Compare
Iron Dispatch vs paper, spreadsheets and big rental software
You are not choosing between two software products. You are choosing between the paper ticket book, the spreadsheet somebody built four years ago, a rental system written for an equipment yard, and this. Every month you wait, the week gets rebuilt from memory again. Here is what each one does, and where money slips through.
One screen instead of a whiteboard, a ticket book and four phone calls. Example data
Side by side
What each one does, and where money slips through.
| What you need | Paper and phone calls | Spreadsheets + QuickBooks | Big rental software (built for equipment yards) | Iron Dispatch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The day’s dispatch, visible to everyone | —Whiteboard and phone calls. One person knows the plan. | ~A tab somebody updates. Drivers still call in. | ~Usually built to schedule from an equipment yard, not for trips out to oil well sites. | ✓One board; the driver’s phone shows their stops; the map shows whoever is on the clock and sharing. |
| A ticket for every fuel delivery, equipment delivery and pickup | ~If it got written. Then it rides on the dash for a week. | ~Typed up from the paper ticket, later, by somebody else. | ✓Yes — often as a form the driver fills in. | ✓Numbered and made automatically the moment the delivery or pickup is logged, with the photos on it. |
| Signed on site, or later when somebody is there | ~If somebody is standing there. Usually nobody is. | —A spreadsheet cannot take a signature. | ~Signature capture is common; check whether yesterday’s ticket can be signed today. | ✓On the driver’s phone. Each company sets it to off, optional or required, and it never holds up the job. |
| Rental days counted from delivery to pickup, at the rates the customer agreed to | —Somebody counts on a calendar at month end and hopes. | ~A formula per unit, kept right by hand. Swapped units and mid-month rate changes have to be fixed by hand, carefully. | ✓Yes — this is what the big rental systems are for. | ✓Daily, weekly, two-week and 30-day rates by total days out, with the right combination applied for you. A swapped unit counts as one rental. |
| Fuel gallons matched to each delivery and to the tank | —Gauge readings in a notebook. | ~A fuel sheet that slowly stops matching the truck, and nobody knows by how much. | —Varies by product; most are built for equipment, not gallons and tanks. | ✓Fuel gauge photos, gallons on the ticket, and a correction on any screen updates the fuel on hand. |
| Works with no phone signal at the well site | ✓Paper always works. That is its one real advantage. | —Not from a truck. | ~Some field apps save without service; many need a connection. | ✓The field app keeps taking logs, hours and photos, and sends them when the truck has service again. |
| Employee hours from the same phone that logs the work | ~A time card in the truck, added up on Friday. | ~A timesheet tab somebody totals, or a separate time-clock app. | —Usually a separate time-and-attendance product, bought and connected on its own. | ✓Workers clock in on the same app that logs the work, and travel and on-site hours are added to the job. Crew fix their own hours within the time you allow and say why. You approve and lock them, then send approved hours to QuickBooks. Employee time — not a payroll service. |
| The invoice comes from what the crew actually logged | —Rebuilt from tickets and memory. | ~Typed again into QuickBooks. Two places, two versions of the truth. | ✓Yes. | ✓A draft is built from what was logged, with the tickets listed on it. Once approved, one button sends it to QuickBooks as an invoice. |
| Knows what a well site is | ✓The driver knows. | ~A column of names. No coordinates, no travel hours to charge. | ~Usually a “job site” address field — not a well site with the travel hours you charge for it. | ✓Sites with map locations, arrival recorded at pinned sites, travel hours for each site, and which customer each site bills to. |
| What it costs | ✓A ticket book. Plus the leaks above. | ✓A QuickBooks subscription and somebody’s evenings. | ~Usually per user or per unit, and usually a project to put in. | ✓One flat price for the company. Never per user, never a share of what you invoice. |
✓ does it · ~ partly, or only with effort · — does not, by its nature · The three columns that are not us describe a way of working, not any particular product. Features vary — check the exact system you are looking at.
Current technology
Built on what a phone can do now.
Works with no signal
The field app saves fuel records, hours, tickets and photos on the phone and sends them itself when the truck has service again. Nothing waits for a signal, and nothing gets typed twice.
Say it instead of filling in a form
Some of your best workers will never fill in a form. With Dispatch Copilot they say or type what happened, the way they would tell a dispatcher. Then they read the card it fills in and tap Confirm. Nothing saves or sends until they do. It can be wrong, which is why a person checks it. Understanding the sentence needs a phone signal; once confirmed, the save waits on the phone until there is signal. Every screen still works with it closed. Growth and Command only.
Knows when the truck arrives
At sites you have pinned on the map, the phone’s own location records the arrival and starts the on-site clock. A sharing phone checks in about every 45 seconds while it is awake and has service. Sharing is each person’s own switch unless you turn on the company policy, nothing is recorded off the clock, and there is no road routing here — distances are straight-line and labelled that way.
Photos, and a signature when you want one
Fuel gauge photos and proof photos go on the numbered ticket. Each company sets signatures to off, optional or required. A missing signature never stops the driver finishing the job at an empty well site.
It tells you; you do not go looking
Notifications to phones: a job assigned, a customer request, a unit down with nobody on it, a help request from the field. The owner and the office see it on the board.
Talks to QuickBooks Online
Connect once. Approved invoices go to QuickBooks as invoices, and approved hours go too, when you press the button. Never behind your back. The connection’s passwords and keys are stored encrypted.
Backed up every night, off site
Your company’s records are copied to a second location nightly. Tickets are frozen when they are made, and every correction and sign-off keeps who did it and when.
One login, every screen
Phone in the truck, tablet in the shop, desktop in the office — one account, each person seeing the screens their role needs, and the map refreshes on its own.
When the other three are the right answer
Sometimes they are. Here is when.
Paper can be enough for two trucks and a customer who pays on a handshake. It stops being enough the first month somebody cannot say which day a rented heater came back.
Spreadsheets and QuickBooks are right for as long as one person can hold the whole operation in their head, and they are what almost everyone starts with. They stop being right when that person wants a week off.
- Big rental software built for equipment yards is right if you rent from a yard to construction sites, your customers make you bill through their own system such as OpenInvoice, or you need accounting inside the same product. It is usually a bigger system than an oilfield fuel-and-equipment company needs, and it is rarely built around well sites, but for some companies that is the right trade.
- Iron Dispatch is right if your day is trucks going to well sites with fuel, heaters, generators, tanks or a mechanic, and the thing that hurts is getting all of it onto an invoice you can defend.
Prices are on the pricing page, in full.
What it does not include
QuickBooks stays your books.
It does not replace QuickBooks — that stays your books. It does not send invoices into a customer’s own billing system, such as OpenInvoice or OpenTicket. It is not an electronic driver logbook, and it does not track the legal limits on how many hours a truck driver may drive.
This page uses no customer logos, ratings or testimonials — only what the product does, next to what you run today. Every screen named here exists; ask us to open any of them on a call.
See it next to what you run today.
Bring what you run today. We will put the same week on Iron Dispatch next to it, and tell you honestly which is better for you. Free for 14 days, no card.