How it works
How Iron Dispatch works
Right now the day lives in texts, a whiteboard, a ticket book and a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds at month end. The person holding it all together cannot take a day off. Set it up, run a week on it, and close the month on what the crew actually recorded.
The first thing that stops costing you time
See which unit is at which well site in seconds, not in a text thread.
“Where is BSG-H11, and how long has it been out there?” takes five minutes when the answer is buried in a month of texts. Here it takes a glance: the unit, the well site (the drilling pad) and the date it arrived.
Every delivery and every pickup is a ticket from the driver’s phone, and the ticket is what updates the unit’s place on the list. So the list is right because the work was recorded, not because somebody remembered to update it.
- Every unit: where it is and since when, on the equipment list, on the site’s page, and on the map.
- The trucks, while the crew is on the clock. A phone that is sharing its location checks in about every 45 seconds while it is awake and has service, and the map shows how old each position is. Nothing is recorded off the clock. Sharing is each person’s own switch, unless the owner turns on the company policy.
- Arrival at a pinned site. When someone reaches a site you have pinned on the map, the on-site clock starts without anybody tapping. The app does no road routing, so it never guesses a drive time or an arrival time.
- Your GPS trackers, if you use them. Connect Geoforce for your units in Settings, and the map reads from it. Optional: the phone is enough to start.
Last visit: Frank F., Aug 22, 340 gal. Example data.
A Tuesday
The same day, run two ways.
On paper
On Iron Dispatch
Three steps
Three steps to a month that closes on facts.
Set up
Every plan includes a setup assistant: AI that reads your spreadsheets in and answers your setup questions while you get started. An hour of help by phone from us is included too, if you want it. Then add your trucks, crew, clients, sites and price list, from a spreadsheet or by hand. The guided setup shows what is left. No consultant needed.
Run one week on it
Dispatch the day from the office. Crews record fuel, service work, hours and photos on their phones as they go, with or without signal.
Close the month on facts
Hours, gallons, rental days and parts are already tied to the job. Your invoices and your crew’s hours come from the record, not from memory.
Nobody typed this. Every line is fuel, labor, truck hours or rental days the crew already recorded, listed under the client and the well site where it happened. Build Invoice turns it into the invoice. Earned, not collected yet. Example data
The shop side
Scan the sticker on the unit. Everything about it is right there.
Print weather-proof QR stickers (square barcodes a phone camera can read) straight from the app, and put one on every unit. Scan a heater with any phone camera and it opens that unit: what it is, where it is, its open work orders, its manual, and a Diagnose button. Diagnose answers from the manual and gives the page number.
Upload the manuals your company owns once, and they go with the equipment everywhere: on the work-order board, on the mechanic’s My Work screen, and on the scanned sticker. The app also watches for repair patterns nobody has time to spot. A unit back in the shop again and again gets flagged. A part failing on several units gets flagged with its vendor. The morning summary names them.
Made to fit
It takes your company’s names, your rates and your rules — not ours.
Your words
Name the yard what you call it. Rename the roles to your company’s job titles. Keep your own list of equipment types. Call a location a well site, a lease (the land an oil company has the right to drill) or a job site. Name each service the way it should read on an invoice.
Your rates
Daily, weekly, two-week and 30-day rates on every unit, and different numbers for customers who negotiated them. Your labor rate. Travel and on-site time billed at set amounts or at the time actually measured, with your own minimums. What fuel costs you and what you charge. Your state and county tax.
Your invoice
For each customer: one line per delivery, per well, per service or per day, and which details each line shows. The fields their bills department needs at the top of the invoice: a P.O. number is built in, plus the customer’s job or budget code, fixed for that customer or typed on each invoice. One invoice per well site when they want it that way. Your logo, and invoices sent from your own email address.
Your rules
Signatures off, optional or required. Crew members approving their own day. The truck inspection before leaving: a reminder or required, and what a reported problem does to the unit. How many days a driver has to fix their own hours. Whether the crew shares location while on the clock. How long a broken-down unit can wait for a mechanic before owners and managers get an alert. Which lines of work you run at all: fuel, service, rentals.
Something we have not built yet?
If your work has a wrinkle the settings do not cover, tell us.
The settings above cover most of what makes one company different from the next. When they do not, we can build it into the software. Two examples: an oil company that wants you to fill your trucks from their storage tanks and prove every gallon you took, and a ticket their bills department needs in a shape nobody else uses. Both became features rather than workarounds. Email our sales address with what you need, and we will tell you straight what it takes.
Before you start
What to have ready to set up your account.
This is everything the guided setup asks for, in the order it asks. Clients, well sites, equipment, parts and your team can come straight in from a spreadsheet: save it as a .csv file (any spreadsheet program can), match the columns, and import. Duplicates are skipped. Everything else is a few fields typed once.
Show the full list
Your company
- Company name, and the email address where customer replies should go
- Your time zone
- Your yard address (where you keep equipment and trucks), and any second yardPuts your yard on the map and powers “back to the yard.”
- Which lines of work you run: fuel delivery, equipment service, rentalsEach is a switch; turn on what you do.
- Your logo, if you want it on tickets and invoicesJPEG or PNG.
Your people
- Everyone who will use it: name, email and roleOwner, manager, dispatcher, driver, mechanic, office. Can come in from a spreadsheet.
- Who is a driver and who is a mechanicDrivers get the field app; the shop gets work orders.
- Driver files and certification dates, if you keep themOptional; reminders go out before they expire.
Your customers and sites
- Clients: company name, billing contact, billing email, phone, addressThe billing email is where tickets and invoices go. Can come in from a spreadsheet.
- Well sites: site name, which client it bills to, county and stateThe county sets the sales tax. Can come in from a spreadsheet.
- A location for each site: map coordinates, or drop a pin on the mapA pinned site shows on the map and starts the on-site clock when somebody reaches it.
- Directions or access notes for the well sites that need them
Your equipment and trucks
- Every rental unit: name or number, type, serial number, make, model, yearCan come in from a spreadsheet.
- The four rates on each unit: daily, weekly, two-week, monthlyAnd the customer deals that differ from them.
- Fuel type and GPS tracker number, where a unit has one
- Your trucks, and which ones are fuel trucks, with tank size
- Yard tanks you fill trucks from: size and current level
- Parts you stock: name, part number, what you pay, what you charge, how many you haveOptional; can come in from a spreadsheet.
Your money
- The fuels you deliver: what each costs you and what you chargeThis is what makes every report show real dollars.
- Your labor rate, and set amounts for travel and on-site timeSensible numbers are already filled in; confirm or change them.
- Workweek start day and your overtime ruleHours export to whatever pays your people; we never touch pay.
- Your QuickBooks Online login, if you want invoices and hours sent thereConnect once, from Settings.
Rules of the road
- The truck inspection before leaving: a reminder or required
- Location sharing for the whole crew while on the clock: on or offOff until the owner turns it on; each driver has their own switch.
- Crew approval of their own day, and ticket signatures: off, optional or requiredThe defaults are the safe choices.
- Your GPS tracking company and its access key, if you use oneGeoforce, for units. Optional.
Have only some of it? Start anyway. The setup page shows what is left, and nothing below blocks a driver from clocking in on day one.
See it with your own trucks, units and sites.
A setup assistant to get you started, an hour with us if you want it, a week on real work, and an honest answer about whether it fits. Free for 14 days, no card.