Analytics and Data Collection

Keeping Hotel Labor Costs in Check:  How Mobile Inspection Apps Can Help

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Keeping Hotel Labor Costs in Check:  How Mobile Inspection Apps Can Help

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Creating a Better Way to Inspect Hotels

When guests visit a hotel, they expect a clean room, of course, but beyond that, they expect service. They assume a concierge will greet them at the front desk, a cleaning crew will tidy their room each day, and a whole host of staff members will be on call to meet their every need.

Service is an essential part of the hotel experience — so essential, in fact, that labor is one of the largest costs for hotels, accounting for 45 percent of total expenses.

And it will likely only get more expensive. As the unemployment rate in the U.S. drops, hotels must increasingly compete for talent by offering higher pay. And in some states, such as California and Washington, there’s been pressure to increase the minimum wage and pay hotel staff more.
To keep guests happy, hotels can’t skimp on service. They must continue to hire quality staff who can meet the needs of customers. But they also can’t succeed if profit margins get too thin. So as labor costs rise, hotels need to figure out how to increase staff efficiency to stay profitable and keep guests happy.

Here are a few ways hotels can improve employee efficiency:

Expedite room cleaning

To keep labor costs low, your cleaning staff must be efficient; the more rooms your employees can clean in less time, the higher your profit margins. At the same time, you can’t sacrifice quality for the sake of efficiency. If your cleaning staff rushes through the cleaning process and misses important tasks, your guests will probably notice — and those issues will likely end up in a negative online review that could hurt your business.

Mobile inspection apps can help speed up the cleaning process while keeping quality high. For example, staff members can document each room they clean with photos within the app rather than by writing lengthy explanations. And by using an app, the information for each room is immediately available to supervisors, eliminating the need to collect papers and return to the back office. Plus, staff members can quickly reference a checklist for the tasks they need to complete, so they don’t miss any critical steps in the cleaning process.

Address issues proactively

Maintenance costs can get out of hand if you have to keep addressing the same issues over and over again. Maybe the same toilet overflows every couple of days so you have to send an employee to fix it. Or maybe your staff has a habit of forgetting to empty the trash under the bathroom sinks, which means a team member has to routinely double back empty it, slowing down the cleaning process (and inviting guest complaints).

Having an efficient way to spot and track patterns is key to managing labor costs. If your staff is documenting tasks and inspections on paper (or not at all), it’s impossible to get a big picture of where recurring problems appear or which employees seem to be involved in high numbers of them. Mobile inspection apps allow you to identify areas of weakness, address challenges proactively, and be more efficient overall. You also get real-time access to your data, and the ability to easily create summaries that can show trends for future planning.

Train new employees faster

When you have new employees at your hotel, you probably require them to shadow a more senior staff member for a few weeks until they’re capable of performing their responsibilities without supervision. While that can make for effective training, it can also significantly slow down your cleaning teams until the new employees are up to speed. And when you consider the high turnover rate in the hospitality industry — 72.9 percent in 2016 — that less-than-efficient training time can add up.

Finding ways to train your new employees faster is key to keeping your labor costs down. For example, you can use mobile inspection apps to give your employees easy-to-follow checklists that are accessible on their own mobile devices. Employees are quick to train, more compliant, and have an easier time completing necessary forms using mobile inspection apps since they can choose from drop-down menus and common fields can be pre-populated.

Maximizing your team’s efficiency can help keep your labor costs low — but that’s only part of running a successful hotel. Get more tips for keeping your rooms full and guests satisfied in our interactive eBook, “Fresh and Clean: How Mobile Inspections Save Hospitality Industry Reputations.”

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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4 Innovative Ways to Better Train and Engage Hospitality Staff

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

4 Innovative Ways to Better Train and Engage Hospitality Staff

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In the hospitality industry, things don’t stay the same for long. Restaurant menus change, hotel room rates fluctuate, and perhaps most noticeably — at least for an establishment’s owners and managers — employees come and go.

The industry is well known for a high turnover rate. In 2016, it reached 72.9 percent overall, although some restaurants (quick service and fast casual, in particular) experience a turnover rate closer to 150-400 percent.

That revolving door of employment spells real challenges for restaurants and hotels. The higher the turnover, the more people to train — and subpar training can put your establishment’s reputation on the line. If a new hire provides bad service, doesn’t cook food to standards, or fails to clean every surface in a hotel room, there’s a high probability it will end up in a negative online review. And even one bad review can harm your business.

To keep your establishment’s reputation sparkling clean, try these innovative methods for training your staff members and keeping them engaged.

1. Use mobile devices to your advantage

The hospitality industry tends to attract young workers. The average hospitality employee is 34 years old — the youngest average age of any reported industry in a recent study. But depending on the establishment, staff can trend even younger. In quick service and fast casual restaurants, the median age is 21.

With such a young group of workers, it can benefit hotel and restaurant management to meet their employees where they’re at — which, typically, is behind the screen of a mobile device. The average millennial spends more than three hours on a mobile device every day (25 percent spend more than five hours and check their phone more than 100 times a day — on average, every 15 minutes over a 24-hour period). And that’s clearly not limited to time off the clock. Most U.S. workers (66 percent) admit to using their smartphones several times a day while at work.

Considering that heavy smartphone use, young employees may find it easier and more natural if they can perform parts of their jobs using their mobile devices. Employees can complete mobile checklists, for example, to make sure they’re following correct cleaning and safety procedures every time. Performing parts of their job on a device they’re already familiar with (and likely already have in their hands) can help them get up to speed faster — and keep them engaged.

2. Bring your training into the 21st Century

On average, companies spend more than 50 hours and $800 training each employee. In a high-turnover industry, those costs add up quickly. The faster you can get an employee up to speed — and with fewer resources — the better.

Restaurants and hotels can speed up the training process by using mobile checklist, guideline, and inspection apps. Rather than having to remember extensive cleaning procedures or safety measures, new hires can simply access the checklist anytime, on their own mobile device. In the end, companies can speed up the onboarding process, which can help make sure customers don’t notice a lag in service or cleanliness.

3. Use data to address training issues — as soon as they happen 

Providing feedback to your staff is essential to improving their performance and keeping them engaged. Millennials in particular need and prefer feedback on a daily or weekly basis, rather than at an annual review. And they’re not only talking about positive reinforcement. In a recent survey, 92 percent of respondents agreed that negative feedback, when delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.

But in a busy industry like hospitality, it’s not easy to constantly monitor all your employees for feedback opportunities. By the time a guest or patron complains about poor service or a dirty room, the responsible employee may be gone for the day — and may not work another shift until the next week. Will you remember to provide that feedback the next time he or she clocks in?

If your staff uses mobile inspection, guideline, and checklist apps to document cleaning or safety procedures, it’s easier to keep tabs on who’s up to speed on your establishment’s procedures, who could use a refresher, and who is (or is not) following process daily. With mobile apps, all this information is available to you at your fingertips, eliminating the need to personally check on employees to ensure they are following proper procedures. You can even require employees to snap photos of their workstation or cleaning handiwork, which can help you spot issues and provide feedback immediately. That gives you the opportunity to objectively and quickly correct problems, which can help keep guest satisfaction and employee engagement high.

4. Reward good behavior

Of course, not all feedback should be negative — and employees benefit just as much from recognition for a job well done. Seventy-two percent of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognized. But the most effective way to provide that praise isn’t necessarily an employee of the month award, or a shout-out at the next all-company meeting. Most millennial employees — 80 percent — prefer on-the-spot (and frequent!) recognition.

But again — are you going to wait until a rave review for your establishment pops up on TripAdvisor to recognize your staff?

To provide timely praise to your employees, it’s important that you know that they’re doing a good job as they perform their daily responsibilities. When employees use mobile inspection apps, the data is immediately accessible in the cloud ­— which means you can see who’s doing a good job and acknowledge their hard work before their shift is over.

Training and engaging your employees can help you combat high turnover and associated training costs. But beyond that, it can help you provide the consistent, quality service that your customers expect — no matter how long your staff has been employed.

Want to learn more about how mobile inspection apps can help you keep your rooms and tables full? Check out our new interactive eBook, “Fresh and Clean: How Mobile Inspections Save Hospitality Industry Reputations.”

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

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Reduce Data Entry & Billing Errors with Automated Calculations from GoCanvas

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Reduce Data Entry & Billing Errors with Automated Calculations from GoCanvas

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Automate More With Mobile Forms

Math is hard. Yes, I’ve finally said it. I still use the calculator on my phone to even conduct the simplest of calculations because I’m afraid of making the slightest error (and I simply write content all day)! Imagine the pressure that field users deal with when they are trying to put together estimates or invoices for materials that cost more than I could ever imagine.

Having to look up material or service costs from a catalog, transport that information to a paper form, and then manual calculate it all up is a process that is extremely open to error. 

This is why GoCanvas has the Calculation field!

This “quick-calc” field essentially allows your field users to input any sets of numbers into their mobile form and have those values run through the formula you have pre-created, which then results in an accurate final total. There is no need for calculators or doing math in your head, GoCanvas does the work for you instantly!

And if you’re using the Reference Data feature of GoCanvas, you can have all of your company’s materials and price lists be pre-populated into your mobile form as well! This means no more catalogs and no more manual calculations!

Eliminate Manual Errors with Quick Calculations

The best part about using the Calculation field in GoCanvas is that it’s incredibly flexible to use within many different processes. The Calculation field allows you to create formulas using any combination of Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division.

Canvas App Builder

With these different mathematical rules, you are able to create calculations using a variety of different form fields including Number, Time, and Date. 

This means you have the option to create simple or complex calculation formulas for determining everything including:

  • Quantity
  • Cost
  • Time
  • Days

The Biggest Benefits of Automated Calculations

If you are going down the path of using mobile forms, then you should definitely be using Calculation fields.

You will immediately realize the time (and reduced headache) benefits that come from taking the calculator out of your field users’ hands and letting the smart device do what it was meant to do.

Some of the additional benefits that you will realize include:

  • 25% Less time spent reviewing reports
  • 25% Increase in data collection speed
  • 50% Increase in data accuracy
  • 100% Less time honing your math skills

Also, remember that if you are using an inspection-type form that you can create built-in scoring using Reference Data and the Calculation field! This essentially means that you can have each question on your mobile form have an assigned point value based on each individual response. Once the mobile form has been filled out, each question’s point value can then be automatically calculated to give the report a final score! This is an amazing way to give you, your users, and even your customers instant insight into their performance! You can click here to learn more about setting up scoring!

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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3 Easy Steps to Create & Deploy Mobile Toolbox Talks

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

3 Easy Steps to Create & Deploy Mobile Toolbox Talks

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Workers using mobile forms

Staying Safe Onsite with Mobile Toolbox Talks

Over the course of a labor intensive 8 to 12-hour shift on a construction jobsite site, safety procedures commonly go by the wayside. The reason for this lapse in safe judgment is more times than none caused by the lack of proper routine safety training. Luckily this is an issue that can be easily solved and is why more safety supervisors across many different industries require Toolbox Talks to be conducted on every job site.

Toolbox Talks are an amazing way for safety managers to re-engage with field workers who may not always be performing their daily duties in the safest possible manner. Toolbox Talks are an easy way to get everyone together on the project site to discuss a relevant job topic like ladder or harness safety, answer any questions they may have about the particular subject or task, and also have each employee sign-off/acknowledge that they were present for the meeting. This documentation process is not only important for possible liability in the case of a worker injury, but it also gives you a clear record of when and where these critical safety sessions are being conducted.

The Advantages of Paper-free Toolbox Talks

Today, many companies conduct Toolbox Talks very informally with a packet of paper and a pen. The issue is that it’s really easy to forget, misplace, or damage this important packet of paperwork since it’s being transported constantly between multiple job sites and the main office.

These issues often lead to inconsistencies in proper safety procedures and documentation. Paper-based Toolbox Talks are extremely hard to verify for completion on a daily basis unless you are physically there to witness the collection of signatures. With mobile Toolbox Talks, you’re able to instantly eliminate the need for manual data verification, transportation, and reporting.

Conducting Toolbox Talks with a platform like GoCanvas allows you to conveniently store all your daily, weekly, and monthly OHSA related safety curriculum right on your smart device. This means that no matter where you are, you have the power to conduct a thorough safety lesson to your field employees. You can also conveniently collect signatures of your crew members in attendance, along with digital time, date, and location stamps for further data validation. This makes not only collecting the information a breeze, but back-office reporting is now made effortless since all the data is now automatically stored in the cloud for real-time analysis and/or data export.

Canvas Mobile Toolbox Talks
Canvas Mobile Toolbox Talks
Canvas Mobile Toolbox Talks
Canvas Mobile Toolbox Talks

Going Paperless in 3 Steps with Canvas

Transitioning your process from paper to a mobile platform like GoCanvas is not as difficult as it seems. All it truly takes is a spreadsheet, a laptop, and a smart device!

The first step is to organize the weekly or monthly content of your Toolbox Talks into a .CSV file (Excel).  Your spreadsheet can be as simple as two columns named “Topic” and “Description”. This file will be used as Reference Data and connected to your GoCanvas account and mobile form. This file should contain the content that you wish to populate within your mobile Toolbox Talks form. You can source Toolbox Talks content from a variety of sources as well, including www.oshatraining.com that contains content for every month of the year!

The second step, after you have created and uploaded the Reference Data file, is to begin the creation of your own Toolbox Talks mobile form. The creation of this mobile form can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be by customizing it with the GoCanvas App Builder. We suggest including Signature, Time, Date, and GPS fields to assist with data reporting. But if you’d prefer to not create a mobile Toolbox Talks form from scratch, download pre-built templates from our template library and customize the fields to fit your company’s needs!

Once you’re finally happy with the layout of your mobile form, the final step is to make sure you connect your Reference Data file to it. This will ensure that the specific safety topic that you select to discuss with your crew populates within the mobile form automatically. And if you need any assistance in connecting your Reference Data file to your mobile form.

Now you are well on your way to a safer work site with GoCanvas!

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Keep Your Trucks on the Road: How Complete Inspection Records Lead to More Revenue

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Keep Your Trucks on the Road: How Complete Inspection Records Lead to More Revenue

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For a driver, carrier, or fleet owner, driving time means more revenue. Every minute your vehicles aren’t on the move, you’re losing money.

What’s the secret to minimizing time off the road? Often, it comes down to thorough documentation. Keeping complete and up-to-date records of your inspections can help you reduce downtime — whether due to repairs, out-of-service (OOS) violations, accidents, or otherwise — and keep your trucks generating revenue.

Of course, the method you use to maintain your records can affect the value and utility of that documentation. If you and your drivers are constantly scrambling to find paper forms (which may or may not be up to date), your documentation probably won’t be very effective in keeping your fleet moving. But by capturing data digitally with mobile inspection apps, you’ll be able to access updated information on demand, from anywhere — and that can have a significant impact on driving time. Here’s how.

Immediately identify preventive maintenance needs


The key to high-performing vehicles is preventive maintenance. Keeping the components and systems on your trucks properly maintained can keep them running safety and reliably. However, that can be a challenge for companies that rely solely on paper documentation, as it can be difficult to track and communicate back to the office which vehicles need which services, and when.

Mobile inspection forms can help you better track data for each of your trucks, such as mileage and completed repairs. Equipped with those records, you can more accurately time preventive maintenance and communicate when necessary services, like repair orders, need to be performed before minor issues turn into breakdowns or violations during roadside inspections.

Maintain quick-to-complete and accurate pre-trip inspections


During a recent blitz of roadside inspections performed by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, over 62,000 vehicles were inspected — and more than 20 percent (one in five) were immediately placed out of service. Some experts think drivers could avoid many of those violations if they kept better records.

Consider this: Jeff Langloss, the federal program manager for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), recently examined the violation records of 10 randomly selected companies in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area. He found that of the 4,296 total violations, 3,309 — 76.3 percent — could have been avoided with a pre-trip inspection. While that’s only a small sampling of the country, it’s clear that pre-trip inspections can be a helpful tool in avoiding common inspection violations.

Mobile pre- and post-trip inspection forms help drivers quickly and accurately assess the major systems and features of their vehicle, and determine if it’s safe to drive. Mobile pre-trip inspection forms cover:

  • Tires (inflation, tread, condition of spare)
  • Leaks (oil, fuel tanks)
  • Gauges
  • Dashboard warning lights
  • Lighting system (headlights, brake lights, turn signals, hazard lights, reflectors)
  • Safety equipment (fire extinguisher, reflective triangles/flares, spare bulbs, emergency contact info)
  • Trailers (brake connections, coupling chains/king pin, doors, landing gear, tires/wheels)
  • Other (windshield wipers, fans/defroster, brake system, mirrors, horn, exhaust system, seatbelts)

Collecting that data prior to each trip can help drivers and carriers pinpoint issues before they result in roadside inspection violations.

Increase safety to avoid damaging (or even fatal) accidents


Keeping accurate documentation can even help prevent crashes that are all too common in the trucking industry.

For example, an Ohio-based commercial driver was recently involved in a fatal accident. Following the crash and investigation, the driver’s family learned that the vehicle had been equipped with a badly worn tire and front axle. A crash reconstructionist who looked into the accident determined that the truck had so many maintenance issues that it shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place.

While not all crashes can be prevented, thorough documentation of truck maintenance and pre-trip inspections can help catch issues before they cause damaging or even fatal accidents that can affect your drivers and other motorists.

Minimize litigation by having accurate documentation


Accidents can also bring legal issues for carriers and other businesses that have trucks on the road.

For example, in another accident, a commercial vehicle that was hauling bales of hay lost 10 bales as its driver tried to keep the load from shifting in a curve, killing a driver and passenger in a nearby vehicle.

Ultimately, the truck’s owner and driver faced charges for failing to secure the load — a violation that should have been caught in a pre-trip inspection and certainly would have been caught during a roadside inspection. But federal records showed that the vehicle hadn’t undergone a check in about 15 years. Had the owner maintained regular inspections and records, he could have used that documentation during the litigation — and moreover, he likely could have prevented the accident altogether.

Mobile inspection forms aren’t just more convenient for your drivers; they’re more effective in keeping your documentation up to date and readily accessible — which can be key to keeping your trucks on the road. Learn more about how mobile inspection apps can benefit your business in the interactive eBook, “4 Ways Mobile Inspection Forms Can Keep Your Trucks on the Road.”

Then get started by trying out GoCanvas free (no credit card or contract required). We’ll help you create your first app, whether it’s for regular inspections, maintenance logs, or managing documentation.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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3 Mobile Features that Every Field Service Company Needs to Succeed

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

3 Mobile Features that Every Field Service Company Needs to Succeed

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Tool box and mobile apps

Finding Efficiency in Field Service

There are many factors that go into making a field service company successful. But one of the biggest contributors in determining the success of a business, field service or not, is the quality of the company’s daily data collection process. If a company is not adequately able to collect, share and analyze the data from their jobs in a timely manner, it’s very likely that they’re not able to make data-informed decisions versus a company who has real-time information available. This inability to make informed, real-time decisions can negatively affect a company’s bottom line and become a huge anchor to a Field Service company’s potential productivity and overall efficiency.

Why Mobile Matters

One reason more small and medium-sized businesses are moving away from paper-based data collecting is because the cost of implementing technology has become so low. Smart phones and tablets can now be easily purchased for under $100, and software like GoCanvas can turn these devices into mobile platforms capable of doing more than just simple data collection.

GoCanvas appBy deploying smart devices with a mobile platform like GoCanvas, you are instantly transforming your data collection process into something that is fluid and dynamic. Forms can now be completed accurately and in less time with the assistance of integrated customer, parts, and material lists. Documentation like photos, GPS, and Time Stamps can now be captured without the need to carry around expensive pieces of equipment. And all this information is now able to be centrally captured from your mobile device, compiled into a custom PDF report, and shared instantly with the client and office.

The GoCanvas platform is the foundation for increasing efficiency within your business, but below are the ways that Field Service companies can significantly benefit.

3 Essential Features for Field Service Mobile Forms

While going paperless is a great first step in improving your daily data collection processes, there are specific features that can help your business gain maximum efficiency. Take a look below at how you can customize your GoCanvas mobile forms to increase productivity within your Field Service business.

Credit card and smart device

#1 – Mobile Payments: A majority of Field Service companies want or have the need to collect on-site payments from the clients they are servicing. By doing this, you’re ensuring on-time payment and avoiding the anguish of having to track down clients who never pay. With GoCanvas and its partnership with Square, you can easily setup and capture payments with your mobile forms with a few simple clicks and a swipe. No more having to worry about lost, missing, or late payments! Say goodbye to waiting weeks for payment! With Square and GoCanvas, collecting payments is as easy as a swipe of a credit card.

#2 – Reference Data: What can speed up, as well as increase the accuracy, of filling out Field Service forms? Integrated data lists! With Reference Data, you are able to take the data that resides in the spreadsheets on your computers and import them directly into your GoCanvas mobile forms. Now instead of technicians having to call into the office for a part number or carry around a heavy paper catalog of materials, all this data is now accessible via the dynamic drop-down lists inside the GoCanvas mobile forms.

But the best part is that if a technician selects “Part A” from a drop-down list in a mobile form, the corresponding details including “Part #”, “Price”, and “Description” will automatically be pre-populated within the mobile form. No more guessing or having to manually type in information. This feature instantly eliminates manual data entry mistakes and can increase data collection time by at least 25%!

GoCanvas dispatch calendar

#3 – Dispatch Calendar: The last key part of improving efficiency within your Field Service business is to ensure that tasks are able to be organized and properly tracked without the need for significant manual data input.

The GoCanvas Dispatch Calendar enables your office staff to create, assign and track the completion of service tasks from an all-in-one calendar view. There is no need to install or purchase a separate scheduling software. With GoCanvas Dispatch Calendar, all the tasks created can be automatically synced with your technicians’ personal or business calendar so that they never miss another appointment again! The Dispatch Calendar can eliminate the need for redundant text messages, emails, or calls related to the jobs. This can help your staff recover 100’s of hours is lost productivity every month!

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Improving Your Operations with Field Service Management Software

Whether you have two or 200 employees, your business’ success depends on their hard work. Passionate, motivated team players are the difference between…

Read the Blog
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Should You Connect Field Service Management Software with QuickBooks?

Field service management software has shown to increase productivity both for employees in the field and operations teams in the office. You may be wondering how field service…

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How the Best Field Services Businesses Use Mobile Apps

Mobility and field service: the talk has been happening forever. The idea that real-time information improves customer service and boosts technician productivity is changing…

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Feature Focus: Capture and Verify Employee Locations with GPS Stamps

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Feature Focus: Capture and Verify Employee Locations with GPS Stamps

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Work Order Image

Increasing Data Accuracy, One GPS Stamp at a Time

When you go paperless with GoCanvas, the benefits of reducing manual data entry and increasing data visibility will be immediately realized. While these are great benefits, there are also other critical parts of your data collection process that you should be mindful of when building out your GoCanvas mobile forms.

The biggest part, no matter if it is a paper or mobile-based data collection process, is how can the data be validated for accuracy. With a typical paper form, you have literally no measures or safeguards that you can put into place to increase the accuracy of the data being collected. The only real action that can be taken is for someone to manually review each paper form and look for glaring mistakes including:

  • Missing or blank fields
  • Misspellings
  • Incorrect calculations
  • Illegible hand writing

This extremely tedious process can cost your company 1-2 hours in productivity every single day. With GoCanvas, we leverage the power of your mobile devices so that you don’t have to worry about these mistakes any longer and aren’t forced to review each report by hand.

The Evolution of Data Collection with GoCanvas

The amount and speed of the data you collect are only as good as the accuracy of it. This means that you can implement GoCanvas and increase your data collection times by 5x, but if you don’t implement the proper data validation steps then the data might as well have been collected on paper.

The GoCanvas platform gives you a variety of easy to implement features and settings that can help ensure the data being collected by your employees is valid and accurate. A couple of these features include Reference Data, Auto Calculations, Time & Date Stamps, and Pre-populated Drop Down Menus. But the most essential of all these data validation features is GPS.

Canvas App builder

The GPS feature of GoCanvas allows for business owners and supervisors to verify not only when reports were captured, but also WHERE the data was collected. This functionality can be easily added to any of your current mobile forms using the drag and drop app builder.  And by marking the field as “required”, you can ensure that every time someone fills out the mobile form, the user will be forced to record their location. Additional field settings for the GPS field include accuracy and selecting how the coordinates collected are displayed on the final PDF report (map, lat/long, web link).

How This Can Impact Your Business

GoCanvas’s GPS functionality is a great compliment to many of the mobile forms and features that you’re already using today.

Canvas Mobile GPS

The GPS functionality gives your team even greater detail and insight into your data, as well as providing you validation of job completion. This data is also great for communicating with customers to verify proof of service or delivery. You can now easily avoid the “he said/she said” scenarios that happen when a customer says a technician didn’t show up on site or didn’t complete the service at the correct location. This alone can save you hours in time, frustration, and headaches! The GPS coordinates that are collected can also help with on-site accident reporting and the creation of custom reports to find out where the most injuries are occurring. This can help your business become more proactive with site safety, and reduce costs when it comes to future employee injury claims.

Overall, the GoCanvas GPS feature is most commonly implemented in mobile forms that are capturing field service data that is both time and location sensitive.

Examples include:

  • Crew Daily Time Sheets
  • Job Safety Analysis
  • Accident Report
  • Proof of Delivery Report
  • Daily Work Order
  • Facility Walkthrough Checklist
  • And more!

While these are just a few examples of how the GoCanvas GPS functionality can be integrated with many of the mobile forms you already use today, the ability to increase data accuracy within your business is just a few clicks away!

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

Three inspection workers on job site.

The Ultimate Guide to Quality Control Inspections

Managing a construction project is a complex and stressful process. Among other things, you have to coordinate project team members, materials, and equipment and ensure that contractors are not afflicted by the potential risks and hazards present at the construction site. That said, quality means different things to different people which is why you should…

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A man using GoCanvas for the digital transformation of his workflow.

Constructions Digital Transformation

Your competition is finding faster ways to capture data and get critical insights from the field into their existing systems. In short, they’re not going bigger, they’re getting smarter. In this 15-minute broadcast on the construction industry’s digital transformation, find out why the trend is to modernize workflows – and how you can stay ahead of the curve…

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A electrician inspecting equipment.

See how VIP Lighting optimized efficiency with GoCanvas

VIP Lighting is a retail lighting and electrical maintenance business that services over 10,000 retail locations all over Australia and New Zealand. Before GoCanvas, VIP Lighting had two separate systems that were impossible to integrate, leading to inefficiencies. GoCanvas made it easy to integrate their systems into single, centralized platform…

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Boost Truck Fleet Efficiency and Profitability – 5 Ways Mobile Apps Can Help

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Boost Truck Fleet Efficiency and Profitability – 5 Ways Mobile Apps Can Help

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Mobile apps are designed to make everyday tasks more efficient. You can document and file car insurance claims directly from your phone in real-time, right at the scene of the accident. With a mobile boarding pass, you can bypass the ticketing counter at the airport and go straight to your gate. You can bank with an app, book hotels with an app, and order pizza with an app.

Now, motor carriers — and any businesses that employ trucks and drivers — can experience those efficiency gains regarding inspection reports. With mobile inspection apps, carriers and drivers can trade in the burden of paper forms for the ease of mobile forms and cloud-based data through their mobile devices. But those apps don’t only increase efficiency — they also drive additional revenue. Here’s how.

1. Eliminate Paper Forms While Increasing the Inspection Process  

When drivers and carriers enter information in mobile apps, that data is stored in the cloud. With reduced paper files, carriers can eliminate much of their physical storage including file cabinets and shelves. That means more space in the office, less clutter to work around, and an easier time accessing the information you need the minute you need it within your mobile application — especially if you’re pulled over for an inspection.

Cloud-based data storage can automate workflow and give owners and managers instant access to inspection documents, including work orders, inspection checklists, and audits and maintenance reports as soon as drivers complete them — regardless of where the driver is — providing accurate, up-to-date knowledge on all equipment.

In the short term, the benefits of those changes may seem marginal — but if you aim to grow your business, mobile technology, and a digital documentation system can help you scale efficiently and stay profitable as you expand.

We recommend creating invoices through our mobile app for Trucking Invoices for an easy way to keep track of your financials.

2. Increase Driver Compliance and Business Workflow 

Drivers already work up to 70 hours in an eight-day period. For carriers to be the most profitable, however, that time must be spent driving, not fulfilling peripheral duties like completing or filing paperwork. A mobile app on a smartphone or tablet can save time and increase convenience for both the carrier and the driver.

With paper forms, drivers must fill out duplicate information every time — like vehicle make, model, year, and DOT registration number. Mobile forms, however, may be pre-populated with this kind of information, saving the driver the headache of having to fill in that information time after time and reducing the chance that they’ll get sloppy and skip portions of the forms completely. Mobile forms can also require users to fill out one field before they are able to move to the next.

The time savings can equate to additional driving time (and revenue), and completing paperwork is a win for everyone when it comes to roadside inspections, traffic stops, and especially if your truck is involved in an accident.

3. Demonstrate Accountability in the Event of a Lawsuit

Even though large trucks represent only 2 percent of drivers, they’re involved in 11 percent of road fatalities. Driver error accounts for 87 percent of those accidents, and vehicle issues, such as brake problems, account for 10 percent.

If one of your trucks was involved in an accident tomorrow, would you have accurate, up-to-date information readily available to prove that your vehicles have been inspected, have received regular maintenance, and that your drivers meet all training and certification requirements?

This kind of information can be vital at the site of a crash and may be able to help exonerate your company of any alleged wrongdoing in the event of a liability suit or lawsuit.

4. Increase CSA and SMS Compliance to Enhance Your Company’s Functionality

The law requires truck fleet owners to keep records of hazardous material carriage, vehicle inspections, driver records, health management, and more. The penalties for failing to do so can be steep — ranging from fines to termination as a business entity.

Companies that don’t keep maintain the required documentation pay out millions of dollars each year. Recordkeeping violations, for example, can carry a fine of up to $1,100 per day while the violation continues, up to $11,000. Hazmat fines can stack up to $75,000 per violation.

If drivers receive a serious violation during a roadside inspection, their trucks can be placed out of service (OOS) — taking them completely off the road until the violation is remedied. And that can be an expensive delay, considering you’re losing revenue for every hour the truck is sidelined.

You also have to consider the broader impact on your business. The public can see carriers’ violations and fines on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (EFMCSA) website and too many penalties against your company could cause your customers to take their business elsewhere. Using a mobile app to keep updated, accurate, and accessible records can help you avoid those penalties and keep your business profitable.

5. Improve Overall Driver Fleet Management

Drivers are expected to carry and manage a long list of documents — including a driver’s license, medical examiner’s certificate, a driver’s record of duty status, documentation of an annual inspection, hazardous materials paperwork, and permit credentials.

Rather than maintaining these documents on paper, a mobile app can streamline the process, helping drivers and carriers become more efficient. On a grander scale, that can help your company become more competitive and continue to attract drivers that will stay compliant and drive profitability.

Utilize GoCanvas for Your Own Mobile Inspection App

Paper forms aren’t just inconvenient. Relying on paper forms can open your truck fleet up to fines, lawsuits, and downtime. Learn more about how mobile inspection apps can benefit your business in the interactive eBook, “4 Ways Mobile Inspection Forms Can Keep Your Trucks on the Road.”Then get started by trying out GoCanvas free (no credit card or contract required). We’ll help you create your first app, whether it’s for regular inspections, maintenance logs, or managing documentation.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

A person sits at a desk holding their phone showing a graph, while their laptop sits on the desk showing more charts and graphs.

How TE3CO Leverages Data Analytics to Unlock Business Potential

TE3CO provides mission-critical pressure relief technology and services to customers across the oil and gas industry. They employ a highly trained and capable workforce of field technicians and engineers. Before working with GoCanvas, TE3CO relied on spreadsheets and emails to manage their ticketing process but found the system time-consuming and difficult to track.

Read their story
Two men in hard hats look onto a tablet.

VIP Lighting Gains Business Efficiencies with GoCanvas

VIP Lighting is a retail lighting and electrical maintenance company that services retail chains across Australia and New Zealand. The business has been operating for 25 years and now services 10,000 retail sites across both countries. Prior to joining GoCanvas in 2018, the business had multiple systems running different aspects of their technician and contractor network.

Read their story
Man in a hard hat inspecting HVAC vents.

Three HVAC Maintenance Checklists that will Reduce Errors and Grow Your Bottom Line

For HVAC technicians, so many errors within their daily tasks come from using outdated paper forms while completing a job. Using these HVAC inspection checklists will prevent issues before they happen, so your technicians can collect comprehensive and consistent data at every job.

View checklists

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Passing Roadside Inspections: 3 Tips for Success

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Passing Roadside Inspections: 3 Tips for Success

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A large truck is involved in a fatal accident approximately every 2.5 hours. To keep your trucks and drivers out of those accidents and on the road, it’s vital that you comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program, which is designed to help prevent commercial motor vehicle crashes, injuries, and fatalities.

The core element of CSA — the Safety Measurement System (SMS) — uses information from roadside inspections to measure a carrier’s safety performance. The higher the ranking, the more likely your business will be targeted for an intervention, which could range from a warning letter to an on-site investigation. And if that investigation finds that you’re not meeting safety regulations, your trucks could be taken off the road completely.

How can you make sure your trucks remain on the road and generating revenue? Part of keeping your company’s ranking as low as possible is making sure that all your vehicles pass roadside inspections with flying colors. Here’s how:

Make the pre-trip inspection process quick and painless for your drivers 


Use mobile apps to check, double check, and document all the basics like lights, mirrors, horns and more. Keep in mind that passing inspection is specific to the category of what is being transported. Instruct your drivers to pay special attention to their vehicle’s brakes, tires, and cargo security (as these are some of the leading causes of large truck crashes).

Make documents easy to inspect

Crumpled and incomplete documents that a driver digs out of a messy glove compartment don’t leave a good impression on an inspector. A mobile inspection form gives your drivers access to inspection documents at their fingertips. If an inspector knows the paperwork is organized, he or she will have a better initial impression of your truck overall.

Cooperate 

This may seem like common sense, but it’s not always common. The more cooperation the officer receives, the smoother things go. An officer doesn’t have to go through with a full inspection just because he or she pulls a driver over, but does have the right to cite the driver, the company, or both, so attitude pays. 

By making it easier for your drivers to pass roadside inspections, you’ll help them get back on the road faster — so you can continue generating revenue.

Want to learn more about meeting safety regulations, passing inspections, and keeping your fleet on the road? Download our new interactive eBook, “4 Ways Mobile Inspection Forms Can Keep Your Trucks on the Road.”

What’s in the interactive eBook?

  • What you need to know about CSA’s ranking systems
  • Tips for how to pass roadside inspections
  • Facts about the true cost of non-compliance
  • Types of CSA interventions and what triggers them 
  • Quizzes and facts on roadside inspections, safety rankings, and CSA interventions
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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

Two people in an office looking at a tablet.

Improving Your Operations with Field Service Management Software

Whether you have two or 200 employees, your business’ success depends on their hard work. Passionate, motivated team players are the difference between…

Read the Blog
Two people in hard hats looking off camera.

Should You Connect Field Service Management Software with QuickBooks?

Field service management software has shown to increase productivity both for employees in the field and operations teams in the office. You may be wondering how field service…

Read the Blog
Person in safety vest smiling.

How the Best Field Services Businesses Use Mobile Apps

Mobility and field service: the talk has been happening forever. The idea that real-time information improves customer service and boosts technician productivity is changing…

Read the eBook

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Let’s Build A Plan Together

3 Ways to Automate Data Approvals & Increase Accountability with Workflow

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

3 Ways to Automate Data Approvals & Increase Accountability with Workflow

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Custom Data Workflows to Fit Your Daily Processes

Workflow with Canvas

Collecting data is an essential part of every business on the planet, but it’s only half of the equation.

Sharing data with the right people, at the right time, is often more important than just simply writing it down. But often when companies collect data with paper forms, it can take hours, days, and sometimes weeks for the information to reach its final destination! This isn’t even taking into account the other complexities that can make the paper-based data collection process even more difficult including multi-department approvals, out-of-state projects, and more!

Workflow with Canvas

Read below how mobile process improvement platforms like GoCanvas are changing the way that companies look at the collection and transmission of their data, and how a simple changes like using Workflow could help your business recover 100’s of hours in productivity every year. 

3 Ways to Automate Your Data Approval & Delivery Processes

The GoCanvas platform is not only a great way to combine all your paper forms into a single mobile app, but it’s also a means of controlling how and when your company’s data is collected.  Read below to learn about three popular use cases for the mobile Workflow feature of GoCanvas and what kind of impact it could have on your business.

Review & Approve Timesheets: Collecting employee daily or weekly timesheets is always a pain, but with GoCanvas it can almost become a pleasure. Instead of your crews having to fill out a piece of paper on every job site at the end of the day or week, they will instead simply log their time right on their phone. Once complete, those times will be sent automatically to their site supervisor who will receive a notification on his or her GoCanvas mobile device. The supervisor can then access and check each employee’s time, add comments, and reject if necessary. If everything looks good, the supervisor can sign off on the timesheet and send it to the company’s cloud database so that it can be digitally filed and processed by the office accounting team.

Safety Violation Tracking: For the Construction, Field Service and Manufacturing industries, employee safety is always a top priority. Due to the nature of work that is involved in these industries, having an efficient system for reporting and reviewing safety violations is essential.

By using Workflow with GoCanvas, a safety supervisor can now do his/her rounds at each project site, fill out the safety reports, and send the results to the office manager for review in real-time. The best part is that reports can be conditionally triggered to be sent for review if, such as, an item is marked as “Failed” or “Requires Correction”. This ensures that the office is only being sent notifications about the most critical reports, which allows them to focus on implementing real-time corrective actions to improve specific site safety situations.

Multi-step Construction Tasks: No matter what you are building or producing, it usually takes a group of people to get the job done. With paper forms, this involves each person who works on a particular task filling out a report. This usually leads to there being folders and upon folders worth of unorganized paper documentation.

With Workflow from GoCanvas, the data collected from start to finish of each task is kept neatly together in a single report. Once “John Doe” completes his part of the task, he can pass or “hand-off” the digital report to “Jane Johnson” so that she can complete her part of the report and continue this process in a dynamic chain of data collection until the report is complete! There will be no more swimming through filing cabinets to find that report from last year since now every completed report will be stored neatly in the cloud for you to easily search through using a simple keyword search. You can even track the status of “in-progress” reports to see why a certain report hasn’t be turned in yet!

And remember, each workflow can be easily setup and customized based on the different types of work processes being conducted, no matter the length. If you’d like to learn more, check out this amazing Workflow eBook on how real companies are making the switch from paper forms to GoCanvas!

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

Three people in hard hats looking at a tablet.

Smarter, Faster, Safer: Improving Safety Compliance with Mobile Technology

Compliance, there are many ways we talk about it. A necessary evil, a chore, a struggle, or a critically important part of business. We all know how crucial it is, helping save…

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Woman reviewing information on a tablet.

Your Guide to Waiver Forms — Examples and Templates

Waiver forms are a type of legal protection used by businesses to reduce their liability and risk. This type of agreement between a business and its customers is used…

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Duotank Transforms Business Processes with GoCanvas

Duotank is a bag-in-tank alternative to the traditional keg beer system. The aseptic tank environment enables breweries to maintain the quality of their beer after it leaves…

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