Beacon or Towbook?

[Stubborn66]

Has anyone used both of these companies and have a preference?  We are finally looking at going with a digital program that will work for all the club work as well as our cash customers.  We are a small company, 4 trucks and three drivers

 

thanks for the input

[Animosus]

We've used beacon for over 105,000 calls now. A couple years ago we switched to towbook for about 3 weeks, worst decision ever. Back to beacon we went.

 

I think towbook was more feature rich maybe, but it was liking using a MSDOS program. Beacon has a much nicer user interface for both dispatch and drivers.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Animosus

[Stubborn66]

Hi All,

Thanks to Animosus for the response, I was hoping someone had tried both and had a preference.  I still want to come to my own conclusions as to what works best for us.

 

We have always been hesitant to go to digital dispatch, based on the volume of our towing business.  We also want our calls to come into our office, not to a driver cell phone. There are three of us in the shop, and my wife does most of the clerical work.  Our towing business is to support our repair shop, we are not strictly a towing company.  We have always had my wife document the calls so our guys could focus on doing the work. 

I had the Honk app on my phone for a very short time and found it to be a PITA and not offering us calls at our agreed to rates, that was another turn off for us. 

Ultimately, I agree that the industry is moving towards the digital platform, and I recently had a call with the club rep that we do the most work for and they informed me that they were going digital as well and asked me to consider it or risk falling to the bottom as far as getting calls.  They did not want an app on a phone, simply, they wanted a digital way to get us the calls in our area to save having a person make a phone call.  They are looking at it as efficiency on their end.  

 

Here is what I have learned so far.  I have had one demo from Beacon and had two more scheduled from Dented, and Omani last week.  Durning the Beacon Demo I learned that Beacon, Dented, and Omani are currently owned by Traxero But, each company maintaining their individual identities.  I have another demo scheduled for this week with towbooks.

 

The Beacon demo was good, there are a lot of good features in the software, some of which will not be useful to our company, but I would think they are to a larger company.  Beacon will also interface with Quickbooks which we use.  Beacon is also compatible with all of the motor clubs we service and can be used easily for our cash calls which is about half of our volume.

Based on what I learned last week, the Beacon software is better suited to our needs.  Dented, and Omani seem to be for larger companies that are doing a lot of impound work and managing inventories of lots.

 

I have a demo scheduled this week with Towbook, which seems to be very popular.  The research I have done seems to tell me that Towbook has more times where the site is down, and the user interface is not as user friendly as stated by Animosus.  I want to see the interface for myself this week before I make judgement. 

 

Price is another thing naturally; it looks like either one is going to be about $150.00 per month to start.  As I was told, that is only $5.00 per day, but it all adds up.    

[Chuckud]

We moved to digital dispatch thru Tracker about 8 months ago & we could not be more pleased.  The ability to send the driver ALL the pertinent details as well as directions from their location to the call has been a HUGE win for us.  The drivers love it & it allows the pre hook & post tow pictures to be uploaded to the invoice as the job progresses.  The ability to email an invoice directly to the customer is also a great help to our overall efficiency.  We too are a small company &  were reluctant to try digital dispatch but it has worked out VERY well for us.

 

[Stubborn66]

10 hours ago, Chuckud said:

We moved to digital dispatch thru Tracker about 8 months ago & we could not be more pleased.

Can you give me more information on this, is it a company or a version of a product.  I have not heard of Tracker.

 

Thanks

 

 

[Chuckud]

Tracker is a towing company specific software that we started with in 1992 ( wow, that is forever ago) & have been with them ever since.  Try looking them up at Trackermanagement.com

They are based in Ohio & we have found their support to be excellent.  We are using their cloud based software & have found it to be very user friendly .

[bkrul]

@Stubborn66 I'd love to sit down and discuss Tracker with you and what we have to offer. Please feel free to reach out to me at brandon@trackermanagement.com or 216-370-7372

[JustTowIt377]

@Stubborn66 Towbook has literally saved our business. I have been with three different platforms prior to going to them and I will never go to another one. 
 

The person who stated that they are a MSDOS program couldn’t be more wrong. They are by far the most advanced and are 100% in the cloud so they literally can’t have anything in common with MSDOS. My wife works at Microsoft so I know a little about software. 
 

The team there is friendly and always there to help, my mother in law who is computer illiterate was trained by them and now uses their program with ease for billing. 
 

I am in other tow groups and there are always tons of posts if they are having an issue but that’s because very few towing companies actually use the other programs because Towbook is by far superior. 
 

I also get jobs from them from time to time that are sometimes 3x my monthly payment amount so their program can actually make you money. I think you are making the right choice by not choosing until you have worked with one of their representatives. 

Best of luck to you in finding the right program that works for your business and welcome to the digital world, you won’t go back. 

 

[Stubborn66]

Thanks for the feedback.  What other programs have you worked with?

 

I think any of these companies will work, it is just finding the best fit at an affordable price.  I am working on getting a demo from Tracker which I hadn't heard of until I made this post.

[Stubborn66]

Just as an FYI

I just had the Towbooks demo.  I have to say, I think the format was good.  Maybe they have upgraded the interface since Animosus had tried it?  It seemed to have a few more features than the Beacon product, some of which is useful, some we won't use.  They claim their system is up 99.9% of the time. The down time seemed to be the biggest complaint I have seen about them.  In reality, they may be up 99% of the time but when you go digital you are at technology's mercy and any amount of down time will be problematic.  They want $40.00 per month more for their product versus Beacon.  They will not offer any discount if we pay for a year in advance.

 

I have one more demo set up from Tracker, that will give me three options to compare.

 

At this point, we will go with one of them for a year and see how it works out, then decide if we want to continue.

 

Thanks for all the input, it helps

[JustTowIt377]

@Stubborn66 sounds like you are doing your due diligence! I was with Beacon prior to switching to Towbook and was not happy, they seem to make promises that they can’t live up to, but to each their own! I also like that Towbook is the only company that didn’t sell to investors, they are a good company that supports the industry in a lot of ways. Good luck! 

Edited March 10, 2022 by JustTowIt377

[Stubborn66]

Hi Guys,

I had the demo with Tracker this morning.  I don't think it is the best fit for our company.  It has many of the features the other programs have but there are couple of things it does not have that I want.  The most important to me is that they would need to host my QuickBooks and that is not something I would even consider.

 

At this point, I am leaning towards towbooks but I am going to sleep on it for a day or two.

 

Hope this helps someone else considering digital.

[Central Towing]

Any updates after close to a year?

[Frank Toms]

We may be a bit bias but Auto Data Direct has had a Towbook integration in place for over a year now and our customers love it. We can provide the state record information needed for notifications and send it certified mail and they have made it all possible from within the app! Check out the tutorial video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RacLqVORzfI

[Stubborn66]

we have had Towbook for just about a year now.

 

Pros:

it gives us a good platform for documenting our calls easily and keeps all information in one place, the pictures and notes are all kept in one place.

It has actually saved us from Agero charge backs.

We are a small company, and tracking our drivers is not what we intended, but tracking our drivers via GPS tracking has also helped to prove service was completed.

We have maintained our volume level with Geico  which is who wanted us to go digital

We have integrated Towbook with our accounting system, Quick Books which has helped us streamline our billing and making sure we are paid properly.

 

Cons:

Agero seems to have access to us, even though we are not contracted with them.  They send out digital dispatches at all hours of the day with ridiculously low payouts and we cannot shut them down without stopping all digital dispatches.

One of their selling points is that we can get "extra" work with these digital dispatches, but only if you want to run for nothing.

 

Overall, we are happy with the choice, and although we were hesitant to go digital it has been a positive move, even considering the cost.

[Rose]

Is there any other digital towing software that gives you work, like Towbook? We are trying a few and just wondering if anyone has joined another one that sends you calls out of your network? 

[Stubborn66]

In over a year and a half now, we have not taken a single call that was dispatched OON through Tow book.  The rates are ridiculously low.  Agero is no longer associated with Towbook on OON calls so the levels of those annoying calls has gone down, but HONK is now doing the same thing.  Fortunately, Honk is not a big as Agero so there are not as many calls.  I have also read where Honk is not doing well, so hopefully they go away completely soon.

 

My recommendation, do not buy any subscription software in an effort to gain more business.  It is simply cutthroat rates and the motor clubs trying to exploit companies who need work.

[Moose]

Been using Beacon for many years now. Thinking about switching, curious about what others are using and if they are satisfied. Have not had any issues until the past 6 months, maybe a year. Nothing major but support is lacking.

[Stubborn66]

As I understand it, Beacon has been bought out so that may be the difference you are seeing.  We are happy with Towbook, but we do not use it to gain extra calls simply for tracking