Field Ticket Management System:
A Case Study in Custom Oil and Gas Services Software

Entrance Software is often asked to upgrade or update existing applications to support more features or better integration. Often, as in this case study, we are asked to take over a software application that was developed by a less experienced or less professional developer. In this case study, we determined that it would be more cost effective to continue to develop on an existing .Net 1.0 code base rather than start from scratch or customize an off-the-shelf solution.

The Problem

This pipeline construction company uses a highly customized piece of software to track work and generate bills to clients. Prior to Entrance Software, they were required to manually print a summary of every work ticket and send the summarized statement of work to their clients for approval. Once the work was approved, they were required to manually create an invoice using Excel, print it along with several thousand pages of supporting evidence, and send it to the customer for payment.

The company needed a solution that would store scanned images of supporting documentation and allow employees to quickly and efficiently record that information in a digital format. The system needed to be aware of their unique work tracking and invoicing methods, and needed to integrate tightly with their existing accounting and a new customer portal being developed at the same time.

The Custom Software Solution

Entrance Software worked with the existing .Net 1.0-based application to add the features requested by the general manager. Among the requested features were highly customized implementations of several standard work processes:

• TWAIN integration to support scanning work tickets and receipts
• Credit card integration to permit completed invoices to be billed automatically or after customer approval
• Accounting integration to allow invoices and payments to be inserted directly into the company's general ledger and A/R software
• A customer portal to permit customers to approve and pay invoices online
• Custom tax tables to support multiple tax jurisdictions per invoice and multiple tax calculation methods per work ticket

Entrance Software put in place a testing and release schedule that allows us to release a test version of the software to our client before the live version is released to all users. Entrance also worked to upgrade the existing Crystal Reports engine and .Net framework in order to prepare them for modern Microsoft operating systems and take advantage of vendor-provided bug fixes.

The Future

Entrance is looking into ways to electronically read information recorded on work tickets, eliminating unnecessary typing and potential for error.