Thebeau Heavy Equipment & Ag Repair

Thebeau Heavy Equipment & Ag Repair opened its doors on February 1, 2022.

Owner Joe Thebeau is based in southeastern Missouri. The operation is mobile, traveling from customer to customer and performing 95% of all work on their various jobsites. Thebeau Heavy Equipment & Ag Repair has a range of 150 miles, giving them plenty of ground to cover.

They primarily work on agricultural and other heavy equipment associated with dirt moving, agriculture, mining (rock quarries, lead mines, cobalt mining for electric batteries).

WHAT DID THEBEAU NEED?

Thebeau Heavy Equipment & Ag Repair is a newer operation, and they’ve been using Fullbay from the start. Joe had used a different kind of shop software at a previous job and knew he wanted an app that would save him time. “Everything from ordering parts to opening and closing jobs was extremely difficult and time-consuming,” he said.

He needed a streamlined app that let him get things done and got him paid.

CHALLENGE #1: ADDING & BILLING CUSTOMERS

When Joe started his mobile shop, he already had a number of customers ready to go with him. The only problem: he needed an easy way to set them up, organize their equipment, and bill/accept payment instantly.

Any mobile operation knows how important that last point is, as customers often want a bill on the spot. Providing that bill is just good customer service—and it spares the tech and the shop the need to fumble around with paperwork and following up after they get back to their base (whether that’s a physical shop or their bedroom office).

CHALLENGE #2: SCHEDULING JOBS

Before Fullbay, Joe and his team had no real way to track all their jobs. They made do with a Word document containing their customers, what machines they had, and the various problems those machines suffered.

As you can imagine, this was not an ideal scenario. Word is great for a lot of things, but using it to track maintenance needs for an ever-increasing amount of equipment is impractical and…well…probably messy. And finding out what parts on, say, a tractor are aging—forget it.

CHALLENGE #3: TRACKING SERVICE ORDERS & INVOICES

What’s a quick way to prohibit shop growth? Getting lost in paperwork. At his last job, Joe spent a lot of unnecessary time writing up service orders and chasing aging invoices. “The old program I used took 25-30 minutes to close a service order on a job,” he says. This took time away from customers (and thus, time away from doing the kind of work that would help him grow the business). Worst of all, “after work” just turned into an extension of his work hours, siphoning time away from his family as he tried to get and stay caught up on orders and invoices.

ENTER FULLBAY

Joe knew he wanted to outfit his new business with management software that could accompany him on the road and make tracking, scheduling, and invoicing easy. “As soon as I saw the [Fullbay] demo, I knew that from using the other systems I’d used in the past, that was the way to go.”

INSTANT CUSTOMER ADDITION & BILLING

Fullbay makes it a snap to add customers and their equipment to the system. Joe especially appreciates how easy it is to review job details on the spot, rather than riffling through papers. The ability to offer on-site billing to their customers has also made it much, much easier to grow. “There’s a lot of times I’ll get a call and go out to do a job, and the customer wants a bill right there,” Joe tells us. “I can turn around and just open the job, do a quick service order, and hand them a receipt right there.”

Organized and documented invoicing makes it easier and faster to close service orders and not let them pile up or get lost. Handling the payment on the spot also cuts down on the need to handle it after work—once the job is done, it’s done!

SIMPLIFIED SCHEDULING

No more trying to jerry-rig Word as a scheduling app! Joe and his team can organize everything right inside Fullbay. He spends less time searching for job details, and more importantly, he can prioritize jobs. “I can always look into Fullbay to see what’s aging,” he says.

A BETTER WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Joe is happy with Fullbay’s ability to streamline his daily operations. By helping him run a more efficient shop, the app has cut down on the after-hours work he and his team had to put in chasing papers and following up with customers.

“Fullbay is probably one of the best tools on my truck,” he says, noting that he can close a service order in five minutes as opposed to the half-hour his previous software required. “It takes care of everything I’m not good at—the paperwork.” It also makes life much easier for his office manager, who can go right into Fullbay, see what’s going on, and take care of things without calling him and asking about parts or charges.

“When I come home at night, I don’t have to spend my time on the computer billing, invoicing, and quoting jobs.”

UP UP AND AWAY

Fullbay hasn’t just made life easier for Joe and his office manager—it’s also been a hit with his customers. They’re enthused about the portal, which lets them see in real-time what’s up with their equipment, including its service history.

Happy customers generally mean a happy operation. We look forward to helping Thebeau Heavy Equipment & Ag Repair grow into a powerhouse mobile shop!