Established in1987, Botswana Railways (BR) forms a crucial link in the Southern African regional railway systems. Its strategically laid rail network, supported by good relationships with other rail operators, makes Botswana Railways freight services the most suitable, reliable and cost effective mode of transport to use for moving bulk commodities. Botswana Railways Freight Service targets bulk commodities that may be operational challenging for transport by other modes of transport.

In this unusual implementation, Afrisoft utilises TransLution™ Software to weigh and label parcels that are being sent by Botswana Railways customers. TransLution™ is used to create the sales order containing the costs of the shipment.

Previously all of the steps taken to complete these sales orders were accomplished manually. However, the Auditor General required that a tracking system be installed to provide an audit trail of all actions and Afrisoft was approached to implement the system.

The process begins with the user capturing information about the sender and the destination address so that there is enough information to create a SYSPRO sales order header. This data is captured using a custom form embedded into TransLution™.

After the header data is captured, the user weighs each parcel that is to be sent and logs this parcel with its weight, to be created as a sales order line in SYSPRO, while simultaneously time printing a label for each parcel. The parcels are weighed on a scale directly linked to TransLution™ so weight capture is automated and no manual input is required. The sales order requires a monetary value which is determined automatically based on the parcel weight. All the sales order information is captured into TransLution™ and once the customer accepts the charges the user posts the sales order to be created in SYSPRO.

At this point, the order is viewed and the invoice can be printed. The invoice is generally printed directly from SYSPRO but it is possible to work in an offline mode when there is no connectivity to the SYSPRO server. In this mode, the data is captured as normal and automatically buffered within TransLution™ if SYSPRO is not available. There is also a Pro Forma invoice available so that invoices can be printed even if SYSPRO is not available.

About

TransLution™ software was developed to assist manufacturing, warehousing and distribution companies to better manage their business processes and stock handling. The TransLution™ product is particularly focussed on robust integration to customers’ existing ERP, accounting and stock