I worked on freight and logistics software for 10+ years for a New Zealand based company that has significant operations in USA, Australia, Europe and Asia. (domestic freight/road, air, sea, 3PL)
We were a bespoke software dev shop, and the freight company was our customer.
During my time there we were transitioning to their third “major” version of the software over about 30 years. It was a new system designed to handle the US market, where the customer was a relatively new entrant who had been running off the shelf software for some time.
Due to the way they run their business, with strong P+L requirements down to each individual location/site they had a presence, and even individual trucks operating as separate business units, a lot of what got built was effectively accounting. If this sounds like you, or you use a lot of third party carriers, keep this in mind: tracking freight movements alone isn’t that hard, but you need really strong accounting fundamentals in the system from the get-go to be able to really understand costs in this business. Some off the shelf software doesn’t do this particularly well.
Based on this - my strongest advice would be to choose boring tech (Java or .NET) and recruit specifically for some core developers who have a solid grounding in accounting fundamentals, or do some serious training on this before embarking on the design. You will inevitably end up posting journal entries to your accounting software, so treat cost tracking as a double entry accounting system rather than trying to construct a journal as an output.
The customer is pretty vocal in their annual reports (publicly available as they’re listed) about their successes in IT as well as their business model. They look at having control of their platform “in house” (product ownership in house, outsourced development of their own platform) as a core part of their success.
If you would like to chat, I’m not hard to find - look me up on GitHub, then search my name + New Zealand on Linked In. (My customer is also pretty obvious from there).
We solved the accounting problem by not doing it. ERPs try to do everything but there are lots with nice integration points. If you outsource your actual accounting to an accounting package life gets very easy. Accounting doesn't change much business to business but everything else does. If you focus on the bit that is special to your company life gets very easy.
But even integrating with an accounting packaged does require understanding of accounting and accounting systems. We had an internal accountant working closely with us.
Hi Matt of NZ
We are currently setting up logistics SAAS specifically for NZ crane and hiabs, and will later branch out to other industries and countries.
we are MotherTrucking.co.nz find us, and let's have a talk, you sound like someone we should get to know.
I'm curious what fast charging standard is going to be standard for where Japanese used cars dominated market. Japan still stick with CHAdeMO for local market despite it's dying outside of Japan. I think it's quite bad for used car export economy.
This was me a couple of years ago. You have asked for help - that’s a great first step here.
Talk to your doctor. Panic attacks aren’t something you have to just live with. They can often help with a “patch” in the form of anti-anxiety meds.
This will help give you headspace to figure out your next steps.
Moving forward, you need to go for the root cause. The long term “fix” here might be something you have suggested - or it might be something else. For myself, I found that a new company helped a bit (until it didn’t), but the long term fix has been working for myself.
The lifestyle + diet advice can also be helpful. No single person here will have all the answers for you - pick some bits from each and give them a try.
Talk to your friends and family. They can bring some outside perspective to the situation at work which might be helpful.
Tldr: Meds are a good patch that gives you the opportunity to go after the root cause on your own terms.
Wow, just discovered CyberChef, thanks for the link!
DevUtils has a comparison page at [1] describing the differences between both tools. To their credit (I reckon it is rare on such "comparison" pages), they even highlight the features of their competitor that they don't match.
This is what concerns me most about as blockers; the potential for collusion. Without transparency around rulesets, they are fundamentally untrustworthy.
That comment in the iOS content blocker screen where it says that a blocker cannot send information back to the app is very literal; while it can't communicate with the app, it could communicate with the outside world.
I wrote a proof of concept showing how a content blocker can be used to disclose a unique tracking token across all domains - seeing collusion happening with one of the biggest blockers makes me think that this could actually happen. It's a little inelegant, but it shows that it's possible.
We were a bespoke software dev shop, and the freight company was our customer.
During my time there we were transitioning to their third “major” version of the software over about 30 years. It was a new system designed to handle the US market, where the customer was a relatively new entrant who had been running off the shelf software for some time.
Due to the way they run their business, with strong P+L requirements down to each individual location/site they had a presence, and even individual trucks operating as separate business units, a lot of what got built was effectively accounting. If this sounds like you, or you use a lot of third party carriers, keep this in mind: tracking freight movements alone isn’t that hard, but you need really strong accounting fundamentals in the system from the get-go to be able to really understand costs in this business. Some off the shelf software doesn’t do this particularly well.
Based on this - my strongest advice would be to choose boring tech (Java or .NET) and recruit specifically for some core developers who have a solid grounding in accounting fundamentals, or do some serious training on this before embarking on the design. You will inevitably end up posting journal entries to your accounting software, so treat cost tracking as a double entry accounting system rather than trying to construct a journal as an output.
The customer is pretty vocal in their annual reports (publicly available as they’re listed) about their successes in IT as well as their business model. They look at having control of their platform “in house” (product ownership in house, outsourced development of their own platform) as a core part of their success.
If you would like to chat, I’m not hard to find - look me up on GitHub, then search my name + New Zealand on Linked In. (My customer is also pretty obvious from there).