Apostle Spring Water bottle fresh spring water from the Darling Ranges to the east of Perth for delivery in 15L bottles to homes and businesses in the metropolitan area. Their business revolves around customers placing one off and recurring orders via an account on the Apostle web site, with payments processed online or collected via cash on delivery. Deliveries are then scheduled based on delivery days assigned to geographic zones.

When we were approached by Apostle we met some very unhappy people. They had spent considerable time and money developing their online store NOT once but TWICE and were embroiled in a vigorous debate with the most recent developer about various aspects of the application. Our investigation revealed the site was unreliable and in some areas incomplete, and over a number of weeks it was determined that the source code of the current store would not be available and the best course was a fresh build.

Over the next few months, we designed, built and commissioned a new store for Apostle. The application is tailored to handle all aspects of Apostle's business process including -

• Placement of orders, including payments and authorization of recurring payments using Eway as a payment processor. One customer may schedule deliveries to multiple addresses, discount vouchers and recurring discounts are handled.
• Collating of orders into delivery zones and days before uploading delivery details to Workwave delivery scheduling software. Drivers record quantities delivered, empty bottles and cash amounts collected into Workwave software using a mobile device.
• Downloading delivery details from Workwave, and transfer of quantities and amounts into the system.
• Full accounting integration with Xero. The system tracks payments and alerts Apostle where recurring payments have failed, cash collections are short, etc. Once deliveries are completed invoicing and payment details are uploaded to Xero. All cash collected passes through a Daily Banking process. All payments are batched and labelled for easy reconciliation against bank feeds in Xero

Implementation proved challenging mostly due to issues with imported data from the historic systems, but within a few weeks the data was all cleaned up and the system functioning properly.

Here's what one of the Business owners, Josh, had to say about working with us

After working with two previous companies at great expense with no success, our third attempt was approached with extreme prejudice and skepticism. Peter and his team at INCUB8 managed our trepidation with professionalism and transparency. Providing complete oversight through the building of the system and very early on in the project it became abundantly clear that INCUB8 had a comprehensive understanding of our business model and processes. Our confidence in INCUB8 grew, especially when faced with complex coding requirements and their solutions were simple cost effective and allowed a platform for future growth of our business. The end result is an extremely powerful piece of software that has provided us with more function, control and most importantly more time. I am more than happy with our experience with INCUB8 and will continue to use them in the future.

This project involved about 450 hours of development, and four months of elapsed time, during 2017.

Chris Mills Performance is a family company retailing high performance parts for the automotive industry with a particular focus on drag racing, street & muscle cars.

Like many retailers, they faced a pressing requirement to address online sales through both their own web site and eBay, in order to maintain and build market share. One of the central challenges in this industry is the sheer volume of parts available, making keeping parts and price lists up to date manually almost impossible. To address this issue more and more suppliers were managing stock lists, changing prices daily and publishing them in different forms online.

Their legacy retail POS system had run the shop front for decades but was not up to operating in an online environment, so INCUB8 was engaged to build and integrated system handling all aspects of the business including –

• Stock management and dynamic pricing. All ordering is handled through the system, with hundreds of thousands of parts available from suppliers, many items are not held in stock and are ordered on demand. Stock items and pricing are updated overnight electronically using different methods for different suppliers. Currency conversion is dealt with for imported items.
• Retail Point of Sale for the showroom. All standard POS features are supported including deposits, credits, special orders, account customers including Capricorn Society
• Listing and management of items on eBay. The system allows control of what items are listed on eBay, including running eBay stores in foreign currencies, price updates when supplier prices change, including recognition of the historical cost of items in stock.
• Integration with online store on CMPs own website. The system also accepts and processes orders via Magento on CMPs web site. Pricing levels can be set individually for each “store”. At the time of writing CMP are changing to WordPress/WooCommerce for their online store.
• Full integration with Xero accounting software. All sales, invoices, payments and credits are synced to Xero so accounts payable functions such as statements etc., can be managed in Xero. Purchase orders integrate with Xero to accurately record stock levels and cost of goods sold.

The system was built in stages over a couple of years, with stock management and eBay listing coming first, followed by POS and the web store. Data from the old POS system was imported and groomed as part of the project.

This is what Reece, one of the owners of the business has to say about the system:

Having surivived on a DOS based system for 20 years, we knew we had to start looking for alternatives that would better integrate with modern systems and allow for growth of our business online. We assessed a number of proprietary systems and found that they were either too simple or hugely expensive.

The custom system allows us to better map our processes into the software, rather than us changing the way we do things to satisfy the software.

The INCUB8 team were supportive and easy to deal with through out the project, and continue to assist us with further changes and tweaks. We found the developers to be flexible and innovative in helping us to continue improving our software to meet our needs.

CMP’s system represents around 1000 to 1100 hours of development over approximately three years.

Telethon Speech and Hearing (TSH) operate a specialist school catering to children with hearing or language development issues. Their Talkabout program caters to children aged 18 months to 6 years involving a team of Early Childhood Teachers, Speech Pathologists, Occupational Therapists and Psychologists in a day school environment.

As you might imagine with such a diverse range of specialists working with the children, and the developmental challenges faced by their students, TSH had developed some unique and innovative methods of reporting to parents on their child’s progress through a spectrum of capabilities with various skills and areas of development. This information was presented both graphically with a position on a development spectrum and a description of the skills mastered for each stage. The problem they faced was the reporting was very labour intensive requiring a lot of coordination between class teachers and specialists to complete, and worse, with all results reported in document form, there was no database of results of student’s progress that could be used for research purposes, or to evidence the value of their work in grant applications.

INCUB8 was approached to develop an electronic form of the reporting system, and undertook a system design to arrive at the final form of the system. Key features developed were:

• Students categorized by year group and class, with the class teacher identified for each.
• Specialist teachers attached to classes, and able to report on designated subject areas.
• Tracking of the progress of data gathering for reporting, showing the completion state of each subject area, student, class and the school as a whole, using colour coding in a tree view.
• Reporting for the year done in two semesters with the second semester showing a comparison of semester one and semester two’s development.
• Reporting topics and stages all flexible and able to be altered each year to reflect the development of TSH’s program.
• Reporting done in a PDF form, with the same combined graphical and text based reporting format as had been development manually.
• Data stored perpetually for research purposes, with ODBC connection, and csv exports to allow use in tools like Excel when doing research.
• System web based to allow teachers to work on reports from home. The ease of use of the interface was a primary design consideration, as a system that required a minimum of training was desired.

Here’s what Janene, the Principal of the school had to say about the application and the development process:

This was a very significant project for us and we couldn’t be happier with the final product. We know have a digital version of our portfolios which has made this a much more time efficient process for all of our specialised staff. Teachers and specialists are able to work on portfolios offsite and are all able to input throughout the year. We worked closely with the INCUB8 team during the development of this system and I was very pleased with the collaborative and professional approach the team took in these meetings. 

Development, training and implementation occurred over a four-month period and involved approximately 175 hours development.

Pilbara Ports Authority (PPA) operates the ports of Port Hedland and Dampier, achieving a combined total tonnage of over 668 million tonnes in the 2016-17 financial year.

The Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Act 2003 administered by the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development require all personnel accessing maritime security zones at any security regulated Australian port to have a current Maritime Security Identification Card (MSIC). As part of its operations PPA is an approved Issuing Body, allowing PPA to process applications and issue MSIC cards to applicants once approved.

INCUB8 built a web-based system used to assist in processing MSIC card applications. The system involves a robust process with strict guidelines when collecting the applicant’s information, including identity and security background checks by AusCheck. Incub8’s MSIC system ensures that the collected information and documents are accurate before the data is uploaded to AusCheck online for approval. Approved applications are then progressed to card printing and issue.

Once the card expires, INCUB8 alerts the card-holder about the appropriate process for renewal or disposing. Other features include:

• Online application process – An initial online application reduces the time an applicant needs to spend at the interview stage.
• Document management – Application documents and communication activities are stored by the web-based system, replacing the storage of hard-copy paper records. Incub8 also implemented a windows client to the system to allow desktop scanning to efficiently be uploaded to the system.
• Electronic signature collection - Signature pads at the MSIC offices allow for signatures to be directly used on electronic documents.
• Automated SMS and email communication - The system provides automatic communications, such as a SMS notification that a card is ready for collection, mid-term address checks, and expiry reminders.

The MSIC system was originally designed for the former Bunbury Port Authority (now Southern Ports Authority following an amalgamation with Esperance and Albany). Using the Bunbury system as the basis, INCUB8 implemented a customised and bespoke system for Pilbara Ports Authority’s business needs and requirements. Due to ongoing changes in legislation and regulations, software updates are implemented twice a year, which requires working closely with PPA on a continuous basis.

PPA policy prevents staff publishing comments regarding suppliers, if you are interested to chat with users of this system we can provide contact details.