Motorcharge project
About Motorcharge
Motorcharge is a leading provider of fuel cards to small and medium businesses throughout Australia.Motorcharge's success in operating over 120,000 vehicle cards has resulted in the company being a leading player in the development and management of co-branded cards, third party cards and an electronic point-of-sale network within the retail motor industry. Over the past 20 years, the range of services has expanded beyond just fuel purchases, encompassing the charging of all vehicle related expense items, including fuel, service, repairs and maintenance as well as accommodation. The Motorcharge system also offers a comprehensive range of management and taxation reports to its cardholders.
Motorcharge first began providing a fuel charge card service in 1981. Motorcharge was the first to electronically capture transactions from service stations in Australia, and its point-of-sale terminal network was amongst the first of its kind in the world.
The more successful Motorcharge becomes, the greater the benefits to members in the form of improved merchant services. Another Motorcharge initiative to benefit members is the introduction of the United 241 (now ReD) EFTPOS terminal. The ReD terminal offers merchants one terminal that can cater for both the Motorcharge card as well as all major bank credit and debit cards. Due to significant buying power, Motorcharge is able to negotiate significantly lower bank merchant service fees on behalf of participating merchants than individuals could achieve on their own. The Motorcharge point-of-sale network now numbers in the excess of 5,000 terminals throughout the country.
Retail Decisions (ReD) is a publicly listed UK company with expanding operations in the United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, the United States and South Africa.
ReD's acquisition of Motorcharge Ltd and Australian Card Services Pty Ltd (Motorpass), specialist card based transaction processing businesses, marked the group's consolidation of their entrance into the Asia Pacific market. Through Motorcharge and ACS, ReD have advanced towards realising its aim of becoming a global provider of e-commerce fraud prevention services and card transaction support services.
With the support of ReD's unparalleled expertise in the development of fully integrated on-line systems, customers benefit from additional card functionality and powerful customer relationship management tools. By use of constantly evolving technologies, ReD is also able to not only detect payment card fraud, but to predict and prevent its occurrence.
This infrastructure provides a platform for a full range of quality card based services, including the development of proprietary label cards. ReD is committed to the delivery of a range of sophisticated, customised solutions designed to suit the changing needs of Australian businesses and an increasingly high level of service.
Whether your business is seeking a vehicle charge card, co-branding arrangement, a card management system or an electronic point-of-sale network, ReD has the ability to provide you with a turn-key solution.
The problem
Motorcharge generates approximately 50,000 invoices per month. These invoices are sent to a mailing house for printing, insertion and mailing to customers.This method of invoice distribution was considered expensive and time consuming, with some customers complaining of late delivery of invoices due to postal delays.
An alternative was sought to reduce the number of printed invoices and to minimise unnecessary postal delays.
The problem centred around the fact that the main database is sitting in a UniData environment on a COMPAQ Alpha. This meant that using a solution such as Acrobat Distiller was not suitable. However, by using txt2pdf PRO we were able to integrate the Unix portion of the server from within the UniData environment to create a PDF file which could then be forwarded via standard email methods.
Why txt2pdf PRO?
The original specifications of the project involved providing an electronic invoice that closely resembled the existing paper version, while adding elements for electronic integration. Txt2pdf provided the perfect solution - being able to create the invoices on a fly, utilizing already existent PICK code while providing an extensive background file creation to build the first and subsequent pages. We were also able to integrate some small graphics to add a touch of pizzazz to the page.The e-invoice also features hyperlinks to allow our customers to make online payments through our website.
We have gone on to produce specific "watermarks" in the PDF render, allowing us to bring important information such as "Payment Overdue", to our customer's attention.
This is an example of our old invoices
This is an example of our new invoices made by a new version of data2pdf with the possibility to have in the same document pages in landscape and portrait format.
Motorcharge also manage a number of co-branded cards on behalf of third party clients, and we are currently working on being able to offer PDF invoices to our co-branded cardholders.
SANFACE Software have played a vital role in the implementation and roll-out of this project. Their service and support has been exceptional, with minimal turn around times in providing solutions to all problems posed.
