Episcript builds transport management systems in Singapore that run each job from the transport order to the invoice: customer bookings, dispatch, route planning, a driver app with electronic proof of delivery, shipment tracking and trip-based billing, all on one job record. AI features, such as reading transport orders that arrive by email, can be added in their own phase.
Built for trucking, haulage, container transport, courier, freight forwarding and last-mile delivery companies in Singapore.
The transport job
The transport order, dispatch, the driver's app, proof of delivery, tracking and the trip charge all work from one job record. Your dispatchers, drivers, customers and accounts team are looking at the same job.
A customer books on your portal, a transport order arrives by email, or your coordinator keys in the job with its pick-up, drop-off and cargo details.
The dispatcher plans the day's runs, assigns each job to a driver and a vehicle that suit the load, and sends it to the driver's phone.
The driver sees the stops in order, opens each address in the map app and updates the status at pick-up, departure and arrival.
At the drop-off the driver captures the recipient's name, signature and photos, and the electronic proof of delivery is saved to the job at once.
Your customer follows the shipment on a tracking page or receives updates, and your office sees the same status without phoning the driver.
The completed job is priced from the customer's rate card, surcharges such as waiting time are added, and the charge goes to invoicing with its proof attached.
Core modules
This is the part of the transport management software your office works in all day. Most dispatch desks still run on a whiteboard, a WhatsApp group and one person's memory, which copes until that person is on leave or a lorry breaks down at nine in the morning. These modules put every job, driver and vehicle on one screen.
Every job starts as one transport order, whether the customer books it on your portal, sends it by email or calls your coordinator. The order holds the pick-up and delivery addresses, time windows, cargo type, weight or pallet count and any handling notes, and a regular customer's weekly job is copied rather than typed again. Where you also hold stock and take sales orders, our order management software can pass each delivery order across as a transport job.
The dispatch board lists the day's jobs against your drivers and vehicles, with unassigned jobs in one column and each driver's run beside it. Dragging a job onto a driver sends it to their phone. When a lorry breaks down mid-morning, its remaining jobs move to another driver in a few clicks, and the customers affected can be told straight away.
Route planning puts each driver's stops in a sensible order, taking account of delivery time windows, the vehicle's capacity and where the run starts and ends. The dispatcher can still move a stop by hand, say when a customer in Tuas asks for an early delivery, and the revised run appears on the driver's phone.
Each job is matched to a vehicle that suits the load, such as a prime mover for a container or a van for parcels, and to a driver who is on duty that day. Leave, workshop days and jobs already booked are visible before you assign anything, which stops one lorry being promised to two customers at the same hour.
Not every job is one pick-up and one drop. A container move can run as several legs, such as collecting the laden container, delivering it to the customer's warehouse and returning the empty, each leg with its own driver and status. The container number, size and seal number travel with the job to the driver's phone and onto the invoice.
A locked gate, a consignee who is not in or a refused carton is recorded by the driver with a reason and a photo. The office is alerted at once, the job is rescheduled or returned, and the customer's record shows what happened instead of relying on a phone call nobody wrote down.
Driver app
Your drivers spend the day in the cab and at loading bays, not at a desk. The driver app is built for a phone used in one hand: today's jobs in order, the address and contact for each stop, and large buttons for every status change.
Electronic proof of delivery replaces the paper delivery order that comes back crumpled, late or not at all. The signed record reaches the office the moment the driver saves it, which matters on the day a customer disputes a shortfall, and what a proof of delivery should capture is worth settling before the app is built.
Each driver sees only their own run, with the stops in the planned order, time windows, cargo details and the customer's delivery notes.
One tap opens the next address in the phone's map app, and the phone's location can update the job's position for the office and the customer while the driver is on duty.
Arrived, loaded, departed, delivered or failed: each status is time-stamped, which turns waiting time at a customer's site into a record rather than an argument.
The recipient signs on the screen, the driver photographs the goods or the container seal, and the proof of delivery is filed against the job with the time and location.
A short daily checklist on tyres, lights and brakes, with photos of any defect, goes to whoever arranges repairs before the vehicle leaves the yard.
A new drop, a changed time window or a cancelled job arrives in the app with an alert, instead of a phone call while the driver is on the road.
Customer visibility
Every transport office knows the call: a customer asking where their delivery is, and a coordinator phoning the driver to find out. Shipment tracking answers the question before the phone rings. Each customer sees their own jobs on a tracking page or customer portal, with the status, the driver's latest update and, once the job is done, the proof of delivery to download.
Updates can go out by email, SMS or WhatsApp at the points you choose, say when the driver sets off and again when the lorry is two stops away. Customers who book with you every week can place their transport orders through the same portal, which keeps their bookings out of your inbox and in the right format.
Trip billing
A delivered job that is never billed is income you have given away.
In many transport offices, billing starts at month end with a stack of delivery orders, a rate sheet and a spreadsheet. Jobs are missed, waiting time is forgotten, and the customer queries a charge nobody can support. With trip-based billing, each job is priced when it is completed, from that customer's own rate card, and the proof of delivery sits beside the charge.
Approved charges become invoices in our invoicing software or pass to the accounting system you already use. Where transport is one part of a wider business with warehousing, purchasing and accounts, the TMS can be built as part of a custom ERP system on the same customer records. It pays to settle how trip rates and surcharges are structured before the rate cards are loaded.
Fleet management
A lorry off the road for an unplanned repair costs you every job it was booked for. The fleet side of the transport management system keeps each vehicle's records, servicing and renewals in one place, and can take location data from the GPS and telematics devices already fitted to your vehicles. If you are weighing up a separate fleet product, how a fleet management system works is worth reading first.
Each vehicle has one record holding its registration, type, capacity, documents and every job it has run. Staff find a lorry's papers in seconds instead of searching a filing cabinet in the back office.
Servicing falls due by date or mileage, and the workshop visit is planned around the vehicle's bookings rather than on top of them. Repairs are logged with the defect and the cost, which shows which vehicles cost most to keep running.
Inspection dates, road tax, insurance and other renewals are tracked for every vehicle, with a reminder to the person responsible well before each one falls due. A lapsed renewal is caught before the vehicle is dispatched, not after.
Fill-ups are recorded against the vehicle and the driver, from a receipt photo in the driver app or an imported statement. Consumption per vehicle appears in the reports, and a fill-up far above the usual amount stands out.
Each driver's licence class, expiry dates, vehicle assignments and job history sit on one record. The dispatch board warns you before a job goes to a driver whose licence has expired or does not cover the vehicle.
Trips, distance and idle days for each vehicle and driver over any period tell you whether you need another lorry, or are paying for one that spends most of the week in the yard.
AI capability
AI features in transport management software are most useful on the repetitive office work around each job: keying in orders, answering where-is-my-delivery questions and checking charges. Each one is scoped with you and built in its own phase, using information from your own transport records, and your team checks the output before customers see it.
AI reads transport orders that arrive as emails, PDF files or scanned booking forms, and fills in the pick-up, delivery, cargo and container details for a coordinator to check and confirm.
AI agents answer customers asking where their delivery is, using the live job status and the proof of delivery. Anything outside their scope passes to your coordinator with the conversation attached.
Managers ask in plain English, for example which customers had the most failed deliveries last month, and get the answer from your TMS records along with the jobs behind it.
AI projects the coming weeks' job volume by customer and day from past orders and seasonal patterns. You can plan drivers and vehicles for the busy days before they arrive.
AI flags what does not look right: a delivered job with no charge, a waiting time surcharge without the time stamps to support it, or a fuel fill-up far above the vehicle's usual consumption.
When a job is running late, AI drafts the notice to the customer with the revised time, and drafts replies to emailed queries about charges. A coordinator checks each draft and sends it.
Buying decision
Packaged TMS software gives you a large set of ready-made features from the first day. A custom transport management system follows your own job types, rate cards and proof of delivery steps. The table sets out where they differ, and a fuller comparison of custom and off-the-shelf TMS options goes further.
| Point of comparison | EpiscriptCustom TMS | Typical productPackaged TMS software |
|---|---|---|
| Job types and workflow | Container moves, multi-leg haulage, courier runs and multi-drop deliveries built to your own steps and statuses | Configured within the job types and statuses the product offers |
| Rate cards and trip billing | Your own rates by trip, zone, vehicle or container size, with the surcharges you actually charge | Rate and surcharge options set by the product |
| Driver app and proof of delivery | Built around the stops, checks and proof of delivery your customers ask for | The product's standard driver app, with options that vary by plan |
| Customer tracking and bookings | Portal and tracking page on your own website, showing statuses your customers understand | The vendor's tracking page and booking features |
| Integration with your other systems | Connected to your accounting software, GPS and telematics feeds and your customers' order systems | Depends on the vendor's supported connectors or API |
| AI features | Scoped around your own transport records and built in its own phase | AI capabilities are those the vendor provides |
| Cost model | Quoted as a project with agreed hosting, licensing and support terms | Usually a subscription priced by user, vehicle or plan |
| Changes after launch | The same team adapts the system as your customers, rates and job types change | Larger changes depend on the vendor's roadmap, though settings can change at once |
| Speed to start | Needs scoping, design and a build before the first release | Usually faster to start, because the product already exists |
| Best fit | Operators whose job types, rates or customer requirements do not fit a standard product | Operators whose work fits the product's standard workflow |
Swipe the table to see both columns
Getting live
We release a transport management system in phases. Transport orders, dispatch and the driver app come first, because they are what your office and your drivers touch every day. Tracking, billing, fleet records and AI features follow once the core is steady.
Current records rarely sit in one place: customers and rates in a spreadsheet, the day's jobs on a whiteboard, vehicle documents in a cabinet. We bring them together with you and check them before anyone relies on them. The system can be hosted by Episcript or in your own environment, depending on the agreement. Our solutions are eligible for government grants, and we talk that through with you at scoping.
We follow a few real jobs from order to invoice, including a container move or a multi-drop run if you have them, and agree what the first release must cover.
Your dispatchers, drivers and billing staff review the dispatch board, the driver app and the tracking page before development starts, when changes cost least.
Built against your own job types, statuses and proof of delivery steps, then tested on real phones by your own drivers.
Customers, addresses, rate cards, vehicles and drivers are imported from spreadsheets or your current system, then checked with your team.
A few drivers or one customer account go live first, and the rough edges are found there before the whole fleet switches over.
Tracking, billing, fleet records and AI features follow in their own phases, supported by the Singapore team that built the system.
Common questions
A transportation management system (TMS) is software that runs transport jobs from the order to the invoice: bookings, dispatch, route planning, driver assignment, proof of delivery, shipment tracking and billing. In Singapore the buyers are trucking, haulage, container transport, courier, freight forwarding and last-mile delivery companies. The systems we build follow each company's own job types, rate cards and delivery steps.
We build it as a web-based transport management system: your office uses it in the browser, drivers use a mobile app on their phones, and customers use a tracking page or portal. It can be hosted by Episcript or in your own environment, depending on the agreement, and the data location, backups and access arrangements are set out in the proposal.
SAP is a large packaged enterprise suite, and suites of that size suit groups that already run them and can work to their standard processes. A custom transport management system is built around one company's own jobs, rates, driver app and customers. For a Singapore transport operator, the choice usually turns on how far your work differs from the standard process and how much of a large suite you would actually use.
The cost of a custom transport management system depends on scope: the job types you run, your dispatch and route planning rules, the driver app and proof of delivery steps, rate cards and billing, the integrations required, the records to migrate and any AI features. We quote against an agreed specification after a scoping session, and a phased release puts orders, dispatch and the driver app live first.
Our solutions are eligible for government grants. A transport management system that moves your orders, dispatch and proof of delivery off paper and spreadsheets is the kind of project the schemes exist to support, and we talk through what your build involves before you apply, as part of scoping the first release.
At each drop-off the driver records the recipient's name and signature on the phone screen, photographs the goods, the container seal or the delivery point, and marks the job delivered. The proof of delivery is saved to the job with the time and location, reaches the office at once and can be sent to the customer automatically. Failed deliveries are recorded with a reason and a photo.
Customers can place transport orders through a customer portal on your own website, and each one sees only their own jobs. A tracking link shows the status of each job and the driver's latest update, and the proof of delivery can be downloaded once the job is done. Status updates can also go out by email, SMS or WhatsApp at the points you choose.
The transport management system can take vehicle location data from the GPS and telematics devices fitted to your fleet, where they provide a data feed, and pass invoices to accounting software such as Xero or QuickBooks. Transport orders from a large customer's system can arrive through an API or a scheduled file exchange. Each connection is scoped during the project against what the other system offers.
Each completed job is priced from the customer's own rate card, by trip, zone, vehicle type, container size or pallet count. Surcharges for waiting time, extra drops or after-hours work are added from the time stamps the driver app records, which gives you evidence when a customer queries a charge. Approved charges then become invoices, one per job or one per month.
AI features work with information already held in your transport records. Common examples are reading transport orders from emails and PDF files, WhatsApp and email agents that answer delivery enquiries, plain-English questions about your own job data, job volume forecasts, anomaly checks on charges and fuel, and drafted delay notices. Each feature is scoped with you and built in its own phase, after the core system is running.
Implementation time depends on the agreed scope, the number of job types and the integrations required, and we give you a timeline once those are settled. We import customers, addresses, rate cards, vehicles and drivers from spreadsheets or your current system, then check them with your team before go-live. A few drivers or one customer account usually go live first.
The system supports your PDPA obligations through role-based permissions, activity logs and controlled access: a customer sees only their own jobs, a driver sees only their own run, and driver location can be recorded only while a driver is on duty. Exports can be limited to named users. Compliance also rests on your own policies, retention rules and staff practice.
Related solutions
A transport management system shares customers, jobs and charges with the rest of the business. Freight and logistics companies that also store their customers' goods can add inventory and warehouse stock management on the same customer records.
Run transport as one part of a wider system covering warehousing, purchasing, sales and accounts on the same records.
View solutionTurn approved trip charges into invoices, send statements and record payments against each customer account.
View solutionTake sales orders, allocate stock and issue delivery orders that become transport jobs for your drivers.
View solutionKeep shipper enquiries, quotations and account contacts on one record before the first transport order arrives.
View solutionNext step
Transport companies usually know exactly where their current setup breaks: the delivery order that came back a week late, the waiting time nobody billed, the customer who called three times to ask where the lorry was. Bring us a few of your real jobs, with the order, the run sheet and the invoice, and we will show you how a transport management system would handle them and what a first release would cover. We build and support it here in Singapore.
Prefer to talk it through first? Call 6581 3431.