Dating back to its launch in 1947 with a single school bus, Reichert Bus Service has used its exceptional team and comprehensive services to grow today to 71 daily school district routes, six motorcoaches on the road daily for school sporting events and charter bookings, and a full International Certified maintenance shop.
In 2021, Reichert Bus Service migrated from an older, DOS-based software to busHive in order to manage its school trips and charter bookings.
“We had the DOS software in use for close to 20 years when we made the switch,” said Kevra Cherne, vice president of Reichert Bus. “We’re a third-generation company, and we can be slow to change. However, the busHive system seemed too effective to pass up.”
busHive for Trips and Charters
busHive develops software to streamline workflows and recordkeeping. The company’s charter management technology manages quoting, scheduling, billing and payroll. It also offers integrated solutions for tracking driver compliance and vehicle preventative maintenance.
Gone are the days of using Google Maps to lookup addresses, time, and mileage. busHive’s integration with PC Miler automatically pulls this information for quotes based on Reichert Bus’s pre-selected billing rates.
“At the end of the day, we have a really nice, accurate, and professionally-designed quote for the customer,” she said. “The system has streamlined our entire quoting process, along with the customer confirmation process.”
“Whether it’s for charters or for school trips, the entire process is fabulous.”
The system has a built in, fully integrated dispatching and scheduling display. With the click of a button, the Reichert team can view a calendar and quickly see what equipment they have available each day. This prevents overbooking, and allows them to adjust rates for high-demand days.
“We utilize the software’s trip features, as well as invoicing,” Cherne said. “We also utilize its payroll features, but only in terms of processing hours per trip during a pay period. Overall, we find it most effective for entering trips, utilizing dispatch features, and then maintaining trip data for odometer hours, fuel usage, and other factors.”
Integration and Ease of Use
When faced with a multitude of choices for charter-management software, Cherne said that busHive stood out thanks to its ease of use and ability to integrate with disparate systems already utilized by Reichert Bus.
“The system is so user friendly and easy to maneuver,” she said.
“Furthermore,” she added, “I know that technology integration can be a major headache – but busHive is super. Our industry is a lot more blue-collar and less tech-savvy, and you really don’t need to be a ‘computer person’ to effectively use busHive.”
The point-and-click functionality of busHive was a major selling point for Reichert Bus, especially when compared to the cumbersome nature of its previous software.
“If it’s too complicated, we just won’t use it,” Cherne said. “With busHive, we have the ability to go to the homepage, and quickly click to access all of the data we need to effectively operate. We never need to have six screens open at a time, toggling between them, like we did with our previous software.”
Service and Support
For Reichert Bus, busHive’s software support has been phenomenal.
“When we have a problem, busHive gets back to us right away,” Cherne said. “I prefer email, and some of my staff prefers a phone call, but either way – their response time is almost immediate.”
After the initial training period, Cherne said, busHive either answers questions right away or, if the answer is not immediately available, the company gets back to Reichert as soon as possible.
“After training, once we had a few days to digest everything that we went through, busHive would send follow-up emails and make sure that everything was clear for our employees,” she said. “I’ve actually never experienced support on software like we’ve had with busHive, so it’s been a fabulous experience.”