Business automation in Bodmin.
Sat on the A30 with the whole county either side of it. The work happens everywhere; the paperwork comes back to one office at six o’clock in whatever state it was left in.
Autaimate builds business automation and custom software for Bodmin businesses, from a studio in St Austell about twenty minutes away. Commissions start with a £750 scoping session, then run at a fixed price from £8,500, typically live in about four weeks. You own the code.
The town everything passes through
Bodmin’s position on the A30 has made it Cornwall’s natural distribution point. Haulage, wholesale, plant hire, builders’ merchants and light industry cluster here precisely because a van can reach most of the county and be back the same day.
That creates a specific operational shape, and it is the source of nearly every problem we get asked about here. The work is done in fifteen different places; the record of it arrives back at one desk at the end of the day, on paper, in handwriting, missing the bits that seemed obvious at the time. One person then has to turn that into invoices, timesheets and compliance records.
The moor is also right there, and with it some of the worst mobile coverage in the county. Any system built on the assumption that the driver or engineer has a signal will fail on the Launceston run, on Bodmin Moor, and on half the sites in between.
Capturing it where the work happens
Four builds that move the record from the end of the day to the point of work.
Field and vehicle records
Job sheets, vehicle checks and delivery confirmations captured on a phone at the point of work, offline, syncing when a signal returns. The office receives structured data instead of a bundle of paper and a set of questions.
Timesheets
Removing the weekly ritual of chasing eight people for their hours and typing them into a spreadsheet. Recorded once, at the job, by the person who did it, against the job it belongs to.
Plant and hire costing
Hire rates, transport, mobilisation and contract comparison. We already build crane hire costing tools, and the same shape of problem applies to most plant — the numbers exist, they are just spread across three places.
Enquiry capture
An assistant that captures every enquiry with a name and a number and texts it to your phone. For merchants and hire businesses, the first to quote generally gets the order, and voicemail is where orders go to die.
If the driver will not use it, it does not exist
Mick Stevenson spent four decades in UK construction and trades before writing software, and the single most useful thing that background provides is knowing when a tool will be ignored. If capturing a job takes more than a few taps with cold, wet hands at the end of a run, the paper comes back within a fortnight and the build was a waste of money.
That is why everything we make for field work is offline-first. Cornwall Play Safety Ltd use our voice-first inspection app to produce BS EN 1176 reports across Cornwall, including on the moor where there is no coverage at all. Speak it on site, finish it before leaving, sync when the signal returns.
Autaimate is based in St Austell, twenty minutes down the road. For a Bodmin haulage or plant business the useful scoping session usually involves a yard and a driver rather than a meeting room.
Bodmin questions
Will it work on the moor with no signal? +
Yes. Everything we build for field work is offline-first and syncs when a connection returns. Around Bodmin Moor that is not an edge case to be handled gracefully — it is the normal operating condition and the build starts from it.
Will drivers and engineers actually use it? +
That is the only test that matters. If it takes more than a few taps with cold hands it will not get used, and no amount of insisting from the office changes that. Designing for the person doing the work rather than the person specifying it is the whole difference.
What does it cost? +
Commissions start with a £750 scoping session, then a fixed price from £8,500. For a business where someone spends a day a week turning paper into invoices, the payback period is usually measured in months rather than years.
We run vans across the whole county. Does that complicate it? +
Not really, and it is often the strongest argument for building something. The wider your operating area, the more the gap between where work happens and where it gets recorded costs you — which is exactly the gap this closes.
Can it feed our existing accounts system? +
Usually. Most builds can export structured data in whatever format your accounts package accepts, and direct integrations can be scoped in. We check whether the other system has a usable interface during scoping rather than after you have committed.
Do we own it afterwards? +
Yes. Repository, documentation and deployment configuration, transferred on delivery. No licence, no lock-in, no dependency on us during a busy week.
Also covering
Show us what comes back in the van.
The pile of paper on the desk at six o’clock is the most honest description of the problem there is. Bring that and we can scope it properly.