AG-Drive

New app for agricultural contractors and farmers shortlisted for innovation award at the National Ploughing Championships.

Ag-drive, a new digital app helping agricultural contractors and farmers to manage their business more effectively and improve cashflow, has been shortlisted for an innovation award by Enterprise Ireland, and will appear in the Innovation Area at the National Ploughing Championships 2022.

Ag-drive was developed by farmer and contractor Will Dunn, in response to frustrations his family business experienced, and after he spent a year working on large farms in Australia and New Zealand. The app launched in summer 2021, initially in the UK, and is now available in Ireland.

“As contractors and farmers, we knew there must be a better way to manage teams, timesheets, and get our invoices out quickly and easily to improve our cashflow. Ag-drive replaces time-consuming paperwork with digital timesheets, field mapping, job recording for teams of any size, health and safety checks, and integrations with common accounting software for easy invoicing,” explains Will.

“We’re taking the pain and hassle away from running a busy contracting or farming business, by putting everything on your phone, on a cloud-based system.

“We’ve had great feedback from early users of the app in Ireland, and we’re looking forward to demonstrating the benefits to farming and contracting businesses at the ploughing match in September.”

The platform connects seamlessly with accounting software QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero, for simplified invoicing and record keeping, ensuring customers know exactly what work has been completed and when. Each job sheet can be attached to the invoice for complete transparency.

“Ag-drive is improving the way the contracting and farming industry works by making every job accountable and traceable. Regular invoicing is more efficient than doing it a handful of times a year, and integrating Ag-drive with accounting packages takes away a lot of the hassle associated with traditional paper-based timesheet systems,” explains Will.

Since launch, the app has been regularly updated in response to user feedback, including recent improvements to the team jobs function to allow multiple operators to record their work under one job, specify multiple locations for a job, and to schedule a job without allocating any one specific operator, giving flexibility to businesses. Invoicing using the user’s preferred currency and local tax rate is also now available.

The Ag-drive app is available on both iPhone and Android smartphones and has been designed for simplicity to support all users. A desktop version is also available and is mainly used for invoicing and processing time/job sheet information

Ag-drive offers a free 14 day trial, with no need to provide credit card information on sign-up. After the free trial period expires, users can continue using Ag-drive from €12 per month, depending on the size of their team.

About Ag-Drive

Ag-drive is an all-in-one cloud based app. It offers a highly cost effective way for farmers and agricultural contractors to manage their business from job planning through to completion along with the ability to invoice. Ag-drive provides a truly paperless system making every farm business, accountable and traceable for what they do.

Ag-drive was founded by Will Dunn in July 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic. A third-generation farmer and contractor’s son, Will was inspired to create Ag-drive after witnessing the difficulties his father Simon faced in keeping track of his employees and sending invoices out on time. All too often, timesheets would be handed in late, be illegible, or some would be missing. When travelling abroad after university, Will realised the ‘paperwork problem’ was common to agricultural businesses around the world.

Ag-drive launched in July 2021 and is being used by contractors and farmers in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand to improve their business.

Will Dunn has been nominated for the Agritech innovator of the year in the British Farming Awards 2022, and shortlisted for Best Farm Management Software in the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Arena at the National Ploughing Championships. He was also a finalist in the LAMMA Show’s young engineer of the year 2022 and runner up in Barclays Agritech accelerator program 2021.