If you’ve been following along, you know that 2024 was a big year for Raken. We’ve been expanding by adding new capabilities and integrations and updating our most widely used current features.
Here’s what’s new.
How customers used Raken
In 2024, Raken users:
Created 165K projects
Signed 2M daily reports
Logged 991K time cards
Added 22K observations
Captured 37M jobsite photos
Completed 322K safety and quality checklists
Held 77K toolbox talks
Sent 27K messages
New features
We started out the year by expanding our product offerings even further to make sure work is done with maximum efficiency and nothing slides through the cracks on the jobsite.
Equipment management
A critical addition to the Raken platform in 2024 was our revamped equipment management feature. Track critical details about your owned and rented equipment to protect your investments and control budgets. And with proactive maintenance and logistics, you can extend equipment lifespan. You can also run reports to analyze trends and areas for improvement.
We also added the ability to manage your small equipment in bulk and report by either units or status (including deployed, on-site, withdrawn, lost/stolen). It’s never been easier to ensure your resources are effectively distributed across your jobsites.
AI photo identification for time tracking
Reduce time theft and improve compliance with AI photo ID and verification questions. When workers clock in for the first time, they’ll be prompted to take a selfie for reference. Then, every time they clock in or out or go on break, they’ll take another photo that will be used to verify their identity using AI technology. Admins can easily review failed matches and follow up to prevent buddy punching or payroll fraud.
Verification questions for time tracking
Admins can also create custom verification questions to be asked whenever workers clock in and out. For example, confirming that breaks were taken, or that workers arrived healthy on the job site. These can be specific to the project and can be reviewed by admins to track compliance and ensure standard procedures are followed.
Incident reporting
Our incident reporting feature, released this past spring, enables you to accurately document accidents, injuries, and illnesses from the field or the office. They’re quick and easy to create, and you can notify stakeholders automatically. Just include all the necessary information and attach supporting documents, and you’re ready for annual OSHA submissions.
Document storage
With our document storage tool, you can give workers in the field quick and easy access to critical documents, all organized in one spot. Create custom folders for project plans, RFIs, safety reports, and more, and easily search for what you need. Plus, you can mark up and share files to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Certifications
Our certification management feature makes it easy to add, report on, and view your whole team’s certifications at a glance, so you can make sure you have the right workers for each job.
Getting started with certifications is simple — just upload proof of employee certifications, set up notifications for when certifications are about to expire, schedule reports to run and share automatically, and track where your highly-skilled employees are working with our labor map to better allocate your workforce’s skillset. Plus, you can assign certifications in bulk to save time.
Groups
It’s even easier to manage projects and employees in ways that make sense to your company’s unique needs. Our groups feature enables you to place projects into customized groups based on location, region, job type, and other criteria. You can also organize employees into groups based on different categories including crews, departments, unions, trades, and more.
Feature updates
Raken is constantly improving and growing to provide the best service possible to our customers. Here’s how we’ve updated some of our core features.
Photo enhancements
Teams now have more flexibility in how they can use photos to support their hard work.
Add watermarks to photos captured in Raken to include critical details, including location, timestamp, and your company's logo. You can even choose where the watermark will show up on your photos. Once you set up your custom watermark, they’ll automatically be included for each photo in that project.
We also added the ability to “favorite” photos in project galleries and even highlight 4 cover photos for daily reports. This way, you can emphasize the most important photos captured that highlight progress or areas of improvement for projects.
Finally, field crews now have the flexibility to organize photos and videos taken in Raken in folders, and choose whether or not they are also saved directly to their mobile devices.
Form templates
You can now create digital templates from your existing forms. Save time and ensure everyone has access to the necessary forms for each project, regardless of their location or what device they’re using at the time.
Mobile task management
Now, it’s even easier to manage tasks across all of your projects on mobile. We’ve optimized our mobile task management layout so you can easily add and edit tasks and view them by status: Open, Completed, or All.
Usability enhancements
While our app was already known for being intuitive and user-friendly, we further enhanced the usability of the platform over the past year. We added flexibility to how users capture break times and enhanced the functionality for offline mode.
We’re never done with the upgrades, so stay tuned for even more enhancements.
Integrations and partnerships
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again — we play well with others. That’s why we’ve added several new integrations this year, as well as a new partnership.
Sage Intacct
Reap the benefits of faster, more accurate payroll with our new Sage Intacct integration. Easily sync projects, cost codes, pay types, classifications, and employees from Sage Intacct to Raken and sync completed time entries from Raken back to Sage Intacct to simplify job costing and payroll.
Paychex Flex
Make processing payroll faster and easier with our new Paychex Flex integration. Our easy-to-use time entry options make it easy to transfer data to Paychex so you can get employees paid on time and accurately.
Shepherd
It pays to use Raken—literally. This year, we started a new partnership with Shepherd to enable our users to save money on insurance premiums. A safe jobsite means less risk, which is why you’ll automatically be qualified to save up to 25% on eligible Shepherd policies for using our safety features like checklists, toolbox talks, observations, and incident reporting.
DroneDeploy
With DroneDeploy, you can capture visual data with drones to get a birds-eye view of the jobsite and see progress from every angle. You can even get detailed insights and data analysis. The best part? You can view all of the footage right in Raken.
TrueLook
With our new TrueLook integration, you can collect detailed data from the jobsite with a live video feed via cameras placed at key locations around the jobsite. Easily access the video feed right in Raken to monitor progress and security at the same time.
Integration upgrades
We’ve enhanced the ability to sync critical documents for our integrations, as well. For cloud storage and project management integrations, you can now sync you and your collaborators’ completed checklists and toolbox talks to help ensure everyone is on the same page when it comes to jobsite safety.
What’s next?
Believe it or not, we’re not done yet! We’re always growing and improving. From a new QuickBooks Desktop integration to resource scheduling and even more time and payroll upgrades, there’s a lot to get excited about for next year. We’ll also be investing more into AI and new project management tools to help streamline operations on the jobsite. Watch this space, because we’ll be telling you all about it soon enough.
It’s going to be a great year, and we’re excited to spend it with you.
Want to learn more about Raken?
If you haven’t tried Raken yet but are curious after reading this article, let us show you how it works in a demo! This is the perfect time to get started with a new field management tool so you can make 2025 your best year yet.