An equipment register that says what is off the road

Most trade businesses have an equipment list. Somebody built it for the depreciation schedule, it lists purchase dates and values, and nobody has opened it in years.

The register the business actually needs answers a different question, which is what can go out on a job tomorrow and what cannot.

Four states, and only one of them is normal

An item is available, out with somebody, in for service, or retired. A register that only records what you own cannot tell the first two apart. That difference is a van leaving on time or a van leaving late.

The state sits on the item, and a filter then reads it. What is out of service this week is a question with an answer rather than a walk around the yard.

Who has it matters more than where it lives

Equipment does not live anywhere. It moves between vans, sites and the workshop, and asking where something is gets you the last place somebody saw it.

Asking who has it gets you a person you can ring. Hold the holder on the item and the search for a missing meter takes one call instead of a morning.

Due dates are the reason the register exists

Calibration, servicing, registration and inspection all have dates, and all of them are invisible until they have passed. A register that holds the next due date turns that into a list you can read a month ahead.

In Diract you list your own testers, tools and vehicles. Each one shows who holds it, when calibration or a service falls due, and what is out of service. Once those dates are fields, what falls due next month is a filter, and it can sit on a dashboard somebody reads on a Monday.

Record the downtime, not just the repair

The repair bill is easy to see because it arrives as an invoice. The expensive part is the four days the item was unavailable, and that never appears anywhere.

The day something went out of service, and the day it returned, both get recorded. After a year the items spending the most days off the road are obvious. Replacing one then rests on a number rather than on frustration.

Hire tells you what to buy

Track what you hire and for how long. Where the same item comes in on hire often enough, a year of hire spend is the purchase argument. It usually convinces faster than anyone expects.

The reverse is just as useful. Something you own and rarely use, that also needs a service every year, is often cheaper to hire when it is genuinely needed.

Tying items to the jobs they have visited

A link between an item and a job answers the awkward questions. Which jobs used the tester that turned out to be out of calibration, and which site the damaged item was on when it broke.

It also settles the ordinary ones. A customer asking what you used at their property should not need anybody to remember. A test and tag register you can actually search covers the same link from the testing side. That is where its absence hurts most.

What to do first

• Every item carries a state: available, out, in for service, or retired
• Hold who has it, rather than where it is
• The next due date sits on the item, and the month ahead gets read
• The days something spends off the road record alongside the repair cost
• Total a year of hire for anything you hire repeatedly
• Items link to jobs, so the awkward question has a quick answer