The trucks, the stock, the hours and the problems, handled before Monday.
A technician is on a roof without the right sprinkler head. The van's oil change is three thousand miles overdue. Timesheets come in on paper Friday and PTO is requested by text. None of it is anyone's job, so it is yours.
Where the day goes now
- Nobody knows what is on each truck. Parts are bought twice, trips are made for a part the other van had, and the supply house sees you every morning.
- A breakdown on the road is not a repair bill; it is a day of revenue and a rescheduled customer.
- Timesheets are deciphered from handwriting, and the hours never tie back to the jobs they were spent on.
- Problems get reported in a group chat and fixed when someone remembers, or not.
What Operations changes
- Inventory by store and by truck. Items, stock levels per location, transfers between them and a transaction trail, so the van is stocked before Monday and bought once.
- Extinguishers. Shop stock, van stock, loaners out and units due for service, by serial number.
- Fleet. Vehicles with maintenance schedules, service history, fuel logs and expenses, so the oil change is scheduled and the real cost of each van is known.
- Time. Timesheets approved in one place and allocated to the jobs and projects the hours went to, with PTO requests and balances alongside.
- Support tickets. Internal problems become tickets with an owner and a status instead of a message that scrolled away.
Inventory
Inventory items have a name, SKU and unit of measure, and are held in stores. A store can be the shop, a warehouse, or a vehicle; every vehicle gets its own store, so van stock is just another store. Each store keeps a quantity on hand and a minimum per item, and the Stock Levels page lists what has fallen below its minimum. Transfers move quantities between stores in one action and every movement is written to the transaction log, which the Snapshot page summarises.
When a service job that used inventory items is completed from the field, the quantities are deducted from the store the technician drew them from and recorded against the building they went into, so the van count and the building's parts history are both kept.
Catalog pricing is a separate thing from stock: supplier catalogs can be loaded from a file or synced from a supplier's API, with cost and list price history per item, so quotes and service lines are priced from current supplier pricing.
Extinguishers
Each fire extinguisher is a serialised unit with its make, model, size and its last annual, six-year and hydrostatic dates. The Extinguishers section shows what is in the shop, what is on each van, which loaners are out at customer buildings and which units are due for service. Per-vehicle minimums by extinguisher type and size tell the technician what to restock. A unit can be installed, swapped, loaned, sold, transferred or condemned, and a condemned unit raises a deficiency on the building. The due dates follow the NFPA 10 intervals for the unit's type.
Fleet
A vehicle record holds the VIN, plate, odometer, and the expiry dates of its lease, insurance, registration and safety inspection, with an annual budget. Maintenance schedules are defined by months or miles and produce a maintenance-due list; each service is logged with its cost and vendor. Fuel logs, odometer readings and other vehicle expenses build the cost summary per vehicle. Vehicles are assigned to technicians, and the compliance page shows which expirations are coming up.
Time and PTO
Technicians start and pause a job clock from the field app on the job they are working, which also moves the job to In Progress. Timesheets are the office record: clock-in and clock-out entries move through Pending, Submitted, Approved and Rejected, with an audit of every adjustment, and the approved hours are allocated to a job or a project punch-list item with an hourly rate, a labor cost and an overtime flag. Pay rates are effective-dated per user and the pay period type is configurable.
PTO requests carry a type, dates, hours and the review decision; balances are kept per user, per type and per year as allotted, accrued, used and remaining.
Support tickets
A ticket has a number, status, priority, category and source, an assignee, a message thread with canned responses, and can be linked to a job, a customer or a building. The Support dashboard shows what is open and who holds it.
Bottom line
Fewer supply-house runs, fewer breakdowns, and hours that tie back to the jobs they were spent on. Those are direct costs, and they come back every month.
Inside this module
- Dashboard
- Inventory: Dashboard, Inventory Items, Stores, Stock Levels, Snapshot, Transfers, Transactions
- Fleet: Dashboard, Vehicles, Service History, Fuel Logs, Vehicle Expenses
- Extinguishers: Dashboard, Shop, Van Stock, Loaners Out, Service Due
- Time: Dashboard, Timesheets, PTO Requests, PTO Balances
- Support: Dashboard, Tickets