The invoice from the hire depot
A 1.5 tonne digger, a tracked dumper and a plate compactor went to the Knaresborough job on a Monday. The dig out was finished on the Wednesday. The machines sat on the customer's drive until the following Tuesday because the crew assumed the office had rung the depot and the office assumed the crew would say when they were done.
The hire invoice arrives a month later with a week of charges, plus a damage waiver and a delivery charge that nobody expected. Nobody can remember exactly when the dig out finished, so nobody can argue with it.
How hire gets lost
Plant hire is booked in a rush, usually by phone, often by the crew leader. It is not recorded against the job, so nobody owns ending it. The hire company's paperwork arrives separately and is filed without being checked.
- Hires are booked by phone or text by whoever needs the kit.
- There is no list of what is on hire right now, where, and since when.
- Off-hiring is nobody's job in particular.
- Collection numbers are not recorded, so disputes over dates cannot be settled.
- Hire invoices are paid without being checked against the job diary.
What idle hire is costing
Every day a digger sits on a finished site is a day's hire paid for nothing. Across a season of garden builds, with diggers, dumpers, breakers, cement mixers and plate compactors, it adds up to an amount most owners would not tolerate if they could see it in one place. Hire costs also get lost from job costing when the invoice is not matched to a job, so jobs look more profitable than they were.
The hire tracker we build
- Every hire is recorded against a job when it is booked: item, supplier, start date, expected end date, and rates, whether booked by the office or by a crew leader from their phone.
- A live list shows everything on hire, where it is and how long it has been out.
- Each afternoon the crew leader on that job is asked, on their phone, whether the kit is still needed tomorrow. A no triggers an off-hire task for the office.
- The office off-hires with the depot, and the collection or off-hire number is recorded against the hire. Where a hire company offers online off-hire, we link to it.
- When the hire invoice arrives, by email or as a PDF, it is read automatically and compared with the recorded dates and rates. Differences are flagged for the office to query before payment.
- Hire cost is added to the job's costs, so job costing reflects what the job really used.
| Hire question | Where the answer lives |
|---|---|
| What is on hire right now? | Live hire list by job |
| Is it still needed? | Daily prompt to the crew leader |
| When was it off-hired? | Off-hire date and collection number |
| Is the invoice right? | Invoice checked against recorded dates and rates |
| What did the job cost in hire? | Hire costs on the job record |
A quieter hire bill
Nothing sits on a finished site because someone assumed someone else would ring. The office has a list every morning of what is out and what can go back. Invoices that do not match the recorded dates are queried with a collection number to hand. And you can see over a season whether buying a machine would make more sense than hiring it, because you know how many days you hired it for.
Is idle hire eating your margin?
- You have found kit on a site days after the work needing it was finished.
- Nobody can say what is on hire right now without ringing round.
- Hire invoices are paid without being checked.
- Collection numbers are not recorded.
- Hire is not included when you work out whether a job made money.