Can you send us everything we've got on hire?
A contractor's commercial manager emails on the last Friday of the month: please send a list of everything on hire across all our sites. The hire desk exports from the hire system, tidies it in a spreadsheet and emails it. The commercial manager finds a welfare unit and a generator on a site that finished weeks ago, and asks why they are still on hire. Nobody off-hired them.
The invoice is disputed, the contractor asks for a credit, and you have a machine that has been earning nothing useful for either of you.
Why long hires get forgotten
Contractors run many sites with many site managers, each ordering what they need. Nobody on the customer's side has the whole list, and your invoices arrive in a format that's hard to check against sites.
- Site managers order machines and move on to the next job without off-hiring everything.
- Invoices list machines and dates but not always the site in the customer's terms.
- On-hire lists are produced by hand on request.
- Long hires attract no attention until the customer's QS reviews costs.
- Customers have no way to see or off-hire without phoning.
What forgotten hires cost
Disputes when the customer finally notices, and credits to keep the relationship. Machines sitting idle on finished sites instead of earning on live ones. Hire desk time producing lists. And customers who feel they are being charged for things they didn't know about, even when it was their site manager who forgot.
There is also the cost to your own fleet planning. A generator or welfare unit left on a finished site is invisible to the hire desk as available stock. When another customer asks for one, the desk may cross-hire or say no, while one of your own sits unused a few miles away.
A customer on-hire view
- Each customer's hires are read from your hire system with machine, site, start date, rate and running total.
- Sites are grouped the way the customer knows them, using their site names and order numbers.
- Authorised people at the customer sign in to see everything on hire by site, with photos and documents for each machine.
- A regular on-hire statement goes to the people the customer nominates, weekly or monthly, highlighting long-running hires.
- Site managers can off-hire a machine from the list and receive an off-hire number straight away.
- Hires with no recent activity on telematics can be flagged to the customer as possibly forgotten.
| Customer question | Where they find it |
|---|---|
| What's on hire at this site? | On-hire view by site |
| How long has it been out? | Start date and running total |
| Is anyone using it? | Activity flag where telematics exists |
| How do I off-hire it? | One tap, with an off-hire number |
After the change
Customers see their own hires without asking. Forgotten machines are spotted by the customer early, off-hired and back in your yard earning elsewhere. Invoice disputes about forgotten hires fall away. And the hire desk stops producing lists by hand at month end.
Signs your customers need this
- Customers regularly ask for on-hire lists.
- Machines stay on hire at finished sites.
- Invoices are disputed over hires the customer forgot.
- Customers can only off-hire by phone.
- Long-running hires aren't highlighted to anyone.