I rang it off on Tuesday
A contractor's site manager calls the depot on a Tuesday afternoon to off-hire a 3 tonne excavator and a roller. The person who answers writes it on a pad, means to enter it in the hire system and gets pulled onto another call. The collection isn't booked until Thursday. The invoice charges to Thursday. The contractor's buyer says the machines were off-hired on Tuesday and asks for the off-hire number. Nobody can find one.
Multiply that across a fleet on hire to dozens of contractors and you have a month-end full of disputes, credit notes and irritated customers who think you bill on purpose for days they didn't use.
Why off-hires go astray
Taking an off-hire is simple. Recording it consistently, across every way customers try to do it, is not.
- Off-hires arrive by phone to the depot, the hire desk, a rep's mobile, email, text and sometimes a driver on site.
- The off-hire number is issued only when someone enters it in the hire system, which may be hours later.
- Customers are not sent a written confirmation, so they have nothing to quote later.
- Collections are booked separately, and the machine sits on site until transport can get there.
- Your terms on when chargeable hire ends are applied differently by different staff.
Under the CPA Model Conditions or your own terms, the off-hire procedure is usually clear on paper. The trouble is the evidence of what actually happened.
The cost of a disputed off-hire
Every disputed day is either a credit you give away or an argument you have with a customer. Invoices are held while the dispute is settled, delaying payment on the rest of the account. Machines sit on finished sites instead of going out on hire again. And the customer's buyer starts to treat all your invoices as suspect.
The hire desk also loses time. Tracking down who took an off-hire call, and when, can mean ringing round depots and reps for days.
An off-hire log with proof
- One off-hire number or address per business, plus a customer link, feeds requests into a single log. Phone off-hires are logged by whoever answers in a short form that takes seconds.
- Each request gets an off-hire number immediately, with the date and time of the request, the caller's name and the machines.
- The customer receives a written confirmation by email or text with the off-hire number, which they can quote on any invoice query.
- The hire is stopped in your hire system through its API or import, using the date and time rules in your terms.
- A collection is added to the transport plan, and the machine's status becomes off-hired awaiting collection.
- Off-hires taken outside the system, such as on a rep's mobile, can be logged later with a note, and are flagged for checking.
| Question in a dispute | Where the answer is |
|---|---|
| When was it off-hired? | Time stamp on the log |
| Who called it off? | Caller name recorded |
| What was the off-hire number? | Issued at the time and sent to the customer |
| Why was it collected later? | Collection booking and transport notes |
| When did charges stop? | Hire system updated from the log |
What month end looks like after
Off-hire queries end with a number and a time stamp, sent to the customer when they called. Invoices go out with the right end dates. Collections are booked promptly, so machines are back in the yard and ready to go out again. And hire desk staff stop hunting through notepads.
Is this your hire desk?
- Off-hires are taken on paper or in personal phones.
- Customers regularly dispute hire end dates.
- Off-hire numbers are issued hours or days after the call.
- Customers don't get written confirmation of an off-hire.
- Off-hired machines sit on site waiting for collection.