'Which of the six SDS drills was it?'
A customer returns an SDS drill and says it stopped working halfway through the job. The workshop tests the drill that is in front of them and finds nothing wrong. Was it the same drill? The contract says 'SDS drill 110V'. You have six. One of them has had the same fault three times, but you cannot tell which one because none of the contracts recorded the unit.
Why units are not recorded
- Writing serial numbers on paper contracts is slow and often wrong.
- Serial plates wear, and asset numbers are painted or stickered inconsistently.
- The hire system allows hiring by type, so that is what happens.
- Test and repair records use one number; the hire system uses another.
- Units move between branches without being scanned.
What not knowing the unit costs
Faulty units that keep going out and coming back. Losses that cannot be pinned to a contract. Test and repair records that cannot be tied to hire history. Insurance claims with thin detail. And units that vanish from the fleet without anyone noticing for months.
A scan for every unit, every time
- Each tool gets a durable barcode or QR label carrying its asset number, matched to its manufacturer's serial number in your records.
- At check-out, staff scan the label instead of picking a tool type, and the unit is added to the contract.
- At check-in, the scan closes that unit's hire and opens its return check.
- Workshop, test and transfer steps also scan, so each unit's history builds up automatically.
- Each unit has one page: hire history, faults reported, repairs, tests and current location.
- A monthly check lists units that have not been scanned for a while, which is how missing tools are found.
What a unit's page shows
| Section | Shows |
|---|---|
| Identity | Asset number, serial, model, purchase date |
| Hires | Every contract, customer and dates |
| Faults | Reported faults with the contract they came from |
| Workshop | Repairs, parts, tests |
| Location | Branch, on hire, in workshop or in transit |
Knowing exactly what went where
Repeat faults are traced to a unit and fixed or retired. Losses are linked to a contract. Check-out is quicker because scanning is faster than writing. And the fleet count is real, because units that have not been scanned for months stand out.
Starting without stopping the depot
Tagging a whole fleet at once is rarely practical. The usual approach is to tag tools as they pass through the workshop or the return bay, starting with the highest-value and most frequently faulty types. Within a few weeks, most of the tools that move regularly are tagged, and the ones that never move show up as untagged, which is useful information in itself.
The bigger job can be matching numbers. Your hire system, your PAT tester and your workshop may each use a different number for the same drill. We build a single cross-reference as tools are tagged, so every record points to the same unit from then on.
Once units are scanned in and out, the question 'how many do we actually own' has an answer, which is often the first thing owners ask for.
Could you trace a unit today?
- Contracts record tool types, not units.
- You cannot say which unit a fault came from.
- Asset numbers differ between hire, test and workshop records.
- You are not sure how many of a tool type you really still own.