Getting From Down to Rent Ready More Quickly - Best Practices for Work Orders and Service

Arielle Cox

Work orders – can they be made truly consistent across the board? Would a streamlined process be easier for your shop? Can you reduce the number of manual processes that you have to think about when it comes to managing day-to-day service? Every minute that a machine is in hard-down status, it’s not earning you any revenue; that’s why it’s crucial to get assets back up and running as efficiently as possible. Below, Tony Tye (InTempo’s Product Manager) and Joel Munivez (InTempo’s Project Manager) share their best tips for getting from down to rent-ready as quickly as possible.

Setting Up Work Orders Correctly in Your Rental Software

It sounds obvious, but correctly setting up your work order processes in your rental software lays the foundation for streamlined operations.

The first order of business is making sure that – when you open a new work order – you’re correctly categorizing the work. Is it scheduled maintenance? Is it a warranty repair? An out-of-warranty repair? Correctly categorizing the work to be performed can make sure your accounting team correctly expenses the parts and labor.

Setting up step descriptions with unique descriptions is crucial as well. As Joel explains it:

“A lot of people go into work order descriptions and type – for example – annual inspection. Then, they go into step descriptions and check annual inspection. That’s a wasted opportunity to provide a lot more analytical visibility into what you’re doing.”

Another important feature is the equipment maintenance entry. This gives you a quicker way to log work done on a unit. You put in a unit number and the parts used; once completed, it creates a work order so that the work is logged. But it also allows you to add a step that’s technically not set up via category/class or sign.

“For instance, you may have “check spark plugs” that comes in as a Step 9999, but it allows you to perform this work on a unit where it’s not otherwise set up. Instead of going in, creating the step, and assigning it to a category and class of equipment, you can pretty much just go into the Equipment Maintenance Entry and put check spark plugs; the system then adds that step to the work order. The mechanic can log their time and any parts they use; everything is all added to your software in one step.”

When you’re completing this process multiple times a day, it can shave off considerable time and hassle.

Multiple Warranty Tracking

In a recent update to InTempo Enterprise, we added the option to track multiple warranty expiration dates. You can set them up at the cat/class menu level or on the machine level. You can add whatever different options you have – for instance, an internal warranty for sold equipment and a separate transmission warranty from the manufacturer. In the future, when you open a work order on that machine, a pop up will inform the technician that one or more warranties are available on the machine. It makes it MUCH less likely for anyone to miss an open warranty and eat the cost of something that might otherwise be covered.

Decide How YOU Want to Use Your Labor Codes

Labor codes are entirely user-defined – which means you can use them to track several different things within your rental software. Some customers use their labor codes to represent which area of a machine they’re working on (e.g., the electrical system vs. the hydraulic system.) Other customers who have both a rental branch and a sales branch use their labor codes to differentiate between repairs on their rental assets vs. customer-owned equipment. This is something you’ll likely want to discuss with your implementation team when you first go live on your system.

Implement Parent and Child Steps

When machines have multi-step maintenance processes – for instance, annual 30-point inspections – breaking them down into parent and child steps can make things more friendly for your team. You can set up a high-level item, such as “rental inspection”, with individual line items for sub-steps like “check battery voltage”, “check hydraulic pressure”, and “check tire inflation.” You’re also able to require secondary checks if a value entered isn’t within an acceptable or expected range.

Getting Richer Reporting

When you’re properly adding information into your work orders, your reporting becomes much more robust. It becomes much easier to see things like:

• When you complete scheduled maintenance, are you completing other work at the same time, like repairing hoses or fixing leaks?
• Which warranties are expiring soon
• What, specifically, you’ve filed for on each of your warranty claim numbers
• What percentage of your labor is going to internal work orders vs. customer-owned equipment
• What type(s) of labor are making the largest impact on your bottom line

An important takeaway, though: the reports you generate are only as good as the data you input in the first place. With an appropriate level of attention to detail, you can give your business a more consistent way to look at your data and analyze it. From there, you can get crucial insights from the raw data – for instance, using your work order data to predict when an engine might fail and when to schedule maintenance.

Integrate Reporter and Service Solution with InTempo’s Mobile App

Your service team doesn’t work in a bubble; that’s why it can be incredibly beneficial to have your work order system integrate with your yard and counter apps. When one member of your team takes a picture of machine damage at check-in, you can label it as damaged and email your shop about it right away. Because you’re on top of the damage the moment it’s noticed, it becomes much easier to recover the cost from customers without the uncomfortable “he said, she said” conversation.

Take the First Step Towards Better Work Order Management

InTempo offers all the tools you need for fast and efficient equipment rental operations. From contracts and reservations through scheduled maintenance and field repairs, you can manage all your day-to-day processes in one place – and keep your business consistently moving forward.

Check out Tony and Joel’s full session on Work Order Management at InTempo’s User Conference.

To learn more about work order management – or any of the other essential functionality in InTempo Enterprise – contact our team or request a demo here.