Plant hire software
A site equipment park is tracked by date, not by memory. Contact manages availability, backlogs, maintenance and invoicing in a single file. Software publisher in Meyreuil since 1987.
What construction equipment rental software changes for a fleet
A construction fleet gets lost one machine at a time. A cherry picker left on a finished job, a vibrating plate hired twice for the same week, a digger that comes back without anyone noting its return. A plant hire software take this memory off your teams' hands: what is available on a given date, what has gone out, what is due back, and the invoice that follows.
01
Before departure, at the depot
It all starts with a simple question to ask and a painful one to check: do I have the machine on the requested dates? On a spreadsheet, you have to open the dispatch file, find the current rentals, and remember the quotes sent last week that haven't been signed yet.
Construction equipment rental software acts as a substitute for memory. The equipment schedule displays, for a given item, the number of units available on each date, with two superimposed views: quote included and not included in the quote. You therefore see both what is actually tied up and what would be if all your pending quotes were signed. The period spans one month, six months or even a year.
From this point on, the sales document moves forward without being revised:
- the estimate redo the article, dates and pricing;
- the booking block availability on the schedule;
- a picking list is created automatically for the repository;
- the invoicing take the same part, without re-entry.
Management is scalable from equipment reservation through to invoicing, not forgetting quotes. The depot works from the record rather than a hand-copied slip, and the equipment that goes out is the equipment that was reserved.
02
On site, during the rental
A construction site rental is nothing like a weekend rental. It stretches out, changes in scope, and gets extended over the phone on a Friday evening. Contact takes care of the short-term lets like long-term lets the management of start and end dates applies to both, and invoicing follows without needing to keep a separate spreadsheet for rentals that span several months.
The feature most often lacking in spreadsheets, and which every plant hire software package must maintain, is the site leftovers what has left, what has already returned, what remains in place. The tracking of incoming items, outgoing items and leftovers is kept in the same place as the rental, so it does not depend on the person who filled it out.
Two trade-specific details also matter on a construction site:
- the gross and net weights with tare calculation, to prepare a load without reaching for a calculator;
- the real-time tracking, complete with a rental history detailing what a machine has done during the year.
You can also handle a rental and a sale within the same file: the trading of supplies and the equipment hire share the same customers, the same documents and the same invoicing.
03
The return to the depot
The return is the moment when a fleet gets lost the fastest, because it is the one that nobody finds urgent. The machine has come back, it is parked, we will make a note of it later. Later, the line is missing, the displayed stock no longer matches the actual stock, and the invoice stops at a date that means nothing.
In Contact, the entry is entered on the same file as the exit, without going back through another screen. The stock is automatically kept up to date, and many statistics are offered to you from these same data: what is running, what is idle, what always leaves at the same time. The carrying out of inventories is facilitated, because counting is no longer used to reconstitute the year, only to confirm it.
Billing takes over without any new data entry. Customer and supplier invoices, as well as payments, are then transferred directly into your accounts or those of your accountant, without any re-entry. The customer aging balance shows what you are owed, and the VAT return is generated from the same software.
If your activity also depends on the upkeep of the articles themselves, the stock control and the order tracking are detailed on their pages.
04
The maintenance, between two rentals
A machine out of action for lack of maintenance costs twice over: the repair, and the hire it failed to bring in during that time. Across a fleet of twenty machines, nobody keeps track of the schedules for each one, and the depot manager's paper notebook goes on holiday with him.
Contact door wears one maintenance alert. Therefore, you don't need to monitor the maintenance schedules for each piece of equipment in the fleet yourself: the tool flags them up. The rental history completes the picture, because a machine that has seen heavy use doesn't have the same requirements as one that has stayed in the depot. It is this exact detail that separates construction equipment rental software from a shared spreadsheet.
The rest of the organisation benefits from the same file:
- the staff rota provides a global and instant overview of the day, the deliveries to be made and the tasks assigned to everyone;
- the message log brings together internal and external messages, email or calls, archived and displayed by priority, by date, by caller or by number;
- the CRM handles contact management, opportunity tracking, and automatic reminders to be scheduled.
What the park tells us after a year
After twelve months, plant hire software contains the history of the fleet: dates, durations, customers, returns. Year-end decisions are then based on figures. Should you buy two cherry pickers or just one, keep the machine that nobody asks for, or revise a summer rate?
What turns, what sleeps
The stock is kept up to date automatically, and numerous statistics are generated from it. The history shows, item by item, what has been issued and how many times.
What we owe you
The customer payment schedule shows current payment deadlines, therefore what your clients owe you. The VAT return is generated from the same software.
What the accountant receives
In just a few clicks, you generate the journal entry files sent to the accountant. No exports to rework, no intermediate spreadsheets to prepare.
Where have the coins gone
Construction equipment rental software also manages documents. A document signed eighteen months ago can be found via the client or the project, rather than the name given to the file.
The parks that Contact equips
Under the heading of construction, yards do not face the same constraints. A scaffolding company counts elements by the thousand; a plant hire firm tracks around twenty machines, each worth the price of a flat. Construction equipment hire software covers both, because the processes are the same: booking, dispatching, returning, invoicing.
Contact the team on construction, handling and agriculture, the metal structures and scaffolding, the toilets, skips and cabins, the containers, as well as the trading of supplies and equipment. Event parks (reception equipment, tents and marquees, sound and lighting, stands) fall within the same range, described on the page event equipment hire.
You only open the modules that are needed: rentals module, sales module, purchases module, files module. A hire company that does not do trading does not open the purchases module, and the software does not present it with screens that do not concern it. The details of the range are on the page Contact software solutions.
Furthermore, Contact is multi-user, multi-company, multi-currency and multi-language, available in French, English and other languages upon request. A rental company operating two depots under two different companies therefore does not have two installations to maintain.
Frequently asked questions about construction equipment rental software
We track the fleet on Excel, what difference does it actually make?
A spreadsheet cannot tell you what is available on a given date; construction equipment rental software can. It lists the contact, includes or excludes a quote, and automatically updates the stock upon return. electronic invoicing between businesses becoming mandatory, the spreadsheet will reach its limit anyway.
Our rentals sometimes last several months, is that catered for?
Yes. Both short-term and long-term rentals are handled in the same way, through the management of start and end dates. Invoicing follows the rental for its entire duration, and you do not have to maintain a separate spreadsheet for projects that span multiple periods.
How do you know what is left on a completed construction site?
By tracking remaining site materials, maintained alongside incoming and outgoing items. You can see in one place what has left, what has returned and what is still on site. That is precisely the detail that spreadsheets lose first on long-term projects.
Does the software notify you when a machine needs to go to the workshop?
Yes, Contact displays a maintenance alert. Fleet servicing schedules therefore no longer rely on a logbook or the depot manager's memory. The rental history also tells you how long the machine has been running since its last service.
Our site managers are rarely in the office; how do they manage?
Contact is used as a remote Windows desktop, and it can be hosted in the cloud on a shared server, with as many sessions as needed. Everyone accesses it from any connected workstation, with no local installation to maintain, and automatic backups are built into the service.
We also hire and sell equipment, do we need two tools?
No, both activities live in the same folder. Quotations, purchase orders, delivery notes, returns, invoices, stock and customers follow on from one another there, whether you are renting or selling. The supply and equipment trade is one of the activities covered.
Where are the construction site documents and attachments stored?
In document management, which allows you to store, organise and search all your documents. Commercial and administrative operations are centralised in a single file, and you search for a document using the customer or the case.
How long before the team actually use it?
The most important part happens beforehand, in the structure of your item catalogue: that is what drives the rest. The installation, the formation and the monitoring are provided by ComputerLine, a training organisation registered with the prefecture of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region under number 93132385313, and the support team that subsequently responds to you is the one that develops the software.
Other answers, across the entire range, are gathered in the frequently asked questions.
Want to see plant and equipment hire software on your own fleet?
Tell us what you rent and how you track it today. The demonstration starts from your catalogue, not a trial game. ComputerLine has been publishing Contact in Meyreuil, Provence, since 1987.