How to count equipment without a stock count.

Ask an equipment manager when the register was last right, and the honest answer is usually “the day after the stock count”. From then on, machines move between sites, tools get borrowed, attachments get swapped, and the list drifts.

A full count fixes that for a day. It also takes people off productive work, often for several days, and it gets postponed when things are busy, which is when the drift is worst.

What goes wrong between counts

The register is not wrong because people are careless. It is wrong because updating it is a separate task from the work itself.

• A generator moves from one site to another on a Friday afternoon. The person who moved it has better things to do than log it.
• A compactor goes to the workshop and comes back to a different yard.
• A laser level is lent to a subcontractor, and the only record is someone’s memory.

Each of those is small. A few hundred of them a year is why the register says one thing and the yard says another.

Count while people work

The alternative is to make counting a side effect of work that happens anyway.

Put a Bluetooth tag on each asset. Link it to the item in your register with two scans: the tag, then the asset. From then on, any phone running the Hirro app that passes within range hears the tag and logs it in the zone or site where it was heard. The app runs in the background, so nobody opens it to make that happen.

People already walk the yard, the store and the sites every day. Each of those walks becomes a partial count. Over a week, most assets are heard many times.

Work from exceptions

A rolling count changes what the inventory job looks like. Instead of checking everything, you check what has not been heard.

Set a threshold per asset type, for example 48 hours for attachments on a yard or two weeks for spare equipment in a store. Anything past its threshold lands on a list. That list is short, and it is the list worth acting on: the asset is out on a site nobody visits, it was lent out, or it is gone.

Keep your register where it is

The register stays in your ERP or asset system, whether that is SAP, Odoo, Microsoft Dynamics or something else. Each tag links to the asset record there, through a connector, the API or an export. Hirro adds what the register cannot know by itself: where each asset was last heard, and when.

What the yearly audit becomes

Your auditor or insurer may still want a formal count. That is fine. The difference is where you start. Instead of a list that was last right a year ago, you start from one where most assets were heard in the last few days, and you spend the audit on the exceptions. In Belgium, every company that keeps accounts must take a full inventory of what it owns at least once a year (article III.89 of the Code of Economic Law).

Where to start

Pick one site or one store, and the asset types where the register is least trusted. Tag those, run the app on the phones of the people who work there, and compare the list of “not heard” items after two weeks with what your register says. The gap is a measure of how far the register has drifted, and the first thing to fix.

Questions

How often should a contractor count equipment?

Most count once or twice a year because a manual count is expensive. With tagged assets and phones that hear them, the count runs every day and the yearly audit becomes a check of an up-to-date list.

Can I count equipment without walking every row?

Yes. Staff phones running the Hirro app hear tags as people go about their work. Assets nobody has heard for a set time show up on a list, so you only go looking for those.

Does a rolling count replace the audit?

It does not replace an audit your accountant or insurer needs, but it makes one much shorter. You start from a list where every asset was heard recently, and you check the exceptions.

Next step See how Hirro keeps a contractor’s register true.

All posts