How to Set Up Landscaping Equipment Inventory Software

As Spring gets underway, it's a perfect time for your landscaping company to make sure you have the right tools to keep your business running smoothly. Having a working landscaping equipment inventory software is a great way to automate your workload.

Here are the steps you’ll need to take to set up a reliable inventory tracking system.

Consider an Inventory Tracker Upgrade

Let’s face it, many companies still rely on spreadsheets, pen and paper, or just “winging it”.

All of these approaches can lead to equipment shortages, cash flow problems, and storage issues. Because there’s little to no way to automate any of these systems, any count of your equipment will be inaccurate.

Tag Items Appropriately

Before you start loading your equipment into a database, you can save yourself a lot of future headaches by attaching durable barcodes that serve as unique identifiers. This will enable you to not only easily identify an asset with a simple scan, but see detailed information about the lifecycle of your equipment. It will also speed up your equipment audits, as you can simply scan the barcode of each item instead of manually searching through your system.

Transfer Your Existing Records

If you already have inventory records, you should transfer them to your inventory database. Depending on how you were tracking your inventory before, this could take the form of a simple data migration or require a lot of data entry.

This process could be very time-consuming if you're moving into a system that doesn't have an easy option for importing data. But if you're using a spreadsheet, many programs like Asset Panda have an import function that can easily and quickly load your existing data into the system. Using this kind of feature will save you a lot of time on data entry.

Compare and Update Inventory Records

Whatever inventory records you have on file, you’ll need to check them against your stock. An important part of this process involves an audit, which involves going to your equipment storage and taking note of what’s in there now.

Updating your records means documenting several different aspects of each piece of equipment. As part of each equipment file, you’ll need to take note of the following:

• Where you found it
• Where it should be stored
• What condition it's in
• What type of jobs it’s used for
• Who has access to it
• Maintenance requirements

While it can seem tedious at first to record all of this information, once you have it then it’ll simplify your work processes. When you have equipment inventory software, you’ll add this information as you update each item, creating a central system of record for all of your equipment. From there, you can set maintenance notifications and create systems to update you when one of your employees uses an asset.

Outline Inventory Management Processes

Now that you’ve gotten your records in order, it’s time to outline specific processes your team can use to keep your equipment in order.

What do you do when one of your employees needs to use an asset to complete a work order? If you just let them take it, you might want to consider implementing check-in/check-out procedures to improve equipment tracking.

How do you stay on top of maintenance? What happens when a piece of equipment has passed its useful lifecycle and is ready for disposal? How do you obtain new equipment? All of these questions and more are important aspects of outlining your inventory management procedures.

You made it! While you might need to put in a lot of work at first to make sure your landscaping inventory software gets set up properly, that work is worth it. Putting in that work means you can automate many procedures and reduce your team’s workload when the busy season comes around again.