If you need more than your fingers and toes to count what’s in your fleet, there’s a case to say your fleet is large, as it moves beyond your brain’s ability to keep track of reliably. And if you have a large fleet, there are probably three things you need most from your management solution: a macro view of what is going on, a broad view, and a comprehensive filtering option.
This newsletter looks at how Shepherd handles status-driven visibility and automation across rental operations, maintenance, and service execution, particularly for the large-fleet club members alluded to above.
Have a look at the deck below or read on for more insights:
Equipment rental status
Shepherd’s rental-specific status indicates where an asset is in the rental lifecycle. That bit of kit might be on rent, in the process of being returned, delivered, terminated, or otherwise unavailable if, for example, it has been returned but damaged and in need of unanticipated repair.
Rental status is primarily used to help rental companies understand real-time and future availability, especially for long-term rentals that block assets for extended periods. Status types or categories are not pre-defined: customers can create their own to reflect their specific workflows, including intermediate states such as delivery, setup, recalibration or the like.
Moving beyond the usual, a rental company that offers specialist equipment for use in remote places may need to have the batteries verified or replaced before being sent out again. Another company may offer a guarantee of total privacy and may need to put its electronics through reset and deletion protocols. A purveyor of medical devices may need to put its returned apparatus through a stringent sterilisation process.
Any such company-specific events could represent a status, or several, if the task is a complex affair. You get the idea: the permutations are almost as endless as they are important to the Shepherd Rental Module user concerned.
Equipment maintenance status
Separate from rental status, equipment status is used to reflect the operational or maintenance condition of an asset. You may have a maintenance schedule that is self-evident to the maintenance manager, but its details may be alien to the rental manager hoping to field that equipment to a new user.
This is where status can clarify for all concerned what the current situation is and what they can realistically expect. A status might be that of down for maintenance or repair, available for rent, or operational but not yet on the shelf. Equipment status is visible on the planner board and helps service managers quickly identify which assets are unavailable due to maintenance activities. Like the rental status, these are customer-defined, allowing flexibility for niche or industry-specific needs.
Automated rules that take the initiative
The standard Shepherd working philosophy applies here, as it does in all Shepherd’s initiatives. Where automation is possible and beneficial, it exists. Where the need for user configuration remains, that exists too. As such, the system supports automated creation and transition of both rental and equipment statuses based on configurable rules. Those rules will be put in place at the time of implementation, but can be changed at any point by a system administrator, or Shepherd implementer.
These rules are typically tied to the lifecycle of service orders. For example, a status can be created or changed when a service order is created, started, or completed. This enables automatic transitions such as: “ready for delivery—on delivery—on rent” for an asset sent to a customer. Another might be: “equipment down—under repair—operational” for equipment on site, or inventory. As previously explained, customers can define these rules themselves, ensuring that Shepherd updates asset status automatically without manual intervention, and does so along the procedural lines that best suit the customer.
”Status can be created or changed when a service order is created, started, or completed. This enables automatic transitions such as: ready for delivery—on delivery—on rent.“
Equipment status changes with service order
Status need not be limited to a piece of equipment. Services rendered can also be subject to these changes of status. Service orders undergo changes, and those will dictate if that Service Order can proceed to the billing stage or not, making that something very useful to track. When service orders are created for repairs, maintenance, installation, or delivery, they can automatically trigger corresponding equipment or rental status changes. The system also tracks whether service orders are planned, reactive, or generated via forecasts, and links these states to asset availability and downtime.
Equipment downtime on Planner Board
Remember the macro vs broader views managers value? The Planner Board is where these are most easily applied. It provides a consolidated, visual overview of both equipment and rental statuses. The filtering options are as simple or detailed as the user chooses.
It allows users to see which assets are rented out, unavailable, under maintenance, or operational, as well as the duration of these states. This is particularly valuable for organizations managing hundreds of assets, enabling quick planning decisions and avoidance of double-booking or scheduling conflicts.
Rental status defines availability
When creating rental contracts, Shepherd filters out unavailable equipment based on current and future rental and equipment statuses. Users can only select assets that are available for the specified rental period, effectively preventing conflicts. This filtering acts as a safeguard rather than automatically suggesting alternatives, ensuring rental availability is enforced at the contract level.
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