Equipment hire, tracked from booking to return.
An equipment rental business earns money from machines that are out on site, not sitting in the yard waiting for paperwork. Yet that is exactly where time disappears: a booking that clashes, a dispatch sheet filled out on paper, a machine returned with damage that nobody documented, an inspection date that slipped past unnoticed. Tenderely BPM connects every step — from the customer enquiry through to the return and the maintenance job — into one record that follows the machine wherever it goes.
What does an equipment rental business repeat every day?
01
Taking and confirming bookings
A customer calls or enquires online. Availability has to be checked, dates confirmed and the booking written somewhere that everyone can see before the same machine is promised twice.
02
Dispatching equipment to site
Before a machine leaves the yard its condition, fuel level and hour-meter reading must be recorded. A dispatch sheet filled in later from memory is worth nothing in a damage dispute.
03
Operated-hire timekeeping
When an operator goes with the machine, working hours by day need to be captured, verified and passed to whoever does the billing. A week of unverified timesheets at month-end creates its own chaos.
04
Return and damage check
When the machine comes back, actual hours worked, fuel consumed and any damage found must be matched against what was recorded on dispatch. Without the comparison, damage charges are always contested.
05
Planned maintenance
Service intervals, statutory inspection deadlines and insurance renewals come around whether a machine is busy or not. Missing one can ground a machine at the worst possible moment.
06
Breakdown on site
A machine stops working mid-hire. The customer needs a response, a technician needs to be dispatched and the lost hours need to be logged — all while another job is also ringing.
Where does this break down today?
Double-bookings happen
Availability lives in a whiteboard, a spreadsheet or someone's head. Two staff members confirm the same machine on the same dates, and the conflict only surfaces when the transport is booked.
Dispatch paperwork is unreliable
Paper dispatch sheets get wet, lost or filled in after the fact. When a customer disputes damage that was already there at dispatch, there is no signed record to point to.
Inspection dates are missed
Statutory test and inspection deadlines are tracked on a wall calendar or a spreadsheet nobody checks until a machine is about to go out. A machine that fails compliance grounds the whole hire.
Billing relies on chasing timesheets
Operators send in hours by text or not at all. Month-end billing means hunting down unsubmitted timesheets, reconciling conflicting figures and delaying invoices that should have gone out days earlier.
What changes with Tenderely BPM
01
Bookings block overlaps automatically
Each piece of equipment has a single booking record. A machine that is already allocated cannot be double-booked because the calendar shows it as unavailable the moment the first booking is confirmed.
02
Dispatch and return are structured records
Hour-meter reading, fuel level and condition at both dispatch and return are captured in the same record. Photos attach on the spot from a phone. The comparison is there the moment the machine is back.
03
Inspection deadlines chase themselves
Give a statutory inspection date an SLA and Tenderely BPM sends a reminder before it expires. A machine approaching a compliance deadline shows up on the fleet dashboard before it becomes a problem.
04
Timesheets are submitted and approved from a phone
An operator logs daily hours in the mobile app; the site supervisor approves with one tap. The verified figures are on the record before month-end, not chased from a spreadsheet afterwards.
05
Customers submit requests from outside
A public form sent as a link lets a customer submit a hire enquiry without needing an account. The enquiry lands directly in the booking flow, ready to be checked against availability.
06
Fleet health is visible at a glance
Which machines are out, which are due for service, which have open breakdown jobs and which are sitting idle — these are live numbers on a dashboard, not a report built from three spreadsheets.
FAQ
Can we track different types of equipment — excavators, generators, platforms — in the same system?
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Yes. Each equipment category can have its own record structure with the fields that matter for that type: hour meter for plant, fuel capacity for a generator, platform height for an aerial work platform. All categories share the same booking, dispatch and maintenance flow, so your team works in one place regardless of what is being hired out.
Can an operator in the field submit timesheets and report a breakdown without coming to the office?
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Yes. The same flows run in the iOS and Android apps. An operator logs hours, attaches a photo of a fault and raises a breakdown job from the site. The record updates in real time for whoever is managing the fleet back at base.
How do we stop two people booking the same machine for the same dates?
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A booking creates a dated allocation against that machine. Any subsequent booking for the same machine on overlapping dates will show the conflict before it is confirmed. Approval steps can be added so that all bookings go through a single point of review before being committed.
Can customers see the status of their hire without calling us?
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If you choose to give them access. A linked external user sees only their own records — the status of their booking, what has been dispatched and any step that is waiting for their input, such as a return confirmation. They never see your internal data or other customers.
Is there a ready-made setup or do we have to build everything from scratch?
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The Equipment Rental package installs with forms, workflows and a dashboard already in place, so a working setup is ready within minutes. You then adjust each form to match your own fleet categories and processes and publish it. The package is a starting point, not a constraint.