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Spare Parts Inventory for Fleets: Know What Every Truck Really Costs to Keep Running

· 4 min read
eSecured ERP Team
eSecured ERP Team
eSecured Cloud Hosting & IT Services

Tyres, filters, brake pads, batteries: a transport company's workshop goes through parts every week. In many companies the parts store is a locked room and a notebook. Parts are bought, fitted and forgotten. At the end of the year the maintenance bill is large, but nobody can say which truck used what, or whether the store still holds what the books say it does. Treating the parts store as real inventory fixes that.

What "real inventory" means here​

With the Spare Parts module, the workshop's store is a location with stock, just like a shop:

  • every part bought is counted into the store, at its cost
  • every part fitted is issued out to a specific vehicle, and its cost goes to that vehicle automatically
  • every damaged or scrapped part is written off with a reason

So at any time you can see what's on the shelf, what it's worth, and where every missing part went.

Your parts store as real inventory: restock, issue and write off

Setting it up​

  1. Open Spare Parts and click 🔧 Create Parts Depot. This one-time step creates the store that holds your parts.
  2. Add your parts as Items of type Product, each with a cost price. If you have many, import them from a spreadsheet.
  3. Restock the depot with an ordinary supplier bill (Purchase Invoice). Pick each part from the catalog on the bill's lines; when the bill is approved, those parts go into stock. Lines typed in by hand don't add stock.

Restocking straight from a requisition​

Most workshops don't buy parts without approval. A mechanic or workshop manager raises a requisition, and it goes through your approval chain. Once it reaches MD Approved, someone with the right permission clicks 📄 Convert to Purchase Invoice. A draft supplier bill is created from the requisition's lines, ready to check and approve. Nobody retypes the request, and the approved requisition and the bill stay linked.

Issuing a part to a vehicle​

When a part is fitted, open 🔧 Issue. Pick the part, the vehicle and, if it's for a specific journey, the trip. Add the fitment position if you track it, such as "front left tyre". When you save:

  • the depot's stock goes down
  • an approved expense for the part's cost is created against that vehicle, and against the trip and its job if you picked one. It appears in the job's ledger and the fleet cost reports with no extra step
  • if you use the Accounting module, the cost is posted to your books, taken from your spare-parts inventory account rather than your bank

That last point matters. The money left the bank when you bought the part. Fitting it moves the cost from stock to the vehicle; it isn't a second payment.

Writing off scrap​

A part replaced under warranty, damaged in the store or found unusable is recorded on 🗑️ Write-Off with a required reason. Stock goes down and the write-off stays in Write-Off History, so the store count stays honest without inventing a fake issue to a truck.

Find the trucks that cost the most​

Consumption shows parts usage and cost by vehicle or by part. A truck using brake pads twice as fast as the rest of the fleet stands out immediately. That could mean a driving habit, a fault, or parts going missing. The Report tab gives parts issued, issue cost, write-offs, cost by vehicle and by part, and current stock for any period, in one Excel file.

Two habits worth building​

  • Check stock before issuing. The Issue form doesn't stop you issuing more than the depot holds, so a quick look at the Stock tab avoids a negative count.
  • Keep cost prices current. Each issue is charged at the part's cost price, so an outdated price understates what your vehicles really cost to run.

Getting Spare Parts​

Spare Parts isn't on the public price list. Ask your service provider to add it to your subscription.