Van stock and parts: stopping the second visit
A return visit for a part costs you twice: the travel and labour you cannot bill, and the customer's confidence that you knew what you were doing. Neither shows up as a line on an invoice, which is exactly why it goes unmanaged.
Van stock is not really a warehouse problem. It is a first-time-fix problem that happens to involve shelves.
Stock the van for the jobs you actually get
Look at the last hundred jobs and list the parts fitted. A short list will cover the large majority of them, and that list — not a supplier's suggested kit — is what should be on the van.
Review it seasonally. What a heating engineer needs in November is not what they needed in June.
Record parts at the point of use
Parts recorded against the job on site do three jobs at once: they price the invoice correctly, they decrement the van count, and they tell you what to reorder. Parts written on a scrap of paper do none of them.
- Scan or select the part on the job sheet before leaving
- Van stock levels adjust automatically
- Reorder triggers when a line drops below its minimum
Ask better questions before the visit
Many second visits are booked, not caused. A photo of the appliance data plate, the meter or the lock before the engineer sets off often decides which part goes in the van that morning.
For known equipment, the property's history should tell you what is fitted without asking at all.
Want to see what this looks like on your own jobs?
Treat unbilled parts as leakage
Parts fitted and never charged are one of the quietest ways margin disappears. If your job records and your stock counts disagree at the end of the month, the difference has usually been given away rather than stolen.
Measure first-time fix by engineer and by job type
One number for the whole business hides the answer. Broken down, it usually points at a specific job type where the diagnostic questions are too vague, or an engineer who needs a different kit — both fixable in a week.
Make the return visit visible
When a job needs a second visit, record the reason from a short list: wrong part, part not stocked, access, further work approved. After a month the list tells you precisely where to spend money on stock.
Frequently asked questions
- How much stock should a van carry?
- Enough to cover the parts that appear most often in your own job history, and no more. Overstocked vans tie up cash and hide slow-moving items that eventually get written off.
- Who is responsible for reordering?
- Ideally nobody, day to day — the system reorders when a line drops below its minimum. Someone should still review the thresholds every few months.
- Do we need a stock count if everything is recorded on jobs?
- Yes, but a quick periodic count rather than a full stocktake. Its purpose is to catch the gap between what the records say and what is on the shelf.