What we are
doing next.

Live availability by date across the whole fleet, quoting on your own rate card, and a booking that allocates a specific machine. Weekly rates are worked out properly, so a fortnight never costs more than it should.

Closed Sundays, weekend minimums, Friday overnights with a Saturday-morning return. Set them once and the app stops a booking that breaks them before it reaches your desk.

Contractors stop the clock themselves and get a collection reference. The argument about when they rang is over.

Photo ID and a recent bill, collected in the app, checked for the obvious signs of tampering, and put in front of you with a clear verdict. Machines you flag will not go out until you have signed it off.

Every examination recorded against the machine, with the certificate attached. A month before anything lapses, you hear about it. A machine with a lapsed certificate is not offered for hire.

Photographs and notes at dispatch and at collection, signed by whoever takes the machine. The pair is what a damage charge stands on.

The card is authorised at booking and only captured if something comes back damaged. That is how plant hire has always worked; now it happens without a paper mandate.

Your name, your colours, your fleet. Contractors install it from a link you send them — it sits on their home screen and opens full-screen, with no store to search.

A searchable listing rather than a link you have to send. One PlantHire app that takes on the name and colours of whichever yard a contractor picks, so it ships once instead of waiting on a review for every customer.

A separate listing per yard would mean a one-to-two week store review for every customer, which is not something we can promise inside a 14-day trial. One themed app is the honest way to do it.

What is going out, what is due back, what needs collecting — with the customer’s number and site address a tap away, and the condition report in the same place.

When your last digger is out, search the yards who have opted in and see what is free, where, and at what rate.

Every yard is separated at the database level, not by a column in a shared table. Your customers, your fleet, your documents.

A wizard that walks you from an empty dashboard to a fleet you can hire from: your rates, your machines, your examinations, your rules. Ten minutes rather than an afternoon, with a checklist that keeps your place if you stop halfway.

Look at the collection photographs, decide what it costs, and take that much and no more — with the reason and your name on the record. Whatever you do not take is released back to the customer straight away.

We already work out what is owed, including overrun at the day rate. This pushes it into your accounts package instead of you retyping it.

Xero is the commitment for Q4. QuickBooks follows once Xero is boring, which may be Q1.

Price the haulage by distance from your yard to the site, with your rate per mile and your minimum. Quoted at booking rather than argued about later.

Your contractor hears that the machine is on its way. You hear that an off-hire came in. Nobody refreshes anything.

Hires on the yard calendar, so the people who live in a calendar can see what is out without opening the dashboard.

The sync itself is written. It needs the Google Workspace side set up and tested with a real yard.

hire.yourfirm.co.uk instead of yourfirm.planthirehq.com. Add one DNS record, press connect, and the certificate is issued automatically the first time somebody visits.

Utilisation by machine, revenue by customer, which machines earn their keep and which are ornaments. Exportable.

Half the sites in this country have no bars. Condition reports should be written at the gate and sent when the lorry gets back to the road.

A finger-drawn signature on the condition report, alongside the printed name we take today.

One company, several yards, machines that move between them, and a view across the lot.

Wanted by the larger firms we have spoken to. Needs the reporting work above to land first.

Monthly invoicing for the customers you know, instead of a card at the point of hire.

Last known position, engine hours, fuel and battery for every machine with a tracker fitted, and a flag on any tracker that has gone quiet.

Turning those readings into fuel-theft alerts, idle-time reports and servicing scheduled by engine hours rather than by date.

A real licence check through a licensed provider, on top of the document triage we do today.

This needs a third-party bureau and a per-check cost. We will not pretend to do it until we actually do.

So you can plug your own systems in. The shape exists internally; making it a supported, documented, versioned surface is a commitment we are not ready to make yet.