Requirements checklist
What to ask for when choosing software for industrial repair companies.
A checklist built from how industrial repair companies work, to print or save as a PDF and bring to any supplier meeting.
What the software should cover
Tick each one that matters to your business.
- Receiving and job tagging
- Teardown reports and quotations
- Customer approvals
- Repair stages and technician work
- Parts, stores and outside work
- Test records and certificates
- Dispatch, field calls and invoices
Roles that need their own access
Who logs in, and what each person may see or change.
- For owners
- For gate and stores staff
- For inspectors and estimators
- For technicians
- For accounts
Reports to ask for
Ask to see each one with your own sample data.
- Items in the workshop by stage and age
- Quotations awaiting approval or lapsed
- Job cost against quoted figure
- Repeat failures by make and model
- Outside work sent and not yet returned
- Parts used by job and parts below reorder
- Balances by customer, oldest first
Systems it may need to connect to
Note which ones you already run.
- WhatsApp or other messaging
- SMS
- Online payment gateway
- Accounting export
- Barcode and tag printing
Questions for any vendor
Put these to every supplier you are comparing.
- How does a job keep its identity from the gate to the bench?
- Can an estimator build a quotation from the teardown report?
- What if the customer approves by phone?
- Can outside machining be tracked?
- Does it keep test readings for each unit?
- Can we repair on the customer’s site as well?
- What can we see about repeat failures?
- How are our current open jobs brought across?
- How is the demonstration run?
- Who maintains it afterwards?
Where the work usually breaks today
Circle the ones you recognise. They set the order of the project.
- Incoming items lose their identity
- Quotes wait on teardown findings
- Approval is verbal
- Parts and machining are not charged to the job
- Test results are not kept with the unit
Prefer to talk it through? See the industrial repair companies page.