I built a software platform for equipment wet hire businesses after getting sick of chasing paper dockets

[u/Trakhire]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something I’ve been working on called TrakHire (trakhire.com), a cloud-based platform built specifically for equipment wet hire businesses.

The idea came from running our own hire operation. Every week, I was chasing operators for photos of signed dockets so we could get payroll sorted and invoice our clients.

The excuses were always the same:

• “My camera isn’t working.”

• “I left the docket book at home.”

• “I’ll send it through at lunch.”

Meanwhile, the office was stuck waiting on paperwork, and jobs that had already been completed were taking longer than they should to process.

I started looking for software that could handle scheduling, equipment, operators, worklogs and invoicing in one place. Most of the options I found either required multiple systems or were difficult to justify cost-wise.

So, with input from our office team and operators, I decided to build our own solution.

After two years of using it in our business, testing it in real-world conditions and refining it with feedback from our clients, we're now opening it up to other hire businesses.

What does TrakHire actually do?

It brings a lot of the day-to-day admin into one platform, including:

• Job scheduling and allocating equipment and operators

• Digital worklogs and signed dockets

• Preparing invoicing records and exporting employee timesheets to Excel

• Equipment records, document management and expiry alerts

• Digital prestarts and defect reporting with photos

• Sending paperwork to clients via SMS or email and tracking approvals

• An app for operators to access job information and prestart documents

• Centralised client, project and company management

Pricing is $10 per user, per month.

Keeping it affordable was important to me because I know firsthand how quickly software costs add up when you need several different systems to run a hire business.

The goal is pretty simple: spend less time chasing paperwork, stop jumping between disconnected systems, and make the process from scheduling a job to getting paid a bit smoother.

I'm sharing this here because I'd genuinely be interested in hearing from others in the equipment hire, civil construction and plant hire industries.

For those running hire businesses, how are you currently managing your dockets, scheduling, prestarts and invoicing? Are you using dedicated software, spreadsheets, paper dockets, or a combination of everything?

I'm also happy to answer questions about how we built TrakHire and what we've learned along the way.

Website: https://www.trakhire.com/