GearWatch is an equipment fleet management system for unit maintenance tracking, costing, and income tracking. Profitool, which makes the software, expects it to be used by those in the maintenance facility or equipment yard, since they are most responsible for equipment productivity. Profitool claimed that the intuitive interface is a match for anyone, regardless of their level of computer experience and skills.

With the Unit Master Module of GearWatch, the user catalogs each piece of equipment by physical characteristics such as make, model, year, weight and fluid capacity. (The user can also add other data fields as needed). This module also catalogs attachments for a particular piece of equipment and logs meter or mileage readings, warranty information, operating status, and even the geographic location of the unit.

From there, GearWatch has four functional areas:

• Maintenance Management: Here users build service tasks and subtasks such as the procedures, the skills and certifications required to operate the equipment, as well as the estimations of labor hours and costs of materials. Once set up, work orders are automatically generated at the time the maintenance reminder is posted. The work order includes the list of service tasks, the materials required, and the estimated time to complete. Tabs on this screen include warranty status, “heads up” notifications (notes related to problems beyond regular maintenance that have been detected), service history, and job status and history.
• Location and Status Tracking: This function lets people not only track the locations of the equipment but also the hours spent on jobs, the dates and times of transfers between jobs, the current status (whether available, in service, or in maintenance), and the history of hours or mileage recordings.
• Costing and Income: When interfaced with an accounting system -- such as the company’s own Profitool, as well as Sage Timberline Office or Sage Master Builder -- GearWatch simplifies the process of capturing all equipment costs so the true cost of owning and operating the equipment comes into focus. Besides tracking costs and income on a unit basis the software will also help owners evaluate costs across entire equipment classes, or even across the entire fleet.
• Warranty Tracking: It’s here that users can search for warranty information by unit and easily see the warranty descriptions and types along with expiration dates. From there they can drill down to get specific warranty details with full descriptions. They can also check on warranties by viewing a summary.

Even though GearWatch is largely a stand-alone system, the company hasn’t lost sight of the need many firms might have to share data with accounting and other applications. The software will pull data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages. This way, items such as the actual labor costs associated with maintenance can be easily compared to a project’s original costs; this verifies if adjustments should be made to the cost items listed in the GearWatch database.

(Other packages included in this article are CollectiveFleet and ManagerPlus software. You can also return to the introduction to construction equipment management software.)