Warehouse & Availability
“Is it free?” is the most expensive question in a dealership — because today the honest answer is “let me make two phone calls.”
We build the availability platform: every unit with a full, normalized specification, an explicit status, and one reservation register. Searchable by what customers actually ask for — capacity, drive, mast, cab — from the office or a customer’s yard.
Your current export, normalized, in 14 days
Every dealer runs two warehouses: the one in the system and the one in the yard. They disagree.
The pattern behind most lost deals we’ve traced
The problem, precisely
Where availability goes to hide.
None of this is anyone’s fault. When a platform has no field for a fact the business needs daily, people improvise — and the improvisations compound.
The export today
- No status field — so SOLD, RENTAL, and RESERVED live inside the engine/battery column, invisible to filters.
- Reservations kept in two places at once: a name in one column, an abbreviation in another. The sets overlap, but not fully.
- Mast written three ways — factory code, millimeters, or a dash — depending on who received the unit.
- Cab, heater, and attachments buried in a free-text equipment field nobody can search.
- A meaningful share of the list — commonly around one unit in seven — is not actually sellable.
The platform
- Status is a first-class field with a lifecycle: free → reserved → sold → shipped. Changed by actions, not typing.
- One reservation register — who, for whom, until when — with automatic expiry instead of eternal holds.
- Specifications normalized once at intake: mast type and height, battery, cab — every unit answers the same questions.
- Photos and documents attached to the unit, not to an email thread.
- The list and the yard finally agree — and stay agreeing, because drift is structurally blocked.
The deliverable
An answer a salesperson can promise.
A customer on the phone asks for a 3.5-tonne electric with a triplex mast and a cab. The search takes seconds and the answer carries a status someone can act on — reserve it, quote it, promise it for Tuesday.
Search by specification
Capacity, drive, mast height, cab, year, new or used — the dimensions customers shop by, across every yard and branch at once.
Reserve from the result
A reservation with an owner and an expiry date, placed in one click from the search result. No more units held forever by a name in a column.
The same truth everywhere
Quoting reads availability from here. Stock ordering reads free stock from here. Your public stock page can, too. One fact, one place.
| Unit | Specification | Status | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| #0412 | 3.5 t · Li-Ion · triplex 4 500 · cab + heater | Free | Main yard |
| #0388 | 3.5 t · Li-Ion · triplex 4 800 · cab | Reserved → 24.07 | Main yard |
| #0421 | 3.5 t · lead-acid · triplex 4 500 · cab | In transit · wk 31 | Sea freight |
| #0299 | 3.5 t · Li-Ion · triplex 4 500 · cab | Rental → 09/26 | At customer site |
Illustrative rows. The second phone call this replaces is the one where the customer was promised unit #0299.
Applied AI
AI does the intake work nobody has time for.
The reason unit data decays is that structuring it by hand is slow, boring work. That is precisely the work AI is good at — with a person approving, not typing.
- 01
Migration without a data-entry month
ExtractionThe existing export goes in as-is. AI splits model codes from serial numbers, decodes mast notation in all three conventions, pulls the cab out of the equipment free-text, and reconciles the two reservation registers. A person reviews the flagged cases — typically a tenth of the list, not all of it.
- 02
Intake from delivery documents
ExtractionNew units register themselves from the manufacturer’s packing list and spec sheet — model, serial, configuration, battery — instead of being retyped from paper in the receiving bay.
- 03
Photo-to-record checks
VisionIntake photos are read against the record: the data plate should match the serial, a cab in the photo should mean a cab in the spec. Mismatches surface at arrival — while the truck that delivered it is still in the yard — not at sale.
- 04
A quality watchdog that never gets bored
GuardrailUnits with no movement and no photos, reservations past their expiry, specs that drifted from the model’s definition — a standing review queue, ranked by commercial impact, instead of an annual cleanup nobody schedules.
- 05
Plain-language search
Assist“Something used, gas, around 3 tonnes, with a cab, under this budget” — typed or dictated — resolves to a structured query over real fields. The answer is a list of units, not a guess.
Operating layer
The substrate the other systems stand on.
Availability is the fact every other process consumes. When it is wrong, quoting lies, ordering doubles, and service promises the impossible.
Feeds quoting
An offer for a stock unit locks to a real, free unit — with its serial number — not to a model that might be in the yard.
Feeds stock ordering
Free stock net of reservations and rentals is the input the ordering recommendation lives or dies on.
Feeds your website
A public stock list that updates itself — instead of a PDF exported quarterly and outdated weekly.
Aging & rotation analytics
Which configurations rotate in weeks, which stand for quarters, and what that stillness costs in financing — surfaced monthly.
Roles & audit
Who reserved, who released, who edited a spec — every change attributed and reversible. Disagreements end with a lookup, not an argument.
Runs where you decide
Your cloud or ours, in the EU. Availability data is commercial data — role-gated and never leaving your control.
Engagement
Parallel run until the numbers agree.
- Discover01
Two weeks on your current export
We take today's warehouse export exactly as it is and return it normalized: specs structured, statuses extracted, duplicates and phantoms flagged. You see your real availability for the first time.
- Design02
Statuses that match how you trade
Free, reserved, rental, demo, in transit, sold-awaiting-pickup — the status model is designed around your actual flows, with owners for each transition.
- Build03
Live alongside the old list
The platform runs in parallel with your current export until the numbers agree and the team trusts it. Then the old spreadsheet retires on its own.
- Operate04
Truth maintained
New deliveries auto-register, data-quality checks run on every change, and the availability answer stays current. Optional retainer for new flows and integrations.
Frequently asked
Questions operations people ask first.
We already have a warehouse tool. Why replace it?
Usually you don't replace it on day one — you fix what it can't say. Most dealer tools have no status field, so 'sold' and 'on rental' get typed into technical columns and the list quietly stops meaning 'available'. We either extend your tool with the missing model or replace it once the parallel run proves the difference.
Who keeps the data current once it's clean?
The system does most of it structurally: statuses change through actions (reserve, release, ship), not through free-text typing, so drift can't creep back the same way. What still needs a person — a new delivery's photos, a spec correction — takes minutes and is tracked to its author.
Does this replace our ERP stock module?
No. The ERP remains the accounting truth — values, invoices, ownership. This is the operational truth: what the unit physically is, where it stands, and whether a salesperson can promise it for Tuesday. The two reconcile against each other instead of fighting.
Can salespeople use it from the road?
That is the main use case. Spec search — capacity, drive, mast height, cab — on a phone, with photos, current status, and location. The call from a customer's site gets answered during the call, not after two phone calls back to base.
What about used machines and trade-ins?
Used units carry the same structure plus their own fields — hours, condition notes, inspection photos, origin. Because the spec is normalized, a used 3.5-tonner appears in the same search as a new one, which is exactly how buyers shop.
One operating system
Availability is the foundation. These stand on it.
- How fast can a salesperson answer a customer?
Quoting & Configuration
Configure a machine from live price lists and send a clean offer in minutes — not days of digging through catalogs.
- What should be on the water right now?
Stock Ordering
Monthly order recommendations that account for a 3–4 month factory lead time, reservations, and units already in transit.
- Can the technician fix it on the first visit?
Field Service & Parts
Diagnosis support, service documentation that answers in seconds, and the right parts in the van before the technician leaves.