Spare Parts and Inventory Management for Fleet Workshops
Stock figures drift the moment a part leaves the shelf without a job attached to it. KO Fleetz issues parts against work orders, so the count falls because something physical happened. What it cost lands on the vehicle that consumed it.
Two of everything, except the one you need
Every store carries the same pair of problems at once: capital tied up in parts nobody has asked for in three years, and a vehicle in the yard waiting on a filter the shelf insists is there. The stock number is a fiction, and everyone has quietly agreed to stop testing it.
It comes apart at the counter. A fitter needs a hose at seven in the evening, the storeman went home at five, so the fitter takes the hose and fully intends to write it down. Repeat for a year. The system now holds a figure that has never matched the shelf and nobody trusts enough to act on.
The cost side is worse than the count. Parts are bought against a supplier account and posted to a general maintenance code. Nobody can say what the fifth axle actually consumed, so when the real question arrives — is this vehicle worth keeping another year — the parts spend is a lump sum with no asset attached to it.
The part leaves the shelf attached to a job
Parts are issued against a work order rather than against a period. Scanning one out records what it was, which vehicle it went on, which job consumed it, which technician took it and what it cost that day. The balance drops by one because a real event occurred, not because someone remembered to adjust a spreadsheet on Friday.
Reorder levels sit per part and per store, driven by what your fleet has actually consumed rather than by a number typed in when the store was set up. A depot that gets through brake pads at four times the rate of the others gets its own minimum, and the alert fires with enough lead time to be a purchase order instead of an emergency.
This is not a procurement suite and does not pretend to be one. There is no tendering, no supplier negotiation, no three-way match into a finance ledger. KO Fleetz owns the physical fact — what is on the shelf, what left it, what it went on — and hands the buying conversation to whatever finance already runs.
Capabilities
What KO Fleetz spare parts & inventory gives your team
Issue against a work order
A part cannot leave without a job to leave for, which is what keeps the count and the shelf telling the same story.
Barcode and bin scanning
Scan the part and the bin rather than typing a part number at a counter, because a mistyped digit becomes a phantom stockout weeks later.
Multi-store locations
The central warehouse, each depot store and the back of the mobile van are separate places with their own levels and their own transfers between them.
Reorder points per part
Minimum and maximum levels set per part per store, with the alert timed to your supplier's real lead time rather than a generic threshold.
Consumption by vehicle
Rolls every part fitted up to the asset, so an axle's parts spend sits against that vehicle instead of dissolving into a maintenance code.
Cores and exchange units
Tracks the old starter motor that owes a core back to the supplier, so the surcharge is reclaimed rather than quietly written off.
Stock count variance
Counts recorded against expected, with the variance kept per store and per count, so a bin that drifts every quarter becomes visible.
Slow-moving stock
Surfaces what has not moved in months and what it is worth, which is usually where the working capital went and why the shelves are full.
How it works
How KO Fleetz does it
Step 1: Load the catalogue
Part numbers, descriptions, supplier references and the vehicles they fit. Fitment data is what stops a fitter ordering the wrong filter for the right engine.
Step 2: Count what is actually there
An opening count is unavoidable. Every accurate stock system starts with someone walking the shelves once, and there is no software substitute for it.
Step 3: Set levels from consumption
Minimums are set per store against real usage and supplier lead time, then revised as the platform accumulates a few months of your own issue history.
Step 4: Issue, receive, recount
Parts go out against jobs and come in against deliveries. Cycle counts test the number periodically so the drift is caught small.
Outcomes
What changes
- Every issue tied to an asset and a job
- Part to vehicle
- The count moves when something physical does
- Shelf truth
- Reorder driven by your own consumption
- Fewer stockouts
- Slow-moving stock stops hiding
- Capital visible
Frequently asked questions
There is no clean answer to this and any vendor who offers one is selling. What KO Fleetz does is make the honest path the fast path: a technician scans the part and the job on a phone at the shelf, which takes about as long as writing on a clipboard and considerably less than finding the clipboard. Self-issue can be restricted to nominated people and nominated bins. Out-of-hours issues are flagged for review rather than trusted blindly.
No. It stops at the shelf edge. KO Fleetz tracks what you hold, what you issue and what it went on. It does not run supplier tenders, approval hierarchies, payment terms or the general ledger. Most fleets keep purchase orders in finance and let KO Fleetz raise the demand signal — this part is at minimum, here is what we consumed. If your finance system is worth its licence, that is the boundary you want.
Yes, and it is worth setting up properly because core surcharges are real money that leaks quietly. When an exchange unit is issued, the old unit is recorded as a core owed back to the supplier and tracked until it is returned and credited. The value of unreturned cores sits on a report. Most fleets that turn this on discover a shelf of old alternators that were owed back to somebody eighteen months ago.
You count it. That is the whole answer and it is the part fleets try hardest to avoid. Importing last year's figures from a system nobody trusted only imports the error. Close the store for a day, count the shelves, load that as the opening position, and from then on cycle counts keep it honest by testing a slice of the catalogue at a time rather than requiring another full shutdown.
New tyres on the shelf, yes — they are stock and behave like stock. A tyre that has been fitted is a different animal. It has a serial number, a position on an axle, a wear rate, and possibly several lives if it gets retreaded. Inventory logic cannot express that, because a consumable does not come back from the retreader with two-thirds of its value intact. Tire Management handles the fitted casing; this module handles the shelf it came off.
They never touch your stock, so they do not move your counts. They arrive as cost and fitment history on the job instead: what was fitted, to which vehicle, at what price. That still matters, because the fitment record is what tells the next fitter what is already on the truck, and the price is what lets you see that a garage charges more for the same filter than your own supplier does.
Find out what your shelves are really holding
Send us a parts catalogue and a month of issues. We will show you the slow-moving value and what your consumption says your minimums should be.