Tool Hire & Equipment Utilisation Tracker Spreadsheet
A hire business rarely fails because the rates are wrong. It fails because half the yard is standing still.
Every machine costs you storage, insurance and capital whether it goes out or not, and the only number that decides whether it deserves the space is how many days a year it is actually on hire. An asset register will never tell you that. This file is about nothing else.
What is in it
- Seven linked tabs, from Start Here through to the Overview.
- Setup — the period, how many days a week you hire out, the utilisation you would be happy with, and what the yard costs anyway.
- Equipment — 40 rows: what it cost, when you bought it, the daily rate.
- Hires — 800 rows: eight columns you type, one that calculates itself.
- Maintenance — 200 rows: what it cost, and how many days it was off the road.
- Utilisation and Overview — days available against days out, machine by machine, then the whole yard on one screen.
Who it is for
Plant and tool hire yards, event and marquee hire, access equipment, and anyone else with a shed full of things that earn only when they leave it.
The worked example
The worked year holds $60,490 of kit. The machines could have been out 3,691 days; they were out 1,545. That is 2,146 idle days and 65 days in the workshop, giving 41.9% utilisation against the 45.0% the owner said they wanted. Six days a week over a year is 313 days, not 365 — and workshop days come off before the sum is done, because a machine in bits has not failed to be hired, it was not there to hire.
The mini excavator cost $18,900, went out 214 days, and returned 1.69 times its price. The concrete mixer cost $980, went out 187 days, and returned 7.38 times its price. The excavator is the machine everybody notices. The mixer in the corner earns four times as much for every dollar it cost, and the revenue total will never tell you that. Meanwhile the carpet cleaner was on hire twenty-six days out of a possible 312 — 8.3% utilised, 286 days standing in the yard, still insured, still stored, still depreciating.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, with Google Sheets, and with LibreOffice Calc. No macros, so there is nothing to enable. You type into the yellow cells; everything shaded calculates itself.
The download has two workbooks: one with the worked year above already in it, and one completely blank, plus a Start Here guide as a PDF. Buy it on Etsy — $9
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes you hire by the day and count workshop days as unavailable. If your yard works on weekly rates, part-loads or operator-supplied hire, I can build the same seven tabs around that instead.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.