Updated
Managing Van and Warehouse Inventory for Appliance Repair
By the Taskrol team at Kereon Inc.
The short answer
Keep van and warehouse inventory in one place, so a technician sees whether the part is in his van or on the company shelf without calling the office. In Taskrol each tech's van and the company warehouse live in the same system; on the Pro plan the owner shares that warehouse with every tech. A part on the shelf gets picked up at the shop, not reordered.
When it's just you and a van, parts live in one spot: the back of your truck. But the moment you've got a shop and a couple of techs, there's a second place stock lives — the company's main warehouse. And that's where a new kind of double-buying starts. Good inventory management software for appliance repair companies has to track both, and here's the problem it solves.
Picture it. A tech is on a job and needs a control board. It's not in his van. Does the shop have one on the shelf? He has no idea. So he calls the office, someone walks back to the warehouse to look, maybe they find it, maybe they don't. Or he skips all that and just buys another one at the supply house — while an identical board sits on the company shelf twenty minutes away. Now you've paid twice at the company level, not just the van level.
The van story is one truck forgetting what's in it. This is a whole team forgetting what the company owns.
Two places, one view
In Taskrol, both live in the same system: the company's main warehouse and each technician's van. They're not two disconnected lists. On the Pro plan the owner shares the company warehouse with his techs, so a tech standing in a customer's kitchen sees whether the part he needs is in his own van or on the main shelf, without calling anyone. The question "do we already own this part?" has an answer on his screen. If it's in the warehouse, he doesn't reorder it and wait days for it to ship — he swings by the shop, grabs the part, and drives to the install. It's already paid for and sitting there.
Why it matters more as you grow
A single tech loses a little money to a messy van. A team loses a lot more to a blind spot between the field and the shop, because now nobody has the full picture in their head. The office doesn't know what's on the trucks. The techs don't know what's in the warehouse. Parts get bought twice, and cash sits frozen in stock nobody can see.
Putting the warehouse and the vans in one system closes that gap. The field and the office look at the same stock, so a part the company already owns actually gets used instead of reordered.
If you started solo, the van inventory side of this is where it begins — this is the same idea scaled up to a team with a shop. You can see how both fit together on the inventory feature page.