Van stock management: stop losing money to missing parts

Most small trades businesses have no idea what is in their vans. Parts disappear, get used on the wrong job, get re-bought from the merchant at retail when there is already one in the rack. Conservative estimates put the leakage at 5 to 10% of materials margin.

The minimum viable stock system - A defined par level for every stocked item (e.g. 2x 15mm copper elbows, 5x 13A sockets) - A scan or tap-to-deduct workflow at job-complete - A weekly auto-generated reorder list from the merchant - A monthly stock count, not annual

You do not need barcode scanners. A simple parts list per van in your CRM, updated as parts are used on jobs, gets 90% of the benefit.

Parts on the invoice = parts off the van The discipline is to record every part used as a line on the customer invoice. That single act gives you accurate billing, accurate margin, and a stock decrement in one motion.

Engineer accountability without micromanagement Per-van stock visibility means you can have a quick conversation with the engineer whose copper usage is 40% above the team average — without it feeling like surveillance. Usually it is a process problem, not a person problem.

Margin recovery in numbers A team of four turning over £600k a year with 30% materials cost is spending £180k on parts. Recovering 7% of that is £12,600 a year in pure profit. That is one engineer's holiday for everyone, paid by tightening one process.

TradeMatrix tracks parts at the van and job level, fires reorder alerts at par level, and shows margin by job, engineer and customer in one report.