Spare parts management with a CMMS

The spare parts warehouse is where a maintenance department loses money without noticing. Not in one big line item, but in five small ones: the part that got fitted and never logged, the one bought twice because nobody knew there was already one in stock, the one that expired on the shelf, the inspection that couldn’t be done because the material was missing, and the urgent order that cost triple because nobody planned for it.

None of the five gets fixed with more shelving. They get fixed by changing when and how the movement gets recorded.

The underlying change: consumption isn’t a bookkeeping entry

This is the idea that explains everything else. In most companies, material consumption is a later administrative task: someone, some day, logs what was spent. In the meantime, the system’s stock and the real stock are two different things.

In a CMMS, consumption is a consequence of closing the order. The technician consumes the item directly from the work order in the app, and with that single action two things happen at once: stock goes down and the cost of the intervention goes up. There’s no second moment where someone has to remember to log it.

And it works without coverage: the action queues and syncs once signal is regained, which is what makes this hold true even in a plant room.

Minimum stock: finding out before, not after

An inspection that can’t be done because a part is missing is an inspection not done, with a paid trip and a second visit ahead.

In warehouses and items, each reference carries its minimum stock, the threshold that triggers restocking. There is also a flag for items with no stock control, for the consumable that isn’t worth counting: it’s just as important as the previous point, because a system that forces you to inventory screws gets abandoned within two weeks.

The question to ask when configuring this isn’t which items to control, but which ones stop a job if they’re missing. Those are the ones that need a minimum.

Knowing the real cost

Every item carries its cost price and sale price, plus its code, its original reference, its brand, and its model. The original reference matters more than it seems: it’s what lets you find the equivalent part from another manufacturer when the original isn’t available.

With the cost on the item and consumption logged within the order, the cost of an intervention stops being an estimate. And from there, reports on materials used in work orders, cost per equipment, and movements let you see what used to be invisible: which equipment actually consumes material, which references really move, and which ones have been sitting still for two years tying up money on the shelf.

Batches and expiry

Not all spare parts last forever. Consumables, liquids, adhesives, batteries, and much of the electrical material have an expiry date.

Items that need it are managed by batch, with its code, its quantity, its manufacture date, and its expiry date, and with its own cost and sale price per batch — which is what lets you value stock correctly when the purchase price has changed between orders.

In sectors with strict traceability requirements, this isn’t a bookkeeping convenience: it’s the way to be able to answer which specific batch was fitted on which equipment and on what day.

Several warehouses, including the van

Almost no operation has a single warehouse. There’s the central one, each branch’s, and above all each technician’s van, which is the one that never shows up in any system and where a good part of the material actually sits.

GMAO Cloud supports warehouses with their own manager and associated team, and transfers between them that record who requested them and who approved them. That double sign-off is what turns a movement into a reliable data point: without it, material that leaves the central warehouse and never arrives anywhere is an inventory discrepancy nobody can explain.

Setting up each technician’s van as a warehouse is one of the changes that squares the inventory fastest, and one of the cheapest to make.

Restocking, without urgency

When you need to buy, the process continues in purchasing: the order carries its supplier, its delivery address, its destination warehouse, its status, its lines, and its amounts, and can be marked for pickup.

What avoids the urgent order — the expensive one — isn’t the purchasing module, it’s having minimum stock properly set on the references that stop work. The module just organizes what comes after.

Material bought for a specific job

There’s an in-between situation worth accounting for that tends to fall outside most systems: the part you don’t have, that gets ordered for a specific job and arrives three days later.

The work order can be flagged as pending material and as needs a return visit, two different states and both useful. Without them, those jobs live in a notebook and get forgotten with notable frequency: the client remembers before we do, which is the worst way to be reminded.

Connecting to the ERP, carefully

If there’s an ERP involved, the item master should live there and not be duplicated. The rule that avoids most problems is to agree on it before connecting anything: the ERP owns items and pricing; the CMMS owns consumption.

Items carry their ERP identifier precisely for that. The integrations catalog lists the scope of each connector, which isn’t the same for all of them: some import items but don’t receive consumption, and it’s worth knowing that before assuming anything.

The inventory count that’s actually worth doing

A full physical count is the task everyone puts off, and for good reason: it takes days, and within two weeks it’s off again if consumption keeps getting logged late.

The order that works is the reverse one. First fix the recording — consumption on closing the order, vans registered as warehouses, transfers with approval — and only then do the count. That way the inventory you build stays accurate, instead of being a snapshot that ages from day one.

Reports on inventory and movements also let you narrow the count to what actually moves, instead of counting everything every time.

Where to start

Not by inventorying everything. Start with the references that stop a job if they’re missing — usually fewer than a hundred — with their minimum stock and their cost. Then, register the vans as warehouses. And only after that, if needed, the rest of the catalog.

If you want to see it with your own real references, you can request a demo.