Van stock without the guesswork: inventory management for trade businesses

By the SKEDS Team · 19 August 2026 · 5 min read

The mid-job supplier run is such a fixture of trade life that nobody counts its cost. Count it once: forty minutes of travel, the queue at the trade counter, the job now running late, the next customer pushed back. Twice a week, per van, at your charge-out rate — the "quick trip for fittings" is one of the biggest silent leaks in the business.

The other leak is quieter still: materials that go on the job and never make it onto the invoice. Between the two, sloppy inventory can cost a small trade business more than its software, wages admin and insurance combined.

Leak one: the van that's never quite stocked

Van stock fails when it's invisible. Nobody knows what's on board, so nobody knows what's missing until the moment it's needed. The fix is a standard load-out per van — the agreed list of consumables and common parts each vehicle carries — checked and topped up on a schedule (Friday afternoon works) rather than discovered empty on a Tuesday morning.

With SKEDS inventory, the load-out is a list in the app instead of a memory in someone's head: what each van should carry, what it does carry, and what needs topping up. Restocking becomes a five-minute routine instead of an emergency.

Leak two: materials that never get billed

Every part that leaves the van should land on a job. In practice, fittings, cable, fixings and consumables get used in the flow of work and forgotten by invoice time — silently converting your materials margin into a gift. The habit that fixes it: log materials against the job as they're used, on the phone, in the moment. In SKEDS, the crew adds parts to the job in a few taps, and those materials flow straight through to the invoice and into job costing. What gets logged gets billed.

Reordering before it hurts

Once usage runs through the system, reordering stops being guesswork. You can see what's actually being consumed and raise purchase orders against real usage — before the shelf is empty, and in quantities your supplier will discount, instead of one-at-a-time trade-counter prices.

Keep it proportionate

A three-van trade business doesn't need warehouse-grade inventory with bin locations and barcode guns. It needs three things: a standard load-out per van, materials logged to jobs as used, and a restock routine. That's deliberately how far SKEDS inventory goes — enough to plug the leaks, not enough to become a second job.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get the crew to log materials? Make it the path of least resistance: a few taps on the job they already have open, with your common parts pre-loaded as a price list. Then show them the number — most crews are shocked by how much unbilled material was walking off their own van.

Should I track every screw and fastener? No. Track parts with meaningful value or margin individually; treat true consumables as a standard sundries line or a per-job consumables charge.

Does inventory tie into invoicing? Yes — materials logged on the job appear on the invoice, and the invoice syncs to Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks via the API. Logged once, billed once, booked once.