Knowing what you have
A unit waiting on a part is unavailable, and a system with nowhere to record that will sell it anyway.
A guest arrives for a scooter that has been on a bench since Wednesday waiting for a brake cable. The booking was taken on Thursday, by a system with no field for a brake cable.
Somebody now has to find a substitute, downgrade the guest, or refund and apologise. The cost is the rental plus the review, and the underlying error is a week old.
Every category has its own version. An e-bike returned at eight percent charge that cannot go out on the next slot. A cylinder past its test date. A crib with a cleaning record that has not been signed. A machine due a service at 250 hours that is standing at 261.
A ticketing platform models a unit as a seat with a calendar. The tools it gives you for taking something off sale are a block on a calendar and a note in a field.
A calendar block requires somebody to guess the end date. Nobody knows when the cable arrives, so the block is either too short, in which case the unit sells while it is still broken, or too long, in which case you lose days you could have sold.
Service state is a state rather than a date range. A unit is out until it is fit, and the event that ends it is an inspection rather than the passage of time.
When state lives in a calendar block and a group chat, there is no list of what is down and why. Ask an operator on a Tuesday in July which units are out of service and how long they have been out, and the answer is a walk to the workshop.
That list is worth having for two reasons beyond availability. It shows the units that consume your season in repairs, which is a purchasing signal, and it shows repairs waiting on a part that nobody ordered, which is the cheapest capacity you will find all summer.
Set the default the right way round. A unit that comes back is unavailable until somebody says otherwise, and a unit going into the workshop leaves the sellable list at that moment rather than at the end of the day.
Give one person the authority to return a unit to service, and give the same person a standing five-minute job every morning: walk the down list and ask what each unit is waiting for.
Where you use calendar blocks, block open-ended and release on inspection rather than guessing a date.
Condition is recorded against the unit at return, and a unit that is not fit stays off the board until it is marked fit. There is no date to guess, because the state ends with an inspection.
The down list is a view rather than a walk to the workshop, and units carry the service intervals their category needs: charge state, test dates, cleaning records and hours where those apply.
Returns and turnaround covers how the gate works.
A returned bike sits out of the sellable pool until the inspection clears it. B-142 stays there until the rim is replaced, whatever Saturday looks like.
Bodhisys is not a maintenance management system. It holds service state, service intervals and history against the unit, and it does not run parts inventory, purchase orders for spares or workshop scheduling.
An operation with a workshop large enough to need those should expect to keep the tool it uses for them, and to have the availability gate live here.
By making service state a state on the unit rather than a block on a calendar. A unit that comes back is unavailable until somebody inspects it and marks it fit, so a unit waiting on a part cannot be sold on Saturday because nobody guessed the right end date on Wednesday.
It also needs a visible down list. Where state lives in calendar blocks and a group chat, no one can answer which units are out and what each is waiting for, which is where lost capacity and repeat repairs hide.
No. It holds service state, intervals and history against the unit and gates availability on them. Parts inventory, purchase orders and workshop scheduling stay in whatever tool you use for them.
Yes, at the point of return or at any time, by the person holding the unit. The unit leaves the sellable board at that moment.
Yes, held against the individual unit. Cylinders, regulators, machine hours, cleaning records and charge state all behave as reasons a unit is unavailable wherever it happens to be sitting.
A demo takes six fields and someone who understands rental operations calls you back. Where Bodhisys is the wrong fit you will hear it on that call rather than after three meetings.
