How do you maintain good records without slowing down your service and maintenance operation?  We looked for alternatives to paper, tags etc. for recording equipment maintenance.  Rather than spend thousands on so-so software, we opted to just build our own low cost software to record equipment service. Now we simply record what we do on a tablet and then export the detailed service record to a line on MS Excel for sorting on an as needed basis. 

Leroy & Jeremy collaborated to write some pretty simple script in visual basic, put it on a touch screen windows tablet, bought a label printer and we were in business.  With a few simple touch screen strokes, the program records the equipment ID number, basic safety checkoffs, maintenance checkoffs, records the date/time, name of tech, and prints a ready to rent tag.  There is also an option to print an “out of service” tag which automatically sends an email to the rental manager to make sure the parts get ordered or the unit gets marked as out of service. We have been using I-pods and tablets in equipment service for quite a few months now.............love the simplicity of it. And being simple means it gets done. Leave a comment if you have suggestions or want to know more about setting this up for yourself. 

Update 6-17-15.......Jeremy grouped together the files needed, you can download them here. https://goo.gl/qDTz1G   Getting it from here to a working version will require an hour or so by someone who can write in Microsoft visual basic. Not complicated at all. One of our guys who designed this has an 8th grade education........neither had a college edu.