Routers and devices held on installers' vans
How an internet provider can track routers and other devices across its warehouse and installers' vans, move stock between them and count each van.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Telecoms businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
For an internet provider, a router is not just stock. It is the thing standing between a signed-up subscriber and a working connection, and it spends much of its life in the back of a van. Installers load up in the morning, fit what the day's jobs need, and come back with whatever is left. By Friday, nobody is entirely sure how many units are in the warehouse, how many are on which van, and how many have quietly gone missing.
That uncertainty costs money in two ways. Units go astray without anyone noticing, and installs are delayed because the warehouse thought a van had stock that it did not.
Achekam's Warehousing add-on treats each van as a stock location in its own right. This article covers setting that up, moving stock between the warehouse and the vans, counting a van, and one limit that your accountant needs to know about.
Every place stock sits is a location
With the Warehousing add-on, a business keeps stock locations on the server, such as warehouses, stores, bins and vans, with the quantity on hand at each.
For a provider, a sensible set-up is:
- the main warehouse, with bins if it is large enough to need them
- each branch or store that holds devices, if you have walk-in customers
- one location per van
Name vans by something that does not change when staff change: a registration number or a fleet number is better than an installer's first name.
Products themselves are set up in the Item Master in the Accounting menu, which lists and creates products on the server with a SKU, name, category, selling and cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment. The Item Master needs the Point of Sale, Warehousing or Wholesale add-on. Set up each device model once: the router, the fibre terminal, the mesh unit, the LTE modem, the patch leads you track.
Loading a van: transfers
Stock moves between locations by transfer, and each transfer goes from draft to dispatched to received.
A morning load-out, in words:
- The storeroom creates a transfer from the warehouse to the van, listing the devices for the day's jobs. It is a draft until the items are picked.
- When the van is loaded, the transfer is marked dispatched.
- The installer checks what is in the van and marks it received.
If the van received fewer units than were dispatched, the short delivery is recorded as wastage. That moment matters. A unit that went missing between the shelf and the van is noticed the same morning, not at the end of the quarter.
Returns work the same way in reverse. Unused devices coming back at the end of the day or week are transferred from the van to the warehouse, so the van's quantity drops and the warehouse's rises.
Counting a van's stock
Transfers tell you what was loaded onto a van. A count tells you what is still there. With the Warehousing add-on, a stock count sets a location's quantity to what was counted and records the difference as an adjustment.
Count each van on a regular day, with the installer present. In this routine, devices fitted at subscribers' premises leave the van without a transfer, so the difference the count records should match the number of devices fitted since the last count. Compare it with that week's installation jobs. If the two agree, the van is in order. If the van is short by more than was fitted, that is a different conversation. Counting a little at a time like this is the idea behind cycle counting; AccountingTools explains cycle counting as counting a small part of inventory every day so the whole stock is counted over time, rather than in one annual count.
General good practice: if you need to know which individual unit went to which subscriber, record the serial number on the installation paperwork as well. Quantities on a van tell you how many; the job record tells you which one.
What does not reach the ledger yet
There is a limit to plan around. Stock counts, wastage, transfers and opening quantities do not post to the general ledger; only till sales and till returns move the inventory account. And goods received against a purchase order do not add stock either.
In practice that means:
- the quantities on the warehouse and the vans can be right while the inventory value in your books does not move with them
- wastage recorded on a short delivery is not automatically an expense in the ledger
- a delivery of new routers from your supplier does not raise the warehouse quantity by itself; count the location after the delivery so its quantity reflects what arrived
Your accountant can bring the ledger into line with manual journals. A business can post manual journals, an unbalanced journal or one dated in a closed month is refused, and a posted journal is corrected only by a reversal. A monthly journal for stock losses and for the movement in stock value, based on your counts, keeps the books close to what is on the shelves and in the vans.
A weekly routine for vans
- Every morning: transfers out for the day's jobs, marked received by the installer.
- Every evening or Friday: unused stock transferred back.
- Once a week: a count of each van, compared with the week's installs.
- Once a month: the counts and wastage summarised for your accountant's stock journal.
Getting started
Begin with the warehouse and one van. Set up the device models, run a week of transfers and one count, and see where the numbers disagree. Then add the rest of the fleet. Once devices are tracked, the money side follows the subscriber: how online subscriber payments reach the books and knowing a subscriber actually got the invoice cover the next steps.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
