Equipment breakdowns mid-season are expensive. Maintenance that gets skipped because nobody tracked it leads to blade damage, engine failure, and emergency repair bills at the worst possible times. LawnBook™’s Equipment Tracker keeps every machine in your fleet documented, maintained, and accounted for — from daily pre-shift checklists to long-term usage analytics.
Adding Equipment
Open the Equipment tab and tap + to add a new piece of equipment. LawnBook supports any type of outdoor power equipment and support vehicles your crew relies on.
Each equipment record includes the following fields:
- Equipment type — Mower (zero-turn, walk-behind, ride-on), trimmer, blower, edger, spreader, aerator, trailer, truck
- Make and model — Manufacturer name and model number for warranty and parts lookup
- Serial number — Important for warranty claims and insurance documentation
- Purchase date — When you acquired the equipment, whether new or used
- Purchase cost — What you paid, used to calculate ROI over the equipment’s life
- Engine hours (if applicable) — Current hours at time of entry, updated as you log usage
- Notes — Any relevant details such as warranty expiration, known quirks, or dealer contact
Tip: Take a photo of the equipment’s serial number plate when you add it to LawnBook. Serial numbers are often in hard-to-reach locations and fade over time. Having the photo in the app means you always have it when you need it for warranty claims or parts orders.
Maintenance Records
Every piece of equipment in your fleet has a maintenance log where you record completed service tasks and set future maintenance schedules. Staying ahead of maintenance is the single biggest factor in equipment longevity and avoiding mid-season failures.
To log a completed maintenance task, open the equipment record and tap Add Maintenance. You’ll record:
- Task type — Oil change, air filter replacement, blade sharpening, blade replacement, belt inspection, spark plug replacement, grease fittings, tire pressure check, fuel system service
- Date completed — When the work was done
- Hours at service — Engine hours at the time of service (for hour-based intervals)
- Cost — Parts and labor cost for the service
- Next due date or hours — When this task should be performed again
- Notes — What was found, what was replaced, any follow-up needed
LawnBook tracks upcoming maintenance across all your equipment and alerts you when a service is due. The maintenance dashboard shows every machine’s current status — which are current, which have upcoming service, and which are overdue.
Tip: Set maintenance schedules at the start of the season for all your equipment at once. Ten minutes of setup in the spring prevents a dead mower in July.
Daily Checklists
Pre-shift inspection checklists catch problems before they become field emergencies. A loose blade, low tire pressure, or empty fuel tank found in the yard beats finding it at a customer’s property. LawnBook lets you create customizable inspection checklists for each type of equipment your crew operates.
To set up a checklist, open any equipment record and tap Checklist. Add inspection items specific to that equipment type. Example checklist items for a zero-turn mower:
- Check engine oil level
- Check fuel level and look for leaks
- Inspect blades for damage, dullness, or missing hardware
- Check tire pressure on all four tires
- Test blade engagement at low RPM before operating
- Inspect belts for fraying or cracking
- Check air filter — clean or replace if visibly dirty
- Verify safety switches are functioning
Each morning, crew members open the Equipment tab and work through the checklist for each machine they’ll use that day. Completed items are checked off. If any item fails inspection, the crew member marks it as a problem and adds a note. LawnBook flags equipment with open checklist issues so you can address them before dispatching the job.
Check-In & Check-Out
The check-in and check-out system gives you a clear picture of which crew member has which piece of equipment at any time. This matters for accountability, for knowing what’s available for a job, and for resolving disputes when equipment comes back damaged.
At the start of the day, a crew member checks out the equipment they’ll be using. The check-out records:
- Which crew member is taking the equipment
- The date and time of check-out
- The current condition (based on the morning inspection checklist)
- Which job or route the equipment is assigned to
At the end of the shift, the crew member checks the equipment back in. The check-in records the return time, end-of-day condition, and any notes about issues encountered during use. If equipment comes back with damage that was not noted at check-out, the record clearly shows when the damage occurred and who was responsible.
The Equipment tab shows a live view of all equipment: what is checked out, who has it, and what is available. If you need to assign additional equipment to a job or swap out a machine, you can see at a glance what’s free.
Truck Inventory
Beyond tracking individual equipment, LawnBook lets you assign supplies and consumables to specific trucks or trailers. If you run multiple crews, knowing which truck has the pre-emergent, which trailer is carrying the aerator, and how many bags of seed are loaded on each vehicle saves time at the yard and prevents wasted trips.
To set up truck inventory, add your trucks and trailers as equipment records. Then use the Assign Inventory function to link supply items and their quantities to each vehicle:
- Assign supplies from your main inventory to specific vehicles at the start of each week
- Track quantities loaded on each truck separately from your main warehouse inventory
- When a crew uses supplies from a truck, usage is logged against the truck’s inventory and automatically deducted from the main supply count
- At end of week, crews return unused supplies and reconcile the truck inventory
- Low-stock alerts work at the truck level as well as the main inventory level
Tip: Standardize your truck loads at the start of each week. A consistent load-out for each truck type means crews always know where to find what they need without asking, and you can restock predictably based on what came back unused.
Equipment Analytics
Over time, LawnBook builds a data history for every piece of equipment in your fleet. The Equipment Analytics view surfaces insights that help you make smarter decisions about maintenance investment versus replacement.
Analytics include:
- Usage hours — Total hours logged per machine, per season, and across the equipment’s lifetime in your fleet
- Maintenance cost history — All repair and service costs logged against each machine, broken down by task type and time period
- Cost per hour — Total maintenance and purchase costs divided by usage hours, giving you the true cost per productive hour for each machine
- Downtime tracking — Time equipment was out of service for repairs, calculated from maintenance records
- ROI by machine — Purchase cost amortized against hours used to show when a machine has paid for itself
Use this data to identify the right time to replace aging equipment. A zero-turn that has accumulated high maintenance costs relative to its hourly output may be costing more to keep running than a replacement would cost. Analytics make that calculation clear instead of leaving it to intuition.