Keeping your tools and machinery in top shape should be a priority for your farm operation. Have you ever needed a piece of equipment in an emergency only to find out it wasn't currently operable? You saw needs to be sharp to deal with an unexpected tree fall, just like your trailer's brakes need to be operational if you need to hustle an animal to the vet in an emergency. Farmbrite knows that staying on top of the routine maintenance can be difficult though! When did the truck get it's last oil change? Is the air filter on the combine harvester due to be replaced? Instead of taking out that old folder with handwritten notes, you can use a combination of Farmbrite's Usage and Maintenance logs to track all of your equipment records digitally, and be reminded when the next one is due.
If you have not yet created equipment records, you can check out this article to get started with it. You'll find links within it to learn more about adding maintenance records and tracking equipment usage too.
You can optionally receive service notifications for any piece of equipment. It's up to you if you want to enable them for some tools and not others, and you'll be able to set up different reminder intervals for each. To configure this feature, navigate to the equipment record, and take a look at it's Details tab.
There are 4 fields to note that are relevant to get the most out of this feature.
Track Usage (Miles/Hours/Kilometers) - Determine the measurement unit for the service interval. You can choose if you want to track the usage of this tool in miles, kilometers, or hours. For the remainder of examples in this article, we will assume Mileage as the unit for consistency, but it will function in the same way for hours and kilometers as well.
Current Miles - This field reflects the most up to date reading for the usage on this equipment. This number will be automatically updated when you record usage logs or maintenance records based on the current amount in the most recent record. You can also manually update this if you need.
Send Service Reminder Every [X] Miles - Set the service interval reminder for how often you would like to get notified that service is due. Be aware that this is calculated based on the overall mileage of the equipment. As things like spark plugs and engine oil have different service intervals, this is meant to send you a reminder to "check on this piece of equipment", not necessarily "change the spark plug at 30,000 miles". So for example, if you set this to 5000 miles, you'd get notifications when the overall mileage of the equipment passes 5K, 10K, 15k, 20k, etc.
Email Alerts To - Where should the emailed notification be sent? Add an email address here.
Once you have supplied this information, you can then add service records and usage records, and when the total mileage surpasses the next interval, you'll get an email at the address you supplied reminding you that service may be due.
In our previous image above, note that our farm pickup truck currently has 9742 miles on it. We set the Service Reminder to be 10,000 miles. In the image below, we record a usage record for a trip that we took to bring some of our show goats to a stock show across the state. Our ending amount was above 10,000 miles, so the service reminder email was triggered and sent to us.
