Maintenance Software: Free Versions Available?

On this page you will find information on the following topics:

• Is a Maintenance Planner Excel Template Helpful?
• Is a Good Maintenance Planner Software Free?
• This Is What a Good Maintenance & Repair Software Should Be Able to Do for Free (And in the Full Version)
• Why a Good Maintenance Planner App Is Usually Not Free of Charge

Is a Maintenance Planner Excel Template Helpful?

If you use maintenance software free-ware, how does that affect your maintenance of plant, machinery and equipment? In fact, services can be managed very well digitally nowadays. However, maintenance planner software free of charge offers only limited functions and often only rudimentary features. Often, companies realise after a while that they need an extended software solution. Therefore, it makes sense to think about what the programme must be able to do in concrete terms and which processes it should support in the company before selecting the software.

There is a cross-industry problem that can lead to security risks and financial losses: The inefficient management of maintenance and inspection schedules. Complex inventory, such as machinery or equipment, can fail or perform poorly if it is poorly maintained. Although this fact is known to most managers in trade or industry, in the construction sector as well as in production companies, many companies still stick to manual recording of inspection dates and inventory data.

Others regard Excel as maintenance planner software, free of charge and easy to use. For example, they place the entire inventory management, including maintenance planning, with one person who keeps a spreadsheet on their local computer. While this type of maintenance planner software is free if the office package is subscribed to in the company administration anyway, it is also poorly scalable and unreliable.

This is especially true if the rights to edit the maintenance planner Excel spreadsheet are held by only one person. If this person is prevented from doing so, it is not possible, for example, to check when the next inspection date is or how old a tool is. Some companies try to introduce Excel tables as maintenance planner software free of charge via their company cloud. Here, there is a risk that an employee makes a wrong entry that is not noticed and leads to confusion in the long run.

Furthermore, simply writing down data such as equipment names and purchase and maintenance dates in tabular form does not solve many of the problems that everyday work brings. Good maintenance planner software has features such as tracking defects and deficiencies via an internal ticketing system. It thinks holistically about the life cycle of equipment and machines and therefore allows the connection of external service providers.

The one-time investment in comprehensive maintenance planning software saves your employees from searching for operating manuals, communicating separately with different departments and external service providers, filling out slips of paper manually, but also from the frustration caused by misplaced documentation files over a long period of time.

Is a Good Maintenance Planner Software Free?

Free solutions for maintenance planning turn out to be of little use in most cases. Working time is spent on understanding the user interface, which is often followed by the desire to adapt it to the company’s own needs. This cannot usually be met with maintenance planner software that is free of charge. Therefore, one is forced to work with suboptimal database fields or has to buy another programme for other, necessary functions.

For years, companies in various sectors have been losing a lot of money by trying to use free maintenance planning software instead of looking directly for a customisable special solution that is available for a fee. Those who opt for maintenance planner software (free to download online) risk opportunity costs. A maintenance planner with limited functionality leads to unnecessary use of labour hours and repair or replacement costs.

A maintenance planning programme should not only quickly show you and your employees when a device needs to be serviced again. It should also clearly list inspection dates for plants, equipment, machines, tools (tool management), vehicles and other inventory.

After all, the safety of your machines is also about legal certainty. Regular, documented inspections by skilled personnel should not be missed under any circumstances. With a good maintenance planner software, you are better prepared for appointments that involve the analysis of technical documentation and safety-related inspections of equipment and systems. If the maintenance planner software you use is available free of charge, it is also advisable to pay attention to how it handles inspection reports and statistics.

Can defect reports be entered into the software? Can the collected data be used to generate clear information? The management of machinery and equipment also includes consideration of the respective profitability. A well thought-out inventory management software not only tracks previous repairs and plans future maintenance. It answers the question “Which machines actually break down how often?” with just a few clicks and enables fact-based planning of new purchases.

This Is What a Good Maintenance & Repair Software Should Be Able to Do for Free (And in the Full Version)