Blog · Fleet Operations · May 6, 2026 · 7 min read
First-Week Setup: From Empty Account to First Job Scan
The shops that fail at inventory software try to load the entire Ferguson catalog on Tuesday. The shops that succeed scan a real job on Friday.
Day 1 — company, people, vans
Name the shop. Create the warehouse. Create each truck with the name techs already use. Invite the office user and one brave tech. Change the temp password. That is day one. Do not import parts yet.
If the truck names in software do not match the names on the board, dispatch will never look.
Day 2 — fifty parts, not five thousand
Pick the fifty parts that left last week. Name, part number, cost, price, min stock, photo if it is confusing. Import a CSV if you have one. If you do not, type them. Speed matters more than poetry.
Categories: keep five. HVAC electrical, appliance water, plumbing valves, tools, other. You can get fancy later.
Day 3 — count what you can touch
Stock the warehouse for those fifty. Transfer a realistic load to one van. Do not pretend to count parts you cannot find. A clean fifty is better than a fake five hundred.
If a part is in a tote with no home, give it a home before you count it. Counting a pile teaches nothing.
Day 4 — the ugly test scan
The brave tech scans one real use to a real job number. Then a return. Then look at the van count together. If that loop feels stupid, fix the scanner now. Do not train the whole shop on a stupid loop.
FleetStock’s tech phone view is the thing you are testing, not the office sidebar.
Day 5 — one van live, the rest next week
Run that van live for five business days. Compare scans to invoices. Then clone the loadout to the next van. A staged rollout survives. A big-bang Saturday does not.
Owners want the whole fleet green on a dashboard. Reality wants one honest truck first. Pick reality.
FAQ
Should we close the shop for setup?
No. Do it around live work. The test scan has to happen on a real ticket.
Who owns the first week?
One person. Committees write catalogs that never go live.
When do we add the rest of the parts?
After the first van’s week. Add SKUs as they are used, or import the next fifty. Never the whole vendor book at once.
See what is on every truck this week
14-day free trial. Then one yearly invoice — $129, $197, or $249.