In a competitive marketplace where costs are constantly climbing, any opportunity to reduce overheads and make better use of your returnable assets should be a priority. 

Unaccounted-for assets pose a significant challenge for businesses, leading to financial losses, operational inefficiencies, and compliance risks.  

TrackAbout’s new Black Hole Recovery feature instantly pinpoints lost cylinders, containers and totes you didn’t even know were yours, enabling you to reclaim them and return them to revenue-generating service fast.

What is Black Hole Recovery?

With regards to asset management, a “black hole” refers to assets that have somehow fallen off the radar, with companies unaware they even exist. Most likely they have been left with a customer and never returned, remaining overlooked and untracked.  

It’s an all-too-common issue, particularly for businesses new to asset management software or those who have been struggling with their data collection. 

Let’s say, for example, that a distributor delivers five gas cylinders to a customer’s facility and later returns to pick them up. All five are logged as returned and accounted for. Everything appears to balance, but in reality, six cylinders were originally shipped.  

Without appropriate tracking software or scanning procedures in place, that extra asset falls into a proverbial black hole. This errant container now has the potential to unravel your record keeping.  

Issues such as these quickly accumulate and can have a marked effect on your bottom line. Extrapolate this incident across multiple sites and multiple customers, and in no time, thousands of dollars of assets have gone astray. Without an effective tracking system in place, those missing cylinders will never be properly accounted for. 

And if you can’t balance your stocks, how can you expect to balance your books? 

Enhanced Reporting and Analytics

Our new Blackhole Recovery feature helps organizations identify and recover these assets using a combination of advanced tracking processes, robust reporting, and insightful analysis.  

Conveniently accessed via Management Reports on the dashboard, a quick search for “Black Hole Finds” instantly provides a snapshot of the mislaid assets TrackAbout has helped find over a specific period. 

Summary view provides a list of the lost assets, including their classification, product code, location, and how they were found. The total number of cylinders discovered is also shown. The Detailed report includes additional information about barcodes and serial numbers. Individual entries can also be selected to display the full delivery record, with invoice information, who handled the item, and various other checks and receipts.  

Having all this information at your fingertips makes it easy to pinpoint exactly where assets are being lost, so you can action an audit with a customer or a particular facility to prevent future losses. 

Stocks Don't Balance

A common issue with some Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, particularly those that track rentals, is they allow balances to go negative, says Liz Schurdak, Product Manager at TrackAbout.

Maybe you’ve just brought a new customer onboard, so their ERP shows their balance as zero. However, somehow this customer has assets to return at their first delivery. The result is a negative balance in the system that will impact future deliveries.

In this scenario, if they were to return three cylinders, their balance would show minus three. If another three cylinders were then delivered during a subsequent delivery, the balance would return to zero and those assets would therefore be “lost” in the system.

This wouldn’t happen with TrackAbout, says Schurdak. If you return three cylinders that we didn't know you had, our software won't give you credit for them, making it easier to keep on top of your tracking.

Over the years, we’ve watched countless companies run into pitfalls like these. Drawing on those real-world lessons, our trusted software now delivers an exceptionally robust and precise solution.

Counting the Costs of Lost Assets

The financial impact of mislaying these valuable assets can be significant, continues Schurdak. With gas cylinders worth between $300-2,500 each, losing them can be a costly mistake.

After all, if you can’t account for your assets properly, how will you know if you have sufficient inventory to keep up with customer orders and meet demand?

Responsible companies should always know the condition, location, and status of their returnable assets so they can manage and maintain them, before getting them back into service as quickly, safely, and efficiently as possible. Failing to do so means your business is not running as efficiently as it should.

Without a clear understanding of how many assets you own or are available to fulfil orders, you’re not going to be running an effective and efficient operation.

It may even mean you’re having to replenish your stocks unnecessarily, which is not only expensive but sourcing them can be tricky as they’re in high demand right now.

With Black Hole Recovery, TrackAbout ensures you make better use of the assets you already own – so it’s easier to control costs, manage inventories, and keep your customers happy.

In fact, the savings from finding just a few cylinders, or being able to increase your rental income, more than covers the cost of your TrackAbout subscription.

To enable this Black Hole Recovery, email TrackAbout Support.

If you'd like to learn more about how effectively managing returnable assets can help boost business efficiency, increase productivity, and reduce regulatory risk, contact our sales team today at sales@trackabout.com. Alternatively, get in touch to request a free demo.