We've made a change to how equipment availability is managed in Service Geeni. This note explains exactly what changed, why we made the change, and what it means for you day to day. In short: nothing has been removed, no data has been lost, and for existing equipment there is nothing you need to do.

Your existing equipment records were automatically updated as part of the release — no manual re-entry is needed. Each record's existing availability was carried over into the matching category, so the information you had is still there, just organised differently.

The change fixes a structural problem with how availability worked, and it opens up automation that removes manual work from your team's day. Here's the detail behind each benefit.

Previously, availability could be touched from both the Status screen and the Category screen, with no single record of which one was “correct.” That meant it was possible for a piece of equipment to look available on one screen and unavailable on another, depending on which field an admin had last updated. Now there's exactly one place — Equipment Category — that governs availability, so a status check, a report, and a job sheet will always agree with each other.

Today, when a hire, sale, or return deal completes, someone typically has to remember to go and update the equipment's status or category by hand — an easy step to miss when things are busy. The new optional Equipment Outcome setting on Deal Types closes that gap: once configured, completing a deal automatically applies the right Status and/or Category to every piece of linked equipment, with no separate step for your team to remember. You choose whether to switch it on, and can set it up on some deal types and not others.

Because availability now updates in one consistent place — manually or automatically — the gap between “what the system shows” and “what's actually true on the yard” shrinks. That matters most at the moments it's easy to get wrong: right after a job finishes, when equipment changes hands, or when two people are checking availability for the same item at once. A more current, trustworthy availability picture means fewer double-bookings and fewer awkward calls to a customer about equipment that turned out not to be free.

With availability consolidated onto a single, well-structured field, it becomes possible to build further automation on top of it over time — for example, more granular reporting on fleet utilisation, or extending automatic updates to other workflow triggers beyond deal completion. None of that requires any action from you now; it's simply easier to do because the underlying data is in one place.

• No action needed for existing equipment — it has already been migrated.

• Going forward, set availability (Available for Sale / Available for Hire / Customer Owned) from the Equipment Category screen rather than Equipment Status.

• Optional: if you'd like equipment to update automatically when a deal completes, this can be configured on the relevant Deal Type — speak to your Customer Success Manager if you'd like a hand setting this up.

For every piece of equipment, we looked at its existing category and its existing availability flags on Status, then created (or reused) the matching category. A new category variant was only created where your data actually needed one — nothing was invented, and nothing was duplicated unnecessarily.

Two combinations were never created, because they aren't valid: For Sale + Customer Owned, and Available For Hire + For Sale + Customer Owned. If a piece of equipment genuinely needs one of these, it's worth flagging to us so we can look at it individually.

Say you have a pallet truck sitting in “Warehouse Equipment” with no availability flags ever set on it. After the update, it's still just “Warehouse Equipment” — there was nothing to migrate, so nothing moved.

Say you have a telehandler in “Heavy Plant,” and it was previously marked Available For Hire on the Status screen. After the update, it now sits in “Heavy Plant (Available For Hire)” — same machine, same base category, with its hire availability now carried on the category instead of the status.

Say you have a scissor lift in “Access Equipment,” marked both Available For Hire and For Sale. Both of those are preserved together: it now appears as “Access Equipment (Available For Hire, For Sale).” You haven't lost either flag — they've just moved onto the one category record.

Say you have a generator that was never assigned a category, but did have Available For Hire ticked on Status. Rather than lose that information, it's now placed in “Unknown (Available For Hire)” — a holding category that keeps the availability visible until you assign it a proper category of your own.

Q: Has the Equipment Status field been removed?

A: No. Equipment Status is unchanged for its normal use. Only the three availability options (For Sale / For Hire / Customer Owned) have moved — they now live on Equipment Category instead.

Q: Will I lose any historical data?

A: No. The update automatically carried your existing availability settings over onto the matching category for every equipment record. Nothing was deleted.

Q: Why does my Category list look different now?

A: New category variants may appear where your equipment previously combined a category with an availability flag — for example, equipment that was “Category 2” and “Available For Hire” now appears as “Category 2 (Available For Hire).” These were created only where your existing data needed them.

Q: Do I need to do anything right now?

A: No, existing records don't need any changes. Going forward, just set availability on the Category screen instead of Status when creating or editing equipment.

Q: What's this new Deal Type automation?

A: An optional setting that lets a deal automatically update the Status and/or Category of its linked equipment the moment the deal is marked complete. It's off unless you choose to configure it, so nothing changes for you unless you ask us to switch it on.

Q: Who do I contact if something doesn't look right?

A: Your Customer Success Manager or our support team — we're happy to walk through your specific equipment list with you.