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Recording Plant Hours

Plant Hours Records capture how long an asset was assigned to a particular activity or job. This is distinct from meter-based tracking — a Plant Hours Record does not record how far an asset travelled or how long it ran; it records how long it was allocated to a task.

This serves two purposes:

  • Time utilisation reporting — understanding how long assets are tied up on activities, including time when an asset is on site but not running (for example, a trailer or a machine waiting for its turn).
  • Cost allocation — calculating and recording the cost of asset use against a Job or Account Code for internal job costing and reporting.

Plant Hours Records can be created by Operators, Supervisors, and Technicians. There are two methods: creating a record manually for a single asset and job, or using the Plant Hours Generator to record usage across multiple assets and jobs at once.

For information on setting up Jobs and Account Codes, see Configuring Plant Hours. For an alternative approach to resource allocation, see Booking an Asset.

Manually Creating a Plant Hours Record

Manually creating a record is the simplest method and is recommended when a single asset was used on a single task.

For Operators:

  1. From the Operator homepage, select the asset. This opens a dialogue box with available actions.
  2. Select Create Plant Hour Record.
  3. Confirm or update the Created By field if needed.
  4. Adjust the Created Date if recording hours for a previous day.
  5. Enter the Hours Used.
  6. Optionally select a Job or Account Code from the Job/Account Code field — or create a new Job by completing the details in the Job Details tab.
  7. Save using the Save Tick in the top left corner.

For Supervisors and Technicians:

Navigate to the asset record and select New Plant Hours Record from the Create Requests, Daily Drivers and Work Orders dropdown.

Using the Plant Hours Generator

The Plant Hours Generator is the recommended method for most situations. It lets you build a complete record of all assets used across multiple jobs in a single session, then generate all the individual Plant Hours Records at once.

Note: The Plant Hours Generator only allows time entries in increments of 15 minutes or greater.

For Operators:

  1. From the Operator homepage, select Plant Hour Generator from the Navigate To section.
  2. Confirm or set the Plant Used Date. Defaults to today; a past date can be selected for retroactive entries.
  3. Select a Job/Account Code. Type to search by code or description, then select from the dropdown.
  4. Select the Assets used for that job. Search by plant number, make, model, or registration. Multiple assets can be selected.
  5. Once both a job and assets are selected, they appear in the Plant Hours Generation Table.
  6. Set Plant Hours and Plant Minutes for how long the selected assets were used on that job. Select Set Plant Hours/Mins to apply the time to all selected assets.
  7. To record hours for another job, select:
  8. New Job (Retain Assets) — if the same assets were used on the next job.
  9. New Job (Remove Assets) — if different assets were used.
  10. Repeat steps 3–7 until all usage for the day is recorded.
  11. Select Generate Plant Hours to create all the Plant Hours Records from the table.
  12. If a record needs correction after generating, select it from the table below, make changes, and save.

Note: Selecting Reset All deletes all entries in the Plant Hours Generation Table. This cannot be undone.

For Supervisors and Technicians:

Navigate to an asset record and select the Plant Hours Generator button from the Create Requests and Daily Driver panel.

Saving Asset Combinations

If the same group of assets is regularly used together, you can save them as a combination to speed up future entries.

  1. Select the assets in the Assets field.
  2. Select Show Asset Combinations.
  3. Select Save Asset Combination.
  4. Name the combination and select OK.

The saved combination appears in the Asset Combination table. Selecting it populates the Assets field automatically.

Reporting on Plant Hours Records

Plant Hours data is available in the following places:

  • On a specific Job record — see all asset usage charged to that job.
  • In the history of an asset record — see all jobs the asset has been allocated to.
  • The Plant Hours Records listing report — a full view of all records across the fleet. Use the Show My Reports checkbox to filter this listing to records created by your direct reports.
  • The Asset Operating Cost Summary report — cost totals by asset.

Published: April 2026 · Formbird FLEET 4.2.8