Replacement

Formbird FLEET provides two tools to help manage asset replacement: a Replacement Prediction report for long-term planning, and a Risk Replacement tool for evaluating individual assets. Both are accessible from the Asset Replacement Report.

Replacement Prediction

The Replacement Prediction section of the Asset Replacement Report helps you plan which assets are likely to need replacing over a given time period. It does not store a prediction on the asset — every time you run it, it reads the current data from each asset, works out when that asset will reach the end of its useful life, and groups the results by financial year.

Because the prediction is built from asset data, the quality of the forecast depends entirely on how completely your assets are filled in. The sections below explain exactly which data the report reads and what it does with it.

Which Assets Are Included

Leave the Assets field blank and the report looks at every asset with an Asset Status of Active. Assets set to Commission, Decommission, Awaiting Disposal or Disposed are left out — so an asset you are still commissioning will not appear, even if its replacement data is complete.

Name one or more assets in the Assets field and the report looks at only those assets, whatever their status — so this is how you include an asset that is not yet Active. Disposed assets cannot be chosen in this field at all.

An asset is also left out if it cannot be predicted at all, or if its predicted date falls outside the report window. See If an Asset Is Missing from the Report.

Learn more about Asset Status.

The Asset Data the Prediction Uses

The report reads the following fields from each asset. The four fields that actually drive the prediction are marked in the last column — the rest appear as columns you can group, filter and export.

Asset field	Panel on the asset	How the report uses it	Drives the prediction
Replacement Due Date	Financials	Used directly as one of the two candidate replacement dates	✔
Replacement Cycle (meter)	Financials	The meter reading at which the asset is due for replacement	✔
Primary Meter	Asset Meters	The asset's current reading — the starting point for the meter-based prediction	✔
Primary Meter Measure	Asset Meters	Determines whether telematics distance or hour readings are used for this asset	✔
Replacement Cycle (mths)	Financials	Shown as a column. Feeds the prediction indirectly — see the note below
Replacement Budget	Financials	The budget figure totalled in the Summary Table and adjusted by inflation
Trade in Value	Financials	Totalled as Trade In in the Summary Table
Device Serial Number and Active	Telematics	Make the asset eligible for telematics meter readings
Asset Status	Classification	Determines whether the asset is included at all
Department, Section, Asset Type	Classification	The grouping options in the Summary Table
Class, Financial Class, Asset Category, Body Type, Make, Model, Fuel Type Primary, Responsible Person	Classification and Physical Details	Reference columns in the Detail Table
Risk Replacement Points	Risk Replacement	Shown as a column, taken from the most recent Risk Replacement calculation on that asset

Note: Replacement Cycle (mths) is not used in the calculation itself. Instead, whenever you change either Purchase Date or Replacement Cycle (mths) and save the asset, Formbird FLEET recalculates Replacement Due Date as Purchase Date plus the replacement cycle in months. The report then reads that date. This means the months-based cycle reaches the report through Replacement Due Date, so if you set a replacement cycle but the due date never updated, the report will not see it.

The report also reads the asset's components. The Accessory Value column totals the purchase price of every component attached to the asset that has Include In Asset Purchase Cost ticked and has not been disposed of.

Learn more about the fields on an asset in Asset Details and about Components.

Where the Meter History Comes From

To predict a replacement date from meter usage, the report needs to know how fast the asset is accumulating kilometres or hours. It works this out from the asset's meter documents — the records that carry a meter reading and a date — across the span you set in Meter Document Date Span.

Two sources are available, chosen with the Prefer Meter Data From option:

Option	What the report reads
Fuel Receipts (default)	Fuel receipts belonging to the asset, dated inside the span. A receipt is only used if it has both a meter reading and a fuel purchase date.
Telematics	For any asset with a Device Serial Number and Active ticked in the Telematics panel, the readings recorded by the telematics integration are used instead. The reading taken depends on Primary Meter Measure — the distance reading for assets measured in distance, the hour reading for assets measured in hours. Assets without an active device still fall back to their fuel receipts.

Two kinds of fuel receipt are deliberately excluded from the calculation:

receipts flagged with an import error
receipts where Ignore this fuel receipt in error checking report is ticked

This matters for planning: a vehicle with a large number of error-flagged receipts has less usable meter history, so its predicted date is based on a smaller sample. Clearing fuel import errors improves the accuracy of this report. Learn more about Fuel Card Errors.

From the meter documents it does find, the report calculates:

Detail Table column	How it is calculated
First Meter / Last Meter	The meter readings on the earliest and latest meter documents in the span
Total Distance	Last meter reading minus first meter reading
Meter Doc Data Duration (days)	The number of days between the first and last meter document
Avg/day	Total Distance divided by the duration in days
3Mth Avg/day Max/Min/Median	The highest, lowest and middle values from a set of three-month averages across the span, which is what the Show Average graph plots

At least two meter documents are needed, because a single reading gives no distance travelled and no time elapsed.

How the Replacement Date Is Predicted

The report works out up to two candidate dates for each asset and then takes whichever comes first:

Candidate	Trigger shown	How it is calculated
Meter-based	PM	The meter remaining is Replacement Cycle (meter) minus Primary Meter. Dividing that by Avg/day gives the number of days until the asset reaches its replacement meter. The predicted date is that many days from today.
Date-based	Date	The asset's Replacement Due Date, used as it stands.

The Replacement Trigger column tells you which of the two produced the date shown, so you can see at a glance whether an asset is being driven towards replacement by its age or by how hard it is being worked.

An asset with only one of the two — no replacement meter cycle, or no replacement due date — is still predicted from whichever one it has.

Financial year grouping. The report window starts on 1 July of the current calendar year and runs forward by the number of years you enter in Years To Run. Each group covers one financial year, labelled 01-07-YYYY to 30-06-YYYY. Assets whose predicted date has already passed are not dropped — they are placed in the first financial year group and shown in bold red, so overdue assets stay visible in the plan.

Inflation. If you enter a figure in Annual Inflation % p.a., the report increases the Replacement Budget of each predicted asset before totalling it. The uplift is not compounded per year.

Running the Report

Navigate to the Asset Replacement Report from the Reports section of the Administrator homepage.
In the Initial Conditions section, configure the report parameters:

Field	What it does
Years To Run (1-20 yrs)	The number of years to project forward. Report Start Date and Report End Date fill in automatically and cannot be edited.
Prefer Meter Data From	Choose Fuel Receipts or Telematics as the source of meter history.
Meter Document Date Span (1-5 yrs)	The number of years of meter history to use. Alternatively, enter a specific Span Start Date and Span End Date. The span must be between one and five years.
Annual Inflation % p.a.	An optional inflation percentage applied to replacement budget figures.
Assets	Limit the report to specific assets (optional). Leave blank to include all Active assets.

Select Run Report.

Large fleets take some time to process — the report shows its progress above the tables while it works through the assets.

Reading the Results

The report produces two tables:

Summary Table — one row per group, showing the Count of Assets, the total Budget and the total Trade In within that group. Use the Year, Asset Type, Section and Department buttons to change the grouping. Select a row to filter the Detail Table to that group; select it again to clear the filter.

Detail Table — the individual assets predicted to reach replacement within the report window.

Assets whose predicted date has already passed appear in bold red.
Rows highlighted yellow have a negative Avg/day — the asset's last meter reading is lower than its first, which usually means a meter reading was entered incorrectly or a meter was replaced. Treat the prediction on these rows as unreliable and correct the readings. Learn more about Meter Reading Errors.
Several columns are hidden by default, including the first and last meter document dates and readings. Select Column Visibility to show them.
Select Export Data to download the table as a CSV file.

Actions from the Detail Table

Button	What it does
Show Average	Select a row, then select this button to display a graph of that asset's meter usage — three-month averages as bars against the span average as a line.
Rerun For Selected	Recalculates the report for only the selected rows. Useful after correcting data on an asset.
Create Replacement Document	Creates an Asset Replacement document for each selected asset, pre-filled from the asset and linked back to it. Each new document opens in its own tab. These appear in the Replacement Management section below.
Select All / Deselect All	Selects or clears every row on the current page.
Clear All Filters	Clears all column filters and any Summary Table selection.

If an Asset Is Missing from the Report

An Active asset does not appear in the Detail Table if any of the following is true:

It has no Replacement Due Date and no usable meter history — with neither, there is nothing to predict from.
It has a Replacement Cycle (meter) but no Primary Meter, or fewer than two meter documents in the span, so no meter-based date can be worked out — and it has no Replacement Due Date to fall back on.
Its predicted date falls after the Report End Date. Increase Years To Run to bring it into view.
An Asset Replacement document already exists for it. The report treats the replacement as already underway and leaves the asset out of the forecast, so check the Replacement Management section below before assuming an asset has been missed.

If an asset is missing and none of these explain it, check its Asset Status first.

Replacement Management

The Replacement Management section of the Asset Replacement Report tracks the progress of individual replacement processes. Each replacement is represented by an Asset Replacement document.

Replacement documents can be created automatically from the Replacement Prediction results (using Create Replacement Documents), or created manually at any time.

Creating a Replacement Document Manually

In the Replacement Management section, select New Asset Replacement.
Select the asset being replaced in the Asset field. The asset's details populate automatically.
Track the progress of the replacement by updating the Status field as the process moves forward.
Enter relevant information as it becomes available, for example, quotes, expected delivery dates, or disposal method.
Save the document and return to update it as the process progresses.

Linking the New Asset

Once the replacement asset has been created in Formbird FLEET (either from a template or by cloning), open the Asset Replacement document and select the new asset in the Asset Details - Replacement section. This creates a permanent record linking the old asset to its replacement.

For information on creating assets, see Creating an Asset.

Risk Replacement

The Risk Replacement tool provides a structured scoring assessment to help evaluate whether an individual asset should be retained, prepared for replacement, or replaced now. It calculates a score based on five categories.

Running a Risk Replacement

Navigate to the asset.
Select Risk Replacement in the navigation panel.
Enter or verify the values in the user-populated fields. Some fields are pulled from the asset automatically (such as Primary Meter and Manufactured Date) but can be edited.
Select Calculate to populate the calculated fields.
Manually enter values for any calculated fields that did not populate (these may require data not yet in the system).
Select Calculate again to generate the Normalised Points score and the corresponding Result.
Tick Include In Replacement Aggregate Report if you want this asset included in the multi-asset replacement report.
Add any Report Notes and Comments to record reasoning.
Save the document.

Understanding the Score

The score is calculated across five categories: Condition, Utilisation, Operation, Return on Investment, and Obsolescence, with each field weighted by its relative importance. The Result field provides a recommendation based on the total score:

Normalised Points	Result
0–50	Retain
50–65	Prepare (for replacement)
65–100	Replace

The 2-Year Repairs / Downtime panel shows the cost of repair work orders against this asset over the past two years and is populated on save. The Replacement Calculation History panel displays a graph of past Risk Replacement scores for the asset over time.

The score is stored on the asset itself, which is why the most recent Normalised Points figure appears as the Risk Replacement Points column in the Replacement Prediction Detail Table. Each time you save a Risk Replacement, a Replacement Calculation document is also created as a permanent snapshot — this is what the Replacement Calculation History graph is built from.

Updated: August 2026 · Formbird FLEET 4.2.9