One search, three very different products
Search for equipment management software and the results are three different product categories wearing the same name. Each one manages a slice of the machine — and quietly ignores the rest:
- GPS tracking platforms know where, not what shape. They put a dot on a map and relay hour meters and fault codes — then stop. There is no work order behind the alert, no parts behind the repair, and no cost landing on the asset. You know the dozer moved; you still don't know what it costs you.
- Check-in/check-out apps treat a machine like a tool-crib item. Who signed it out, when it came back. Fine for survey gear and power tools; useless for an asset that ages by the hour meter, carries a rebuild history, and burns money when it sits broken.
- Facilities maintenance tools know the work, not the fleet. They bring real work orders — scheduled by calendar dates, for machines bolted to a floor with Wi-Fi in every corner. A construction fleet ages by hours, moves between jobsites, and breaks down where there's no signal.
Managing construction equipment means holding three answers at once, for every machine: where it is, what condition it is in, and what it costs per hour. That is the job construction equipment management software actually has — and the job Tenmil was built for, in Edmonton, Alberta, around the hour-meter reality of construction, mining, and earthworks fleets.
Start with the asset: one record per machine
Ask a tracking platform about an excavator and you get a pin and a serial number. Ask Tenmil and you get the machine's biography — everything that determines what it's worth today and what it will cost next:
- Component clocks, not just a chassis meter. Engines, pumps, and final drives keep their own hour counts — swap in a rebuilt engine and its clock starts fresh — alongside replacement history and warranty coverage per component, with alerts before coverage runs out.
- The to-do list lives on the machine. Deferred repairs, failed inspection items, and operator write-ups stack up against the asset in severity order, so the next time it hits a shop bay — or a field mechanic reaches the site — the whole backlog joins the work order in one click.
- Hours you can trust. Meter readings land automatically, captured during inspections or synced from your telematics feed, which keeps the number underneath every PM forecast and every cost-per-hour figure tied to work the machine actually performed.
- Fluids on the record. DEF and refrigerant usage posts against the asset and the work order, consumption trends flag anomalies early, and Freon logging stays EPA-compliant without a side spreadsheet.
The wrench-turning half of the story — how work orders actually run, how PM programs get built, what a shop does with all of this day to day — has its own deep dive on our heavy equipment maintenance software page.
Know where the fleet is — and how hard it's working
Location is the one thing the tracking tools do well, and Tenmil covers it without trading away the rest — the map on the Advanced plan, the numbers on every plan:
- A live GPS fleet map with geozones per jobsite. On the Advanced plan — which carries the map and the telematics integration behind it — every asset shows its real-time position and status. Draw a zone around each site, tie it to a project, and let entry, exit, and idle alerts do the watching: a machine leaving, arriving, or sitting still announces itself.
- Utilization reporting, on every plan. When hours worked sit next to hours available, under-used machines have nowhere to hide — and moving one between jobs beats writing a rental cheque for its twin.
- Up/Down availability, on every plan. Fleet status by asset every morning without the phone-around: what's running, what's down, and how long it has been that way.
If the operational side is your main event — availability, utilization, moving iron between jobs — our guide to heavy equipment fleet management software covers it in depth.
Manage the work, not just the whereabouts
This is where tracking tools stop and management software earns the name. Knowing a loader threw a fault code is trivia until something happens because of it — and in Tenmil, something does:
- Hour-based PMs that stay current. Service intervals run on the hour meter, and the meters stay live from two directions — readings captured during digital inspections and hours synced from your telematics feed. The 250-hour service comes due when the machine has earned it, not when the calendar guesses.
- Fault codes go somewhere. The alert a tracking platform stops at is where Tenmil starts: every code carries a severity and a response you define, so a serious fault opens a work order on its own, puts the supervisor on notice, and gets a technician's name on it — while the nuisance codes file themselves quietly.
- Work orders that close where the machine is. The mobile app runs the whole workflow offline on iOS and Android: a mechanic in a pit with no bars can finish the job, record the parts, and walk away, and the record catches up on its own once coverage returns. The mobile CMMS app page has the full tour.
- Inspections with consequences. Operators run guided digital pre-trips instead of paper, and a failed item turns into a tracked backlog entry on the asset the moment it's flagged, photo and note attached — instead of riding back to the office on a clipboard.
If your fleet is construction-first, our CMMS for construction guide walks through the field workflows — and the hour-meter PM math — in detail.
Put a cost on every hour
No tracking platform and no checkout app will tell you what a machine costs to own and run — and that number is the whole reason the fleet exists. Tenmil tracks ownership, maintenance, and operational costs separately for every asset and rolls them into a true cost per hour, broken into capital, repair, and operating components:
- Every cost stream lands on a machine. Work order labor and parts post to the asset when the job closes, and invoices with no purchase order — the emergency field repair, the third-party service call — get allocated straight to the asset, or split across several, so nothing leaks into overhead.
- Hourly rate trending over the machine's life shows the curve bending before it gets expensive — which is how rebuild-or-sell timing becomes a financial decision instead of a gut call.
- Bid-ready rates. A construction bid is largely machine hours priced out. When the hourly rate per unit comes from live work order, parts, and hour-meter data, the estimator carries a number instead of a guess.
The full discipline is on our equipment cost tracking software page, and if you want to run your own numbers first, the equipment cost per hour guide includes a free calculator.
Parts, purchasing, and the systems you already run
A backhoe waiting on a $12 filter is down exactly as hard as one waiting on a pump rebuild — downtime has never cared what the missing part costs. The parts layer is part of managing equipment, not an accessory to it:
- Inventory that watches itself. Stock levels update in real time and reorder points fire before the shelf runs dry — not after the third mechanic goes looking.
- One part number, every equivalent. Superseded numbers resolve to the current part, equivalents link across manufacturers, OEM and aftermarket options sit side by side, and compatibility checks against the exact model before the order goes out.
- Warranty that warns you. Coverage is logged when the part goes in, by hours or by date, and the system flags a technician who is about to replace something the supplier still owes you.
- Purchase orders with a paper trail. POs carry approvals before money moves, and each one lands on the asset it was bought for — which is how cost per hour stays honest.
And none of it should live on an island. Maintenance dollars belong in your job costing, so Tenmil passes purchase orders, invoices, and cost data to the ERP and accounting platforms a fleet is likely already running — QuickBooks, Sage, Procore, IBM Maximo, Oracle NetSuite, Oracle JD Edwards, Acumatica, and Explorer — while cost reports export by asset, location, or period as PDF, Excel, or CSV, or send themselves on a schedule.
Heavy equipment management software, wherever the iron works
Construction is the anchor use case, but nothing above is construction-specific. The same three answers — where, what condition, what cost — are the job of heavy equipment management software on any fleet that runs by the hour meter: mining and earthworks operations, agriculture, forestry, equipment rental houses, government and municipal fleets, and energy.
The underlying problem is identical everywhere: machines that work far from the office, age by hours rather than miles or days, and cost real money every hour they sit broken. A rental house needs the same component-level records and cost per hour a road builder does — it just bills them to someone else.
Tracking platforms vs check-out apps vs Tenmil
Most fleets evaluating construction equipment management software are really comparing two product categories that happen to share a search result — and a third kind of system that actually does the whole job. Here is what each one manages:
| Capability | GPS tracking platforms | Check-in/check-out apps | Tenmil |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it knows about a machine | Where it is, what codes it throws | Who signed it out | Where it is, what shape it's in, what it costs per hour |
| PM scheduling | Alerts with no work order behind them | None | Hour-meter PMs fed by inspections and your telematics feed |
| Work orders | Not the product | Not the product | Open to close, with offline mobile for the field |
| Asset records | A pin with a serial number | A checkout log | Full lifecycle: components, hour history, backlogs, warranties |
| Parts & purchasing | None | Consumables at best | Inventory with reorder points, cross-parts mapping, PO approvals |
| Cost tracking | Fuel and location data, no repair costs | Replacement value, not operating cost | True cost per hour — capital, repair, and operating |
| Pricing | Quote form, plus hardware per machine | Priced for tool cribs, not heavy fleets | Public: $75–$99 per user/month, free trial |
Read the pricing row twice. GPS tracking vendors typically quote per machine and add hardware on top, so the true cost only surfaces at the end of a sales cycle — and climbs with every unit you add. Tenmil is priced per user, the numbers are printed on the pricing page, and the trial needs no credit card: you can know what it costs before anyone knows your phone number.
Pricing you don't have to ask for
Most vendors hide their pricing behind a quote form. Tenmil's is public: per-user plans, free trial, no credit card required.
- Free trial on every plan
- Mobile app included
- Data migration help at onboarding
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about choosing construction equipment management software.
Construction equipment management software keeps the complete operating picture of a construction fleet in one system: where every machine is, what condition it is in, what work is open against it, and what it costs per operating hour. In practice that means asset records with component-level hour counts, hour-based preventive maintenance, work orders and parts, digital inspections, GPS fleet visibility, and per-asset cost tracking — the full lifecycle of the machine, not just one slice of it.
Equipment tracking software answers one question: where is the machine? It puts assets on a map and may relay hour meters and fault codes from telematics hardware. Equipment management software also manages what happens next — the PM that comes due at 500 hours, the work order a mechanic closes in the field, the parts that went into the repair, and the cost that lands on the asset. Tenmil syncs with your telematics feed for hours, location, and fault codes, then runs the maintenance and cost side that tracking tools leave behind.
Look for one lifecycle record per machine with components tracked on their own hour counts, hour-meter-based PM scheduling, work orders a mechanic can complete offline on a phone, parts inventory with purchase order workflows, digital inspections that create backlog items automatically, GPS fleet visibility with geozones, per-asset cost tracking with a true cost per hour, and integration with your ERP and accounting stack. If a product covers location but not work orders and costs, it is a tracking tool, not a management system.
Tenmil publishes its pricing: Professional is $75 per user per month and Advanced is $99 per user per month (USD), with custom Enterprise pricing for larger operations. Advanced adds telematics integration, inspections and greasing, and the live GPS fleet map. Every plan includes the mobile app, and there is a free trial with no credit card required. Most vendors in this category only reveal pricing after a sales call.
Yes. On Tenmil’s Advanced plan, the live fleet map shows every asset with real-time GPS positioning and status, and you can draw geozones around each site, assign them to projects, and configure entry, exit, and idle alerts. On every plan, cost reports break down by asset, location, or time period, and utilization reports flag underused machines worth redeploying to the next job — so a scattered fleet still reads as one operation.
Tenmil connects with the ERP and accounting platforms construction fleets already run — Procore, Sage, and QuickBooks among them, alongside Oracle NetSuite, Oracle JD Edwards, IBM Maximo, Acumatica, and Explorer — so purchase orders, invoices, and maintenance costs flow into job costing without double entry. Cost reports export as PDF, Excel, or CSV, or arrive on a schedule, and the telematics connection keeps hour meters, location, and fault codes syncing from the machines themselves.
See every machine's location, condition, and cost
A live, one-hour walkthrough of hour-based PMs, the fleet map, and true cost per hour — built around your own equipment mix and jobsites.