Inventory: know what's on the shelf and what's in the ground.
Parts and inventory tracking for small water and wastewater utilities
Ask most operators what a main break cost and you get a shrug and a guess. "A couple hundred in parts." That is the part you feel, the fittings off the shelf. The backhoe, the two guys for half a day, the truck, all of that is invisible. So the job goes in the books as "some parts," and nobody ever really knows what it cost to keep that pipe alive.
Inventory tracking fixes the parts half of that. You log what comes off the shelf right on the work, in the same app as your map and your work orders. Not in a spreadsheet you reconcile later. Not in a standalone parts program you bought to sit next to everything else. The part draws down. The cost rolls up. And the true cost of the work finally shows up instead of dying in a part number nobody wrote down. Here is how it works and where it fits.
Why is keeping parts inventory such a headache at a small utility?
Because the count lives in four places and none of them is written down.
Some parts are on the shop shelf. Some are riding around in three truck beds. Some are in the conex nobody has opened since spring. And the real count lives in one person's memory of what he thinks is still back there.
That works right up until the moments it matters most. The ground is open on a service line break and the clamp you were sure you had is not on the shelf, so a two-hour fix turns into a half-day of driving, calling the supplier, or borrowing from the utility next door. Or the opposite: nobody trusts the count, so you order another case of fittings you already have, and the parts budget quietly ties itself up in stock bought twice. Then budget season comes, the auditor or the board wants a number for what is on the shelf, and somebody spends a weekend in the shop with a clipboard counting couplings.
None of that is anyone failing at their job. It is what happens when the parts and the work live in different places.
Put the count in the same app as the work orders and the whole headache goes away a piece at a time: the count drops when the part is used, the shelf tells you before you run out, and the year-end number is already sitting there.
Does utility management software track parts and inventory?
Yes. Ziptility tracks the consumables a water crew keeps on hand: fittings, clamps, couplings, chemical, and line.
It runs in the same app as your map and work orders.
You set up your products once, with a location, tags, and a SKU so the crew can find them. From then on the app keeps a running count of what you have. You do not need a fancy stockroom for this to pay off. The point is that the part and the cost of the part live in the same place as the work. Neither one walks off on its own.
That is also the honest boundary of this page. We track parts a water crew burns. We are not a barcode warehouse system, and we are not the IT-asset, retail-stock kind of "inventory management" software. Different job, different buyer. If that is what you are after, we are not it.
How do parts get drawn down when my crew does the work?
The crew picks the product they used right on the task and enters the quantity, and the on-hand count drops by that amount.
No second step, no end-of-day reconciliation.
This is the whole idea behind Ziptility, applied to parts. Try to reconstruct it a month later from memory and a pile of receipts and you have made it slow, lossy, and expensive. So inventory lives in the field app, on the same task as the repair, not in a back-office spreadsheet someone catches up on Friday.
The most valuable, cheapest moment to capture what got used is the moment the ground is open and the part is going in.
Say a crew clamps a service line break and pulls 100 feet of line and two fittings. They log it on the task. The line and the fittings come off your shelf count, and they attach to that repair. The next time someone opens that asset, the parts are right there in the history with everything else that has ever been done to it.
You can also adjust counts by hand when you need to, for a physical count or a correction.
Can I tie parts to a work order and see the real cost of a job?
Yes, and this is the reason inventory matters more than a stock count.
When a task closes, three costs roll up onto the work: the parts the crew pulled, the equipment they ran, and their time.
You set the rates once. Your operator is billed at some hourly rate all in, the backhoe runs at some hourly rate, and the parts carry their own cost. Close the job and those three add up. That main break stops being "some parts and a day." It is a number. The part cost is figured the way one operator put it: on a "first in, first out unit price." The number reflects what you actually paid for the stock you actually used, not a rough average. (Inventory and the full cost roll-up are on the Plus tier.)
Do that across every asset and you can finally see what each pipe, pump, and valve really costs to keep running. That is the number an honest capital plan is built on. It is also the number that backs your next rate increase when the board asks why. The parts are one input. What the system needs over the next ten years is a bigger story, and that lives over on financial tracking. Inventory feeds the number. Financial tracking spends it upward to the board.
Does it track minimum levels so I know when to reorder?
Yes. You set a par level on each product, the amount you want to keep on hand.
The app reads your count against that par and sorts everything into four buckets: On Hand, Running Low, Out of Stock, and On Order.
This is the view that keeps the crew from a wasted trip. Before they leave the garage, they can confirm the parts are there. No driving out to a break, finding the shelf empty, and driving back. It is also what stands between you and the worst version of that moment: the ground open, the water off, and the repair clamp you were sure about not on the shelf. Running Low shows up before the break does. And because the count is honest, you do not double up on an order for something you already have a case of.
When you do need to restock, the app closes the loop. You raise a purchase order to your supplier (Core and Main, or whoever you buy from). Add the PO or invoice number and an estimated delivery date. Those items show as On Order so nobody reorders them again. When the shipment lands, you receive it against the PO on the Received tab and it flows back into your on-hand count. Order to receive, in one place.
Is this different from the equipment and the trucks I have to maintain?
Yes, and we keep the line clean on purpose.
Inventory is consumables, the stuff you use up and reorder: the fittings, the clamps, the chemical, the line. Equipment is the durable, billable gear that gets used across many jobs and amortized over years, like a pump or a generator. Fleet is the vehicles and heavy machinery that need their own scheduled maintenance.
All three can load their cost onto a job, which is how you get the true cost of the work. But they are different object types because a utility's shelf works differently from its truck bay. This page is about the consumables. The durable stuff and the vehicles are handled as their own things, the way they should be.
Questions operators ask
Does utility management software track parts and inventory?
Yes. Ziptility tracks the consumables a water crew keeps on hand: fittings, clamps, chemical, and line. It runs in the same app as the map and the work orders. It is a Plus-tier feature, built for water parts, not a barcode warehouse system.
Why does a small utility even need inventory software?
Because the count usually lives on a shelf, in three truck beds, and in one person's memory. That means wasted trips, parts bought twice, a weekend of counting for the auditor, and the clamp that is not there when the ground is already open. Keeping the count in the same app as the work fixes all four without adding a job.
Can I tie parts to a work order and the cost of a job?
Yes. The crew logs the part on the task, it draws down the on-hand count. When the job closes, parts roll up with equipment and labor into the true cost of the work. Part cost is figured first-in, first-out.
How does the stock count stay current?
The crew picks the product and quantity right on the task in the field, and the count drops automatically. You can also adjust by hand for a physical count.
Does it track minimum or reorder levels?
Yes. You set a par level per product. The app sorts your stock into On Hand, Running Low, Out of Stock, and On Order. You know what to reorder before you run out.
Can I create purchase orders and receive shipments?
Yes. You raise a PO to your supplier with a PO or invoice number and an estimated delivery. The items show as On Order. When the shipment lands, you receive it against the PO on the Received tab and it flows back into your count.