A service desk is a chain: a call arrives, an engineer is sent, a job card is closed, parts are consumed and an invoice follows. This guide walks each link and shows where the chain usually breaks.
Medical equipment service management is the handling of everything that happens after a machine is installed: the breakdown calls, the scheduled visits, the engineers who attend, the spare parts they fit, the response times you promised and the invoices that follow. It is a chain with six links, and a business is only as reliable as its weakest one.
Done on paper, each link is a separate memory. The call is in a diary, dispatch happens by phone, the job card is a pad in a bag, the spare leaves the shelf unrecorded and the invoice follows weeks later if somebody remembers.
Each of these steps produces information the next one needs. Where the information does not travel, work is repeated or lost.
Somebody rings, sends a message or raises a ticket. The desk needs the customer, the machine by serial number, the fault in the caller's words and whether the machine is under warranty, under contract or uncovered. That last answer decides chargeability, and it has to be on screen in seconds.
A technician is assigned. A good assignment considers who is nearest, who is already booked, who is trained on that model and whether the likely spare is in the van. Sending the wrong engineer costs two visits instead of one.
On site the engineer records what was found, what was done, meter readings, photographs of the fault and the customer's signature on completion. A mobile job card with offline capability matters because hospital basements and radiology rooms are exactly where mobile signal fails.
Any part fitted must be issued against the job, so stock falls, the part joins that machine's history and, if the visit is chargeable, reaches the invoice. Parts recorded only in a notebook are the largest source of quiet loss in a service business.
SLA means service level agreement, the response time you committed to. A timer starts at intake and stops at attendance, so breaches are visible while they can still be fixed.
The closed job produces a service invoice with GST where the work is chargeable, or closes against the contract where it is not. Payment is tracked against it, and the whole event is added to the machine's history.
A hospital may own thirty of your machines. Filing service events under the hospital tells you nothing useful about any of them.
Keep history against the serial number, and several questions become answerable that were previously matters of opinion:
This register is explained in what is installed base management, and the scheduled half of the work in what is preventive maintenance software.
Service teams are drowned in activity counts. These few measures tell you whether the department is healthy, and each one comes straight out of the chain above.
| Measure | What it tells you | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Response against SLA | Whether your promises are being kept | Timer between intake and attendance |
| First-time fix | Whether engineers arrive prepared | Jobs closed without a repeat visit |
| Preventive visits due and done | Whether contract obligations are being delivered | Schedules generated from contracts |
| Chargeable work invoiced | Whether completed jobs turned into money | Closed jobs matched to service invoices |
| Contracts lapsing this quarter | Income about to disappear | Contract expiry dates |
| Cost per machine per year | Which models are worth a contract | Parts and labour against the serial number |
Aura Business covers this ground with breakdown call intake, technician dispatch, mobile job cards, spare parts consumed per job, service history per asset, SLA definitions with breach tracking, service invoices and an owner dashboard. The product pages are service management software, the field technician app and spare parts inventory.
It is the record an engineer completes on site: the fault found, the work carried out, parts fitted, readings taken, photographs and the customer signature on completion. On a mobile app it replaces the paper pad and reaches the office the same day.
By checking the cover on that serial number at intake. A machine in warranty or under a maintenance contract is not chargeable for labour, an uncovered machine is, and parts depend on whether the contract is comprehensive. The desk needs this before dispatching anyone.
Service level agreement: the response you committed to, usually a number of hours or working days between the call and an engineer attending. Tracking it means timing the gap on every call, not estimating it at the end of the year.
They need to. The Aura Business field service app supports offline working with photo proof and a field signature, so job cards completed in a basement or a shielded imaging room sync when the phone regains signal.
By being issued against the job card rather than taken off a shelf. The part then leaves stock, joins that machine's service history and appears on the invoice if the work is chargeable, so the three records cannot drift apart.
It is less about headcount than about installed units and contracts. Once scheduled visits and breakdown calls compete for the same people, a diary stops working.
Contracts and renewals.
The scheduled half of the work.
History per serial number.
Who pays for the part.
Intake, dispatch, job card, invoice.
Job cards that work offline.
Tell us how your centre or business works today and we will tell you plainly which parts of this apply to you, and which do not.
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