The installed base is the register of every unit sitting at a customer site with your name on it. Kept properly it becomes the contract pipeline, the service history and the replacement list all at once.
Your installed base is the list of units you have sold and commissioned, held by serial number with the customer, the site and the department each one sits in. Managing it means attaching everything that happens to a machine to the machine itself: warranty, contract, every visit, every part fitted and every reading taken.
Most dealerships have this information. Very few have it in one place. It is split between an invoice ledger, an engineer's phone, a stock register and somebody's memory, which is why questions such as how many of a given model are out of cover cannot be answered on a Tuesday afternoon.
This is the single change that makes everything else work, and it is a habit rather than a feature.
A hospital that has bought thirty machines from you is one account and thirty assets. Filing service events under the account produces a long, useless list. Filing them under the serial number produces a history per machine.
| On the asset record | What it unlocks |
|---|---|
| Serial number, model, site and department | The engineer goes to the right floor on the first attempt |
| Sale and installation dates | The age of the machine, which drives contract pricing |
| Warranty end date | A contract quotation prepared before cover lapses |
| Current contract and its type | Chargeability decided at call intake |
| Every job card and part fitted | Failure history for this unit and this model |
| Preventive visits due and completed | Evidence that the contract was delivered |
| Transfers between sites | The register stays true when a customer moves a machine |
Once this record exists, several jobs stop being investigations. Call intake sees cover instantly. A comprehensive contract can be priced from what that model has actually cost you. A manufacturer's field notice becomes a list of serial numbers rather than a week of telephone calls.
Sales teams work a pipeline of enquiries. The larger and more predictable pipeline is already installed at your customers.
Every unit in the register is at one of a few stages, and each stage has an obvious next action:
This is why the register matters more than a customer list. A dealership selling a modest number of machines each month accumulates hundreds of installed units within a few years, and it is those units that quietly become unmanageable. The cycle around them is described in what is a medical equipment CRM.
Aura Business holds this as an asset and installed-base register alongside warranty tracking, service contracts, service history per asset, asset transfers and a dashboard showing what is lapsing. The product pages are installed base management software and medical equipment asset management.
Nobody begins with a clean list. The practical route is to build it from what you already have and then keep it correct by making it part of normal work.
Keep the maintenance of this register close to the work. A register updated by a coordinator from paperwork drifts within months. A register updated by the job card that closed this morning stays true.
It is the total set of units you have sold and commissioned that are currently in use at customer sites, tracked individually by serial number rather than counted as sales volume.
Inventory is stock you still own and can sell. The installed base is equipment the customer owns and you are responsible for maintaining. They are different records with different questions, although both are kept by serial number.
Because service, warranty and contracts attach to a machine, not to an organisation. A customer with thirty machines has thirty different cover positions and thirty different histories, and only serial-level records can express that.
The asset record should support a transfer, so the history stays with the machine while the site changes. Without that, the engineer is dispatched to the old address and the history is rebuilt from scratch at the new one.
It tells you what is in the field: which models, how many, how old and where. Stocking then follows from the population you support rather than from last year orders.
It is a reasonable start for the model, customer and date, but accounting records rarely hold serial numbers, sites or departments, and never hold service history. Treat the export as seed data.
Turning the register into renewals.
The full cycle around a machine.
Where the history comes from.
Why serial numbers matter.
One page per machine.
Know when cover ends.
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.
Founder-led · Chennai, India · Built and supported by the person who wrote it