Asset tracking shows the containers that are currently standing at your customers' sites: the skips and bins you have left on site and not yet collected. You do not enter anything on this page. Paperwork works it out from the siting actions on your jobs, and warns you when a container has been sitting on a site long enough to be worth chasing.
Click Asset tracking under Workspace. You need permission to view jobs to see it.
Set up what Asset tracking needs
Nothing appears here until three things are in place. If the page says "Nothing is being tracked", check these first.
Mark the containers that stay on site
In References, open Containers and tick Is sited on every container you leave at a customer's site, such as a skip or a bin. A container that is not sited never appears here, however it is used.
Say what each siting action means
In References, open Siting Actions. Each action has an Asset tracking meaning, and it starts as Not classified, which means it is descriptive only and never tracked. Change it to the one that matches:
| Meaning | What it does to the site |
|---|---|
| Delivery | Leaves a container at the site |
| Exchange | Swaps a full container for an empty one, so the site still holds a container |
| Collection | Removes a container from the site |
| Disposal | Takes a container away for disposal. It counts as a collection |
| Not classified | Nothing. The action never appears in Asset tracking |
Put siting actions on the sale's waste lines
On a sale's waste line, choose a sited container and add its Siting actions. Without a sited container the form says "Only sited containers can carry siting actions. Pick a sited container to add them." When a job is raised, it must pick which action it is for — "Choose the action this job is for on each waste line". See Sales.
Understand when a container counts as on site
A container is on site once a job delivers or exchanges it, and it stays there until the collection that removes it has been invoiced. A collection that has only been Completed does not clear it yet.
The rules Paperwork applies:
- A job counts in any status except Cancelled, so a delivery booked next week already shows. A job marked as a wasted journey never counts.
- When a waste line has several siting actions, they are combined: Exchange wins, Delivery together with Collection or Disposal is an exchange, and otherwise the removal wins over the delivery.
- Each container is judged on its own, at its own site. A job can deliver one container and collect another.
- A newer invoiced movement for the same container at the same site replaces an older one. An invoiced Collection or Disposal clears the container. If two movements fall on the same date, neither replaces the other, so you may see one row too many rather than lose a container.
- The movement date is the booking's start date, otherwise the job's requested date, otherwise the date it was created.
- A job at an unlisted site never replaces or is replaced by another, because an unlisted address cannot be matched.
If an invoice is voided or fully credited, the job returns to Ready to Invoice, and the container comes back on site. Nothing is latched.
Read the page
Each job with a container still on site is a block: the job, its site, its status and any rental badge, then its lines with Container, Waste description, Waste type, Container name, Qty and Siting actions. A map leads the page, with a pin for each site.
Use the filters to narrow it:
- Live, Stopped and All choose which tracking scope you see. Live is the default.
- Search job, site or customer... finds a job, site or customer.
- Container, Department, Any movement kind (Delivery, Exchange, Collection or Disposal), Any status and Any rental state each narrow it further.
- Movements in the last looks back 6, 12, 24 or 60 months. It starts at 24, which bounds the page without hiding anything for good: widen it to find a container left on a site for years.
- Sort by offers Most recent, Job number, Status, Rental and Days onsite, ascending or descending.
Two notices can appear:
- "Some movements may be missing. Narrow the filters, or shorten the date range, to be sure you are seeing everything." The page looks at up to 10,000 jobs at a time.
- "N jobs have no site coordinates and are missing from the map. They are still listed below." Choosing the site's postcode from the address lookup on the customer site fills in its coordinates.
Set the rental warning days
Rental badges tell you which containers have been on site too long. They are set under Settings › Sales & Jobs, which only an organisation Owner can open:
- Rental warning after (days) defaults to 35. After this many days on site, the job shows a Rental warning badge, with the days, for example "Rental warning · 40d".
- Rental due after (days) defaults to 42. After this many days the badge becomes Rental due.
Leave a field blank to switch that badge off. Zero is a real value meaning warn straight away, so a blank box and a zero are very different. Days are counted in whole days from the movement date. Use the Any rental state filter to see just the Rental warning or Rental due jobs. See Numbering and Sales & Jobs settings.
Stop tracking a job
Sometimes a container has gone and nobody will ever record it, or a job should not count. If you can edit jobs:
Select the jobs
Tick the jobs you want to remove from the page.
Click Stop tracking
Paperwork asks "Stop tracking N jobs?" and explains that the jobs and their records are not deleted or changed. It only affects what this page shows. Confirm with Stop tracking.
To bring a job back, switch the scope to Stopped, tick it and click Resume tracking. The Stopped scope is also where to look if you stopped everything and the page says "Nothing is being tracked".
Stopping a job hides it from this view only. It does not decide which later movements clear the container.
What to do next
- Mark containers as sited and classify siting actions
- Set your rental warning and due days
- Add siting actions to a sale's waste lines
- Mark a job as a wasted journey if nothing was actually moved
- Setup guide, step 6: Set up your operations lists if you are setting Paperwork up for the first time
Keep moving
Next steps
Explore further
Related Guides
Set up the lists Paperwork uses — tax rates, nominal codes, containers, departments, vehicles and more — and learn what depends on what
Set document prefixes, your Sales & Job prefix, the opportunity pipeline and the rules that apply to sales and jobs
Create a sale, add waste lines, extras, carriers and disposal sites, send the quote, turn it into an agreement and raise a job from it
Raise a job from a sale, fix what the job check blocks, print the transfer paperwork, record what was collected and hand the job to invoicing
Add departments, unit types, container types, containers, siting actions and extra types so sales and jobs can be created