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Insight · Plant and assets

Off-hire, and the charges
that keep running.

Hire runs until the item is off-hired, not until you finish with it. A preventable loss that every contractor recognises and almost nobody has a process for.

Published ·Updated ·4 min read·Written by

Three tracked excavators standing idle on a site beside a storage container
Hired plant is charged by the day whether it moves or not. The off-hire reference is the only thing that stops the clock.

Hire charges run until the item is formally off-hired, not until you stop using it. The off-hire reference issued when you make that call is the evidence that you ended the hire on a particular date, and without it you are arguing about a conversation. Kit sitting in a compound on a finished job is the most preventable loss in contracting.

Why the meter keeps running

Nobody is doing anything wrong. That is worth saying at the outset, because the instinct when a large hire invoice arrives is to assume the hire company has behaved badly.

A hire agreement is a contract for the supply of equipment over a period. The period ends when the customer ends it, by off-hiring. Until that happens the equipment is on hire, whether it is being used, standing in a compound, or sitting behind a locked gate on a job that finished six weeks ago. The hire company has no way of knowing you have finished, and no obligation to guess.

The hire did not continue because anybody was careless. It continued because a hire only ends when somebody ends it, and nobody did.

The off-hire reference is the whole thing

When you off-hire an item, the hire company issues a reference or confirmation number against that request. It is the single most important piece of information in this article.

It establishes that you ended the hire, and on what date. Without it, a dispute about six weeks of charges reduces to your recollection of a phone call against their records, and their records are the ones that were written down.

So the rule is short: no off-hire without a reference, and the reference goes on the record against the item and the job rather than into a text message. A photograph of the item on the day it was collected, with the reference noted, closes the question entirely.

Where the process actually fails

Consistently the same four places, and none of them is anybody being careless.

  • The job finished but nobody owned the closing down. The gang moves to the next site, the site manager is already somewhere else, and off-hiring is nobody in particular's job.
  • The person who hired it is not the person who finished with it. The office raised the hire, site finished with the item, and each assumes the other dealt with it.
  • Collection was requested but not off-hire. These are different transactions. Asking for a collection is not the same as ending the hire, and on some arrangements charges continue until collection actually happens.
  • It was off-hired verbally and nobody kept the reference. The call was made, the charges continued, and there is nothing to point at.

Disputing a charge after the fact

Harder than preventing it, but not hopeless, and worth doing properly rather than angrily.

Establish the date you actually finished with the item, with whatever evidence exists: site diaries, photographs, delivery or collection notes, the date the job completed. Then contact the hire company promptly, and be specific about the date and what you are relying on.

Hire companies deal with this constantly and many will meet you somewhere reasonable, particularly on an ongoing account relationship. What weakens the position is delay, which is why an invoice nobody checked for two months is worse than the same invoice queried on the day it arrived. Which is itself an argument for someone actually reading hire invoices against the job rather than approving them because they look like the last one.

A process that works

Four rules, and they are administrative rather than clever.

  1. One person owns the off-hire for each item, named at the point of hire rather than decided at the end.
  2. Off-hire is part of closing a job down, on the same checklist as the final clean and the handover, rather than a thing that happens when somebody remembers.
  3. Always get and record the reference, against the item and the job.
  4. Check hire invoices against the job, monthly. This is the control that catches everything the first three missed, and it is the one most firms do not do because hire invoices look routine.
Tracking hired plant in software

In Unibuild's asset register, hired items sit alongside owned ones with their hire details against them. Each is moved between sites with a signed note, so the question of what is on hire against which job has an answer rather than an assumption. Those notes are signed on the phone at the point of handover, in a staff app published under the firm's own name. Because hire is captured as committed cost against the job from the point it is raised rather than when the invoice arrives, an item still accruing on a job that has finished is visible in the cost position rather than in an invoice two months later. Off-hiring is still a phone call somebody makes, and the value is in it being obvious who and when.

Assets and inventory Cost control Plant, stores and equipment Project and site

Where to start, on Monday

List every item currently on hire and, against each, name the job and the person who will off-hire it. Anything on the list where the job has finished is money leaving the account today, and that is usually at least one item.

Then add off-hire to your job completion checklist, if you have one, or write a three-line one if you do not. It is the cheapest control in this whole article and it removes most of the exposure permanently.

Asked most often

The follow-up questions.

The wider question of knowing what you have is in knowing what plant you own and where it is.

Why am I still being charged for plant I have finished with?
Because hire runs until the item is formally off-hired rather than until you stop using it. A hire agreement is a contract for a period, and the period ends when the customer ends it. The hire company has no way of knowing the work has finished and no obligation to guess, so equipment standing in a compound is still on hire.
What is an off-hire reference and why does it matter?
The confirmation number the hire company issues when you off-hire an item. It establishes that you ended the hire and on what date. Without it, a dispute reduces to your recollection of a phone call against their written records. Record it against the item and the job, and photograph the item on collection if you can.
Is requesting collection the same as off-hiring?
No, and confusing the two is a common cause of continued charges. They are separate transactions: asking for a collection does not necessarily end the hire, and on some arrangements charges continue until collection actually takes place. Off-hire explicitly and obtain the reference.
Who should be allowed to off-hire plant?
A named person per site, with everybody else raising a request to them. Open off-hiring produces duplicate calls and items released while another trade is still using them. No named person produces the opposite: everybody assumes somebody did it. One owner per site, a written request, and a reference recorded against the item is the whole control.
How do I stop this happening again?
Name one person responsible for off-hiring each item at the point it is hired, put off-hire on the job completion checklist alongside the final clean and handover, always record the reference, and check hire invoices against the job monthly. That last control catches whatever the first three miss.
Can I dispute hire charges after the job finished?
Often, if you act quickly and specifically. Establish the date you genuinely finished with the item using site diaries, photographs, collection notes or the job completion date, then contact the hire company promptly with that evidence. Many will reach a reasonable position on an ongoing account. Delay is what weakens the case.
How do I dispute hire charges after the job has finished?
With evidence of the date you stopped needing it and the date you told them. An off-hire reference given at the time is decisive. Without one, a dated site record, a photograph of the empty compound or an email asking for collection is what you have, and hire companies do settle against that. What rarely succeeds is an argument made months later with nothing dated behind it.
What is hire creep and how do I spot it?
Hire running on past the point the item was needed, accumulating quietly because nothing triggers a review. Spot it by reconciling the open hire list against the sites each week and asking one question per line: is this on site and being used. Items hired for a specific task that finished are the usual finds, along with kit moved between jobs and never rebooked.
What is idle hire and how is it different from off-hire leakage?
Idle hire is plant on site, on hire, and not being used, which is a planning failure. Off-hire leakage is plant no longer needed and still being charged, which is a process failure. Both show as hire cost with no production against it. They need different fixes: idle hire is solved at the programme, leakage at the point somebody finishes with an item.
Is it cheaper to buy rather than keep hiring?
Compare the annual hire spend on that item against the purchase price. Then add what ownership costs: maintenance, thorough examination where it applies, storage, insurance, transport between sites and the capital tied up. The crossover usually arrives sooner than people expect for small plant in constant use, and later than they expect for anything needing statutory inspection. The figure to start from is what you actually spent on hiring it last year.
Next step

Stop paying for kit you finished with.

Off-hire is a phone call somebody meant to make. The charge runs until the call is made and the reference is written down.

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