An idea, not a product. Nothing has been built yet.
Demo Equipment Tracker
A simple way to know who has your demo equipment right now, and when it's due back.
Demo Equipment Tracker is an idea for a lightweight web app that replaces the spreadsheet manufacturers and distributors use to track loaned demo, trial and evaluation equipment. It would show who has each item, when it's due back, and whether the demo turned into a sale, without the overhead of a full CRM or asset management system.
Tell me if you'd use itWhere it comes from
Companies that lend demo equipment to prospects, manufacturers, distributors, specialist suppliers, tend to run this on a spreadsheet or a shared calendar. It works until it doesn't: someone asks where a piece of kit is and nobody's sure, two salespeople think they've booked the same item, or a customer just keeps something past the return date.
The person feeling this most is whoever runs the demo pool day to day. Their real frustration isn't paperwork, it's not being able to answer 'where is item X right now' without digging through a spreadsheet or asking around.
What it would be
The idea is one fixed way of working, not a configurable platform. A salesperson logs in and requests a piece of equipment. Ops approves or assigns it from what's available, it goes out to the customer, and the system knows who has it and when it's due.
When equipment is overdue, it gets flagged. Ops would see a daily or every-other-day summary of what's late, rather than being pinged the moment something crosses its due date. When equipment comes back, ops logs its condition, adds photos if needed, and records whether the demo led to a signed purchase order or contract.
On top of that sits simple reporting: overall conversion rate across the pool, and how much the equipment is actually circulating. No breakdown by individual salesperson, just the pool-level picture a sales manager would want to see.
What it would do
Live visibility of who has what
See at a glance which customer has each item, who sent it, and when it's due back. This is the core job: answering 'where is it' in seconds instead of digging through a spreadsheet.
Request and approval workflow
Salespeople request equipment themselves. Ops approves or assigns it from what's actually available, which stops double-booking.
Overdue flagging
A daily or every-other-day summary of what's overdue, so ops knows what to chase without needing a same-day alert for every item.
Condition and photos on return
When equipment comes back, ops records its condition and can attach photos, so damage or wear is on record.
Sale outcome linking
Each demo can be marked as converted (a purchase order or contract signed) or not, manually, once the outcome is known.
Pool-level reporting
Aggregate figures only: overall demo-to-sale conversion rate and how much the equipment pool is circulating. No per-salesperson breakdown.
Who it's for
- UK manufacturers with a pool of demo equipment managed by an ops or admin person
- Distributors and resellers who lend evaluation equipment to prospective customers
- Specialist equipment suppliers still tracking loans on a spreadsheet or shared calendar
- Sales managers who want to know if the demo pool is actually generating sales, not just moving stock
What it wouldn't do
- No integration with CRM or ERP systems. Sale outcome is recorded manually, not pulled from another system.
- No help contacting salespeople or customers about overdue kit. It flags what's late and leaves the chasing to whoever already does it.
- No per-salesperson performance tracking, only pool-wide numbers.
- No support for consumables or wear items like samples or spare parts, only high-value reusable equipment.
- No configurable workflow. Everyone follows the same request, approve, dispatch, return, outcome sequence.
Saying no to these is the point. A tool that tries to do everything ends up doing none of it well.
Register interest
Would you use this?
This is an idea, not a product. Nothing has been built and there are no users yet, this page exists to find out if the problem is real enough for a sales manager to pay a flat fee to fix it. If you run a demo pool on a spreadsheet, or you're the one chasing kit that hasn't come back, your take on this would genuinely shape whether it gets built.
Registering costs you nothing and commits you to nothing. I'll email you if it gets built, and not about anything else.
Questions
- Does this exist yet?
- No. It's an idea I'm testing before writing any code. If there's enough interest, I'd build it. If not, I won't.
- Isn't this already in my CRM?
- Some CRMs have basic asset or demo tracking bolted on. The thinking here is that a lot of smaller suppliers either don't use a CRM that does this well, or find it too heavy for what's really a simple lending problem. That assumption is exactly what I want to test.
- What would it cost?
- The plan is a flat monthly or annual fee for the whole system, not priced per item or per user. Nothing's fixed yet, that depends on whether this gets built at all.
- What happens if equipment never comes back?
- It would sit flagged as overdue indefinitely. The ops person decides when to write it off as lost, the system doesn't make that call automatically.