Hydraulic repair shop software

ServiceCenterSoft is job-tracking software for hydraulic repair shops: cylinder reseals and rebuilds, gear and piston pumps, drive and swing motors, control valves, and hose assemblies made while the customer waits. Each component gets its own job with teardown notes, an itemised estimate and a recorded approval; seal kits and fittings sit in stock with real quantities; and a contractor running twenty machines is one customer with one balance. It runs in the browser — on the PC next to the test bench and on your phone when you are looking at a machine on a job site.

Who it is for

Independent hydraulic shops, mobile hydraulic technicians who now have a bench, and machine shops that do cylinder work alongside machining. The customers are earthmoving and paving contractors, quarries, farms, municipal fleets, equipment rental yards and owner-operators with a single backhoe. When a boom cylinder blows a seal, a crew stands idle; during harvest, a combine with a dead drive motor is money left in the field. The repair is the easy part to explain — the downtime is what they are counting.

Where it usually goes wrong:

• three cylinders come off one excavator, and a week later nobody can say which is the bucket cylinder or what was wrong with it;
• the rod went out for re-chroming and the barrel for honing, but the invoice only shows the seal kit;
• a site foreman okayed a pump rebuild by phone, and the company’s accounts team never saw the number;
• seal kits for the most common loader cylinder run out in the middle of the season;
• a contractor’s balance is spread across a dozen jobs and added up by hand.

One job per component, found by the machine it came from

Each job has device type, model, serial number and a “product code” field. Put the component’s part number and serial in model and serial, and the machine it came off in product code — “CAT 420, unit 14, bucket cylinder”. Advanced search in device mode looks through model, serial and product code, so “the same backhoe again” turns up in seconds with its repair history.

Set up a device type for each kind of work — cylinder, pump, motor, valve, hose assembly — each with its own diagnostic price and labour list, so a piston pump rebuild never gets priced like a seal swap. Condition covers scored or pitted rods, dented barrels, damaged threads; accessories — pins, bushings, fittings, whether the ports were capped. A component back after your repair gets the “Repeat repair” type, and the serial brings up the earlier job.

Several cylinders from one machine? Fill in the first job and copy it for the rest: customer, device type and fault carry over, and you enter each serial and product code.

Teardown and test bench results

To be straight: there is no dedicated test bench report form. What you measure goes into the job’s work log with a date — “barrel worn in stroke zone, rod scored 40 mm, piston seal torn”, “pump: case drain flow above spec at 3,600 psi, rotating group worn”. Internal notes — bore and rod sizes, seal kit numbers, what you suspect — go in “Notes for the technician”: the customer never sees that field, and text search finds it a year later. Advice such as changing filters, flushing the system or checking the relief valve goes in “Recommendations for the customer”, which prints on the completion report.

Approval before the expensive work

A cylinder reseal is an easy number. A piston pump or a drive motor is not — customers want to see it first. After teardown, move the job to “waiting for approval” and build an itemised estimate: seal kit from stock, labour from the labour list, and outside work such as re-chroming or honing as its own line. A button sends it by email or Telegram; the customer sees each line and the total and presses “I agree” or “I decline”, and the answer is stored with the date. For a fleet account that means the person who pays is the one who approved — on record.

Not worth fixing — a bent rod, a cracked pump housing? “Repair refused” or “beyond repair” closes the job. A replacement pump on order puts the job in “waiting for parts”. Rewinding the electric motor of a power unit is covered on the electric motor repair page.

Rush jobs for contractors and farms

The “Urgent” flag shows right in the list — for the excavator holding up a crew or the combine that has to be back in the field tomorrow. Every job has a promised date; once it passes, the row turns red and the “overdue” filter collects those jobs. Statuses of your own, with a colour and a tile above the list — “On the bench”, “Out for chrome”, “Awaiting field call” — show where everything is with one click. A field call-out is a labour item with a price and goes onto the estimate as a line.

Seal kits, hose and fittings in stock

Stock is a movement log: goods in with cost and supplier, used on a job as an estimate line, returned, adjusted at stock-take. A seal kit picked from stock reduces the balance by itself. A typical shelf: seal kits for common cylinders, rod seals, wipers, wear rings, O-rings, hose fittings and ferrules, bulk hose. Quantities are whole numbers, so track hose in whole feet or metres and oil by the pail.

A hose assembly fits an estimate naturally: hose by length, two fittings, crimping as labour. Minimum levels and a “running low” tile tell you to reorder before the season, not in it. A pump or motor for a specific machine is ordered from the job, and the request is emailed to your supplier. More on spare parts tracking.

Fleet customers and getting paid

The “Company” field makes a contractor or a farm business one customer, whoever drops off the component. Its record shows every job and the balance owed. A job can take several payments — a deposit on an expensive pump, the rest on completion — and the “unpaid” filter lists what has gone out without being paid. The completion report has estimate lines, the work log, recommendations and the amount due.

When a component is ready, the customer gets an email or a Telegram message, and the ready list shows how many days each one has been waiting — a cylinder nobody has collected for a week is hard to miss. If you also look after material handling equipment, see forklift repair software.

What stays outside the software

Rules for working on pressurised components, pressure testing and workshop safety depend on your country and on the equipment manufacturer, and are not handled by the software. Dispose of used oil and contaminated seals under local rules.

What repairs typically cost

As a rough guide only — prices vary with region, size, make and condition: cylinder reseal €150–500 labour plus the seal kit, rod re-chroming €150–700 depending on length and diameter, gear pump repair €250–800, piston pump or motor rebuild €800–4,000, control valve repair €250–1,200, hose assembly €25–150 per hose. You set your own prices: per device type, in the labour list and as estimate lines.

What it does not do

• a dedicated test bench report form — measurements go in the work log;
• a fleet management module — machines are found by unit number in product code;
• photos or file attachments on jobs;
• SMS, a mobile app, online payment by the customer;
• supplier integrations or seal catalogues;
• fractional stock quantities.

What it costs

One price for the whole shop — no extra charge for staff or branches.

Off-the-shelf not enough — your own forms, roles, reports or workflow? We will build a program for you. How it works

Try it without signing up in the demo: check in a cylinder, enter the machine’s unit number, add a seal kit to the estimate and send it for approval.

In short

• One job per component; the customer’s machine in product code, searchable.
• A device type each for cylinders, pumps, motors, valves and hoses, with their own diagnostic price.
• Teardown and bench results in the work log, advice on the completion report.
• Pumps and motors only after the customer clicks “I agree”.
• Seal kits, hose and fittings in stock with minimum levels.
• Urgent and overdue jobs in plain sight; fleet customers with deposits, balances and reports.
• €20 a month for the whole shop.