Where it leaks
Off-hire logged late, hire billed short
When the off-hire date on the paperwork does not match the day the asset actually came back, the hire is invoiced for a shorter period than the asset was really out on.
Recharges that never reach an invoice
Damage, loss, cleaning and consumables are agreed on the yard or the ticket but the corresponding charge is missing from the customer's billing, so earned recovery income simply never appears as an invoice.
Delivery and collection charges dropped
Transport, delivery and collection fees are quoted per movement but are easy to omit on the final bill, leaving short payments where the invoice total falls below what the movements should have carried.
Standing hire that quietly stopped
A long-term or contract hire billing on a regular cycle can cease charging while the equipment is still out, a missed or stopped recurring charge that keeps running as a cost with no matching revenue.
The same hire billed twice
Re-keyed contracts, split despatch notes and cross-hire passed between depots can produce duplicate invoices or duplicate charges, which distort the ledger and get written off when a customer disputes them.
Credit notes that outrun the dispute
A credit raised for a damage query or a billing correction can be duplicated, left unapplied, or exceed what was actually owed, so genuine revenue is cancelled out in the finance data without a clear reason.
The scale
It is commonly estimated that around 1% to 3% of revenue leaks before it reaches the bank, and payment failure is part of that picture: GoCardless has observed that roughly 2.9% of Direct Debit payments fail, across about 55,000 businesses. As an illustration only, on a hire firm turning over £20m, 1% to 3% is roughly £200k to £600k a year.
How it is found
It is found by reading your own finance data read-only, invoices, payments, credit notes and ledger entries from the systems you already use, with no change to any system and no rollout to sit through first.
Take the full guide with you
If it would help to see the figure for your own depots, you can get your own number for free, with nothing to install and no commitment.
Common questions
How is this different from our depot or hire management system's own reports?
Hire system reports tell you what was contracted and despatched. This reads the finance data end to end, invoices, payments, credit notes and the ledger, to show where the money earned did not actually turn into cash, such as recharges never billed or a recurring hire charge that stopped.
We recharge damage and consumables manually. Can leakage really be spotted in the numbers?
Yes, because the leak shows up as a gap in the finance data itself: a short payment, an unapplied credit note, a recurring hire line that stopped billing, a duplicate, or a rate that never moved. A charge that was never raised at all leaves no trace in the finance data, so that one needs your hire-desk export, which is on the roadmap. It reads the money that moved, not the notes on a ticket, so manual recharge processes are exactly where it tends to find the most.
Does connecting this change anything in our billing or hire systems?
No. The review is strictly read-only. It looks at a copy of your finance data to flag where revenue is leaking, and it never writes back, alters an invoice or triggers a charge.
How is this different from an aged debtors report or a Power BI or Tableau dashboard?
An aged debtors report, or a dashboard in Power BI or Tableau, shows what is already on your ledger: invoices you raised that have not been paid. Revenue leakage is the money that never reached the ledger correctly in the first place, under-billed, never invoiced, or failed on collection and never chased, so it usually never appears on a debtors report at all. That is what this audit looks for.
Keep reading
- How LeakIQ works for Plant and tool hire
See it applied to your systems, not just the theory.
- What revenue leakage is
The plain definition, and why earned revenue slips before the bank.
- Revenue leakage in every other sector
The same field guide for facilities, waste, logistics, security and more.
