Agricultural Equipment Management - Dolibarr

1. Module overview

Agricultural Equipment Management turns Dolibarr into a specialised ERP solution dedicated to the complete life cycle of an agricultural machinery fleet. From the moment a need is expressed to the day a machine leaves the fleet, every event is recorded, costed and reported: purchase, commissioning, reservation, assignment, field use, refuelling, breakdown, repair, regulatory inspection, rental, and finally disposal. The module is built entirely on native Dolibarr foundations and never modifies a single core file.

·       54 business objects covering the fleet end to end, backed by 54 dedicated database tables.

·       106 granular permissions grouped into 31 functional areas.

·       A decision dashboard, eleven report families, a weekly planner, a fleet map, a mobile field interface and a 271-route REST API.

·       Five shipped languages: French, English, Italian, German and Spanish.

·       A realistic demonstration dataset spanning fourteen months of activity.

 

2. Business objectives

The module answers the five questions a fleet manager is accountable for every single day.

·       Where is my equipment, and is it available? — real-time status, position and booking calendar.

·       Is it safe and legal to operate? — regulatory inspections, insurance, warranties and operator qualifications, each with its own expiry alert.

·       What does it actually cost me? — total cost of ownership per machine, per hour, per hectare and per campaign, built from sixteen cost families.

·       When will it break, and what will it take to fix it? — preventive plans triggered by hours, kilometres, hectares, cycles or calendar, plus a full corrective maintenance workflow.

·       Is it earning its keep? — utilisation rates, rental revenue, contracting margins and a replacement recommendation threshold.

 

3. Target organisations

The module is designed for any organisation that owns, hires out or maintains agricultural machinery, whatever its size.

·       Farms, livestock operations and multi-site farming groups.

·       Agricultural cooperatives and machinery rings.

·       Agricultural contracting businesses working for third-party farms.

·       Equipment rental companies, dealers and repair workshops.

·       Agrifood units, nurseries, greenhouses, vineyards, olive groves and palm groves.

·       Irrigation companies and public bodies operating an agricultural fleet.

 

4. Equipment fleet management

The equipment record is the heart of the module. It carries forty-three business attributes and eighteen distinct statuses, and every status change is historised with its date, its author, its reason and the meter reading at that moment.

·       Identification — internal reference, fleet code, serial, chassis and engine numbers, registration plate, barcode and QR code.

·       Technical data — power, energy type, tank capacity, tracking unit, hour meter, odometer and cumulative worked area.

·       Financial data — purchase value, current value, residual value and depreciation period.

·       Location — farm, site, GPS coordinates and the timestamp of the last telematics reading.

·       Compliance — next maintenance, warranty end, insurance end and inspection due date, each one feeding a dashboard alert tile.

 

5. Equipment categories, brands and models

A three-level reference structure keeps the fleet consistent and makes reporting meaningful.

·       Eighteen configurable categories covering traction, harvesting, sowing, tillage, spraying, spreading, haymaking, transport, handling, irrigation, energy, livestock, packaging, towed tools, vehicles, drones and mobile sensors.

·       Each category carries its own tracking unit and service periodicity, plus flags for inspection and licence requirements.

·       Brands with country, website, main supplier and support contact.

·       Models with power, displacement, weight, dimensions, capacity, theoretical consumption, work rate, working width, maximum speed, hitch type and service interval.

 

6. Attachments and towed tools

Attachments are managed as first-class objects rather than as free text on the tractor record, because they are reserved, maintained, valued and depreciated in their own right.

·       Mounted, semi-mounted, trailed, front-mounted, carried, accessory, tool and trailer types.

·       Carrier equipment, hitch type and required power, so an incompatible pairing is visible before the machine leaves the yard.

·       Weight, working width and capacity for work planning.

·       Independent condition, status, purchase value and maintenance history.

 

7. Sites, depots and workshops

The module models the physical organisation of the business, not just a flat list of machines.

·       Nine site types: farm, depot, workshop, technical base, rental centre, maintenance centre, worksite, storage centre and regional office.

·       Each site records its manager, address, GPS position, area, and whether it has a fuel station, a workshop or a parts store.

·       Optional link to a native Dolibarr warehouse and to a third party.

·       Workshops carry their own capacity, workstations, technicians, specialities, hourly rate and current workload.

 

8. Reservations and assignments

Booking a machine is where most fleet conflicts are born, so the module makes them visible before they cost a working day.

·       A nine-state reservation workflow with an explicit approval gate.

·       Conflict detection on overlapping bookings, unavailable operators, planned maintenance and expired inspections.

·       Assignments to a farm, site, parcel, campaign, project, task, customer, operator, team, contract or rental.

·       Opening and closing meter readings, condition on departure and on return, and a signature flag.

·       A configurable buffer between two bookings of the same machine.

 

9. Agricultural work orders and usage logbooks

Field activity is captured at the level a farm actually works: the job and the day.

·       Work orders for ploughing, sowing, planting, spraying, fertilising, irrigation, mowing, harvesting, transport, handling, packaging, haymaking, baling, spreading and shredding.

·       Planned versus actual duration, planned versus completed area, quantity and cost.

·       Usage logbooks recording hours worked, productive and idle hours, kilometres, area, fuel used and cost per hour.

·       Derived indicators: hourly yield, cost per hour and cost per hectare.

 

10. Operators, skills and checklists

The module refuses to treat operator qualification as paperwork: it is an operational control.

·       Operator profiles with role, site, hourly cost, availability, cumulative hours and average fuel consumption.

·       Ten skill types including driving and tractor licences, forklift, sprayer, lifting, electrical and chemical certificates, first aid and machine training.

·       Each skill carries an issuing body, an obtained date and an expiry date, feeding an alert.

·       Configurable checklists for before use, on return, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and before and after a rental, with the option to block use when a check fails.

 

11. Breakdown and maintenance management

Preventive and corrective maintenance share one workflow, one cost model and one set of reports.

·       Breakdowns with type, symptom, severity, immobilisation flag, meter reading, initial diagnosis, root cause, downtime and recurrence flag.

·       Intervention requests raised from the equipment record, the logbook, a QR scan, the mobile interface, an alert, a checklist, a breakdown or a telematics event.

·       Preventive plans triggered by calendar, engine hours, odometer, cycles, hectares, fuel consumed, observed condition, telematics or manufacturer recommendation.

·       Maintenance ranges with ordered operations, duration, required skills, tools, parts, risk level and standard cost.

·       Maintenance orders with labour, parts and external cost lines, downtime, result and next due date.

·       Subcontracting with quote, supplier order, supplier invoice and repair warranty.

 

12. Spare parts, stock and purchasing

Parts are linked to the native Dolibarr product and stock modules rather than duplicated.

·       Twenty-two part families from filters and belts to tyres, batteries, oils and protective equipment.

·       Manufacturer reference, equivalent code, supplier, lead time, criticality and service life.

·       Compatibility matrix linking a part to the models and categories it fits, with quantity per machine and fitting position.

·       Stock movements: entry, exit, transfer, inventory adjustment, reservation, return, scrapping and correction, each valued.

·       Purchase requests with a full validation workflow and links to supplier orders and invoices.

 

13. Fuel, lubricants, tyres and batteries

Fuel is usually the second largest cost of an agricultural fleet, so it is measured rather than estimated.

·       Tanks with capacity, live level, low threshold, meter index, unit price, stock value and measured discrepancy.

·       Dispensing records linked to the usage logbook, so litres per engine hour are computed from real work rather than assumed.

·       Automatic overconsumption detection against a configurable threshold.

·       Tank supplies with delivery note and supplier invoice.

·       Lubricant applications, tyre tracking by position with wear and cost per hour, and battery tracking with cycles and state of health.

 

14. Rentals, loans and contracting services

The same fleet can be a cost centre and a profit centre; the module reports both.

·       Incoming and outgoing rentals, with or without a driver, short term, long term or seasonal.

·       Seven tariff units: per hour, day, week, month, hectare, kilometre or flat rate.

·       Deposit, penalties, direct cost and computed margin.

·       Condition and fuel level on departure and on return, with a damage flag.

·       Equipment loans for mutual aid, cooperative provision, breakdown replacement, demonstration and training.

·       Contracting services linked to native quotes, orders and invoices, with revenue, direct and indirect cost, margin and margin rate.

 

15. Insurance, warranties and regulatory inspections

Compliance data is entered once and then drives alerts on its own.

·       Insurance policies with insurer, policy number, coverage type, insured amount, deductible, premium and renewal flag.

·       Warranties with type, supplier, duration, meter limit, covered parts and exclusions.

·       Eleven inspection types including technical, homologation, lifting, electrical, sprayer, roadworthiness, safety, extinguisher, environmental, hydraulic and brake inspections.

·       Each inspection records the body, the result, compliance, reservations issued, cost, certificate number and next due date.

 

16. Telematics and GPS tracking

The module ships the whole data model and the connector framework; the physical hardware and the provider subscription remain the customer's choice.

·       Connectors over REST API, MQTT, HTTP, CSV import, manual entry, IoT gateway, third-party service or FTP.

·       No API key is ever stored in clear text: only a masked fingerprint is persisted.

·       Telemetry readings carrying position, speed, heading, hour meter, odometer, fuel level, engine speed, coolant temperature, oil and hydraulic pressure, battery voltage, engine state, fault code and data quality.

·       Geofences with entry and exit alerts, allowed hours and violation counters.

·       Trip records with distance, duration, engine and idle time, speeds, fuel used and out-of-zone or out-of-hours flags.

 

17. Cost management and total cost of ownership

Costs are aggregated along every axis a manager is asked about.

·       Sixteen cost families: acquisition, depreciation, insurance, fuel, lubricants, parts, tyres, maintenance, labour, rental, subcontracting, inspections, telematics, storage, overheads and financing.

·       Aggregation by equipment, category, site, farm, campaign, customer, period and cost family.

·       Total cost of ownership expressed globally, per hour, per hectare and per machine.

·       A configurable replacement ratio that flags machines whose hourly cost has drifted beyond the fleet reference.

·       Budgets by site, equipment, category, campaign, maintenance, fuel, parts, insurance, rental and investment, with commitment, spend, variance, execution rate and an overrun flag.

 

18. The Agricultural Fleet Control Center dashboard

The dashboard is organised into the six zones a fleet review actually follows.

·       Overall fleet state, availability and planning, maintenance and breakdowns, fuel and energy, costs and profitability, and the map and alert centre.

·       Sixty-one indicators, each labelled with the quantity it counts.

·       Twelve clickable alert tiles, each linking straight to the filtered list behind it.

·       Four gauges: availability, utilisation, share of preventive work and workshop load.

·       An eight-stage kanban following a failure from report to completed repair.

·       Ten charts including engine hours, fuel consumption, maintenance cost, availability, breakdown types, usage by category, cost breakdown, preventive versus corrective, fleet age pyramid and utilisation by site.

 

19. Reporting and exports

Eleven report families, forty-five reports, four export formats.

·       Fleet, usage, planning, maintenance, fuel, parts, operators, regulatory, financial, rental and telematics families.

·       Every report is filtered by a validated date range and rendered with translated labels rather than internal codes.

·       Exports to CSV, Excel, Word and PDF; the PDF is produced in landscape orientation.

·       Every non-HTML export decodes HTML entities so accented characters are written correctly.

 

20. Dolibarr integration

The module reuses native objects wherever one already exists, and creates a table only for data that is genuinely specific to agricultural equipment.

·       Third parties, contacts, customers and suppliers.

·       Products, services, stock and warehouses.

·       Quotes, sales orders, supplier orders, receptions, customer and supplier invoices, payments.

·       Projects, tasks, agenda, contracts, interventions and the document management system.

·       Banking, accounting, margins and human resources.

 

21. Demonstration data

The module ships a complete, realistic dataset so that an evaluation never starts on an empty screen.

·       Two farms, nine sites, three workshops, forty machines, thirty attachments and fifteen operators.

·       Fourteen months of history so every monthly chart is populated.

·       Every workflow stage is represented, including work still in progress, so no dashboard counter reads zero by accident.

·       Every row is tagged with a technical marker, and the purge removes only those rows: real data is never touched.

·       Two clearly separated buttons on the configuration page: populate, and clear.

 

22. Security

Security is enforced at every layer rather than assumed.

·       Permission check on every page, with delete, validation, cost visibility, export and administration disabled by default.

·       CSRF tokens on every write form, validated by the Dolibarr core.

·       All request input filtered and escaped; report date bounds validated against a strict pattern; sort fields checked against the real table columns.

·       Output escaped on display; HTML exports escaped without re-encoding accents.

·       GPS data and cost data each behind their own permission.

·       A centralised event log recording author, old value, new value, origin and result.

 

23. REST API

The module exposes its whole object model through the native Dolibarr REST API.

·       271 routes across the 54 objects.

·       Authentication through the standard DOLAPIKEY header; an invalid key is rejected with HTTP 401.

·       Every route checks the corresponding module permission before reading or writing.

·       Multi-entity filtering applied on every query.

·       Structured JSON responses with pagination and a validated sort parameter.

 

24. Installation and deliverables

The module installs as a standard Dolibarr external module and requires no core modification.

·       A single installable archive: module_materielagricole-1.0.zip.

·       Activation creates the tables, indexes, permissions, menus and constants, and self-heals the schema on upgrade.

·       Deliverables: the module archive, the screenshot set, a French training manual in PDF, this English feature document, and the technical documentation covering the database schema, the REST API, the IoT connectors, security, the test report and the known limitations.

  

About the publisher

DoliResources designs and publishes business modules for Dolibarr ERP/CRM. Every module is delivered with its full source code, a five-language interface, a realistic demonstration dataset, technical documentation and a training manual.

DoliResources — www.doliresources.com