Straight answers about Property, Fleet & Asset Management.

Retirement apparently means owning things that require constant attention. We have two cars, a caravan, a small fishing boat and enough bits of equipment in the garage to start a hardware shop.

Before AssetSaver, registration dates were in the calendar, servicing stickers were on windscreens, insurance policies were in emails and caravan receipts were in a folder somewhere "safe", which generally meant nobody could find them.

I put everything into AssetSaver and now I can see what's coming instead of remembering what's overdue. Before our last caravan trip it reminded me about servicing and I discovered the tyres were badly aged even though the tread looked fine.

That one reminder may have saved us from a very unpleasant afternoon on the Western Highway.

Our fridge died eight months after we bought it. Normally I would have spent an hour hunting through emails trying to work out where we bought it and whether it was still under warranty.

I opened AssetSaver and the receipt, purchase date, warranty details and model information were all attached to the appliance. I had everything the retailer asked for while I was still on the phone.

That was when AssetSaver clicked for me. It's not just for cars.

I've now added our television, computers, air conditioners, washing machine and some higher-value jewellery. I hope I don't need most of those records, but if something breaks, gets stolen or needs an insurance claim, I know exactly where the proof is.

I'm a car tragic and apparently that disease has spread to motorcycles.

I have two cars, a weekend motorbike and a trailer. I used to be pretty good at remembering servicing but hopeless at remembering the boring things like insurance renewals, trailer registration and when something was last replaced.

AssetSaver gives me a history for each vehicle rather than a pile of invoices. I can see what I paid, what I'm spending, what work has been done and what is coming next.

The biggest eye-opener was seeing the actual running costs together. One of my "cheap toys" wasn't nearly as cheap as I'd convinced my wife it was.

AssetSaver won that argument. I did not.

Our vehicles weren't actually the hardest assets to manage. It was the trailers, mowers, compactors, generators and other equipment moving between crews.

Someone would tell me something had been serviced, but six months later nobody could remember who did it or find the invoice.

We now record the equipment and its service history in AssetSaver and attach the paperwork to the asset instead of to an email conversation.

When a crew reports damage or a repair, we have a much clearer history.

We're finally building an equipment record that stays with the machine even when the person using it changes.

One morning a supervisor asked me for the insurance details and service history of one of our vans after an accident.

Previously that would have meant searching folders, emails and probably calling our mechanic.

With AssetSaver, the vehicle record gave me the information and supporting documents from one place.

What I hadn't expected was how valuable that became across the whole fleet.

Our drivers and providers can contribute information closer to where the work happens, while I can still see the overall picture from the office.

Claims and vehicle handovers have become much less chaotic.

Our biggest headache was not forgetting everything. It was that important costs arrived without warning.

A few vehicle registrations, insurance renewals and major services landing in the same month could make the accounts team very unhappy.

AssetSaver gives us visibility of upcoming work and the history of running costs across the fleet.

That means I can flag heavier months earlier rather than explaining them afterwards.

We still have to pay the bills, unfortunately AssetSaver hasn't solved that part, but at least they don't jump out from behind a bush anymore.