TMS Contract Costing Plant Hire handles both external and internal plant hire. External Plant Hire, the ability to hire plant from a 3rd party supplier, is an integral part of Purchase Order Processing and ultimately leads to Purchase Invoicing. However, instead of GRNs, Purchase Orders for external plant use dedicated routines to mark plant as on/off hire and to transfer plant to a different Job.

Plant orders are specifically designed to work with hours, days and weeks as their units of measure, which, when combined with plant hire shift patterns, can allow the hire duration to be automatically calculated based on the on and off hire dates. This makes the laborious task of calculating long hire periods, where certain days of the week are not charged, simple. The system also handles open ended hire durations as well as the ability to hire multiple items at the same time.