The size of the prize — and what it costs to own.
How much quietly leaks, and whether recovering a fraction of it pays for the control. That is the whole question, and it is answerable — but only against your numbers, not ours.
Where the prize actually sits.
Ordered by how often they carry the case. Control of what leaves the shelf comes first; headcount comes last.
| Lever | What drives it | How we measure it |
|---|---|---|
| Unattributed consumption | Draw that never lands against a job. Usually over-draw, a buffer held against a stockout, or an item that moved to another job and stayed there — all reasonable at the time, all invisible afterwards. Often the largest of the five. | Attribution rate before and after, on the same catalogue. |
| Waste and rework | The wrong item issued, an out-of-date item issued, or a job done twice because what was needed could not be found or proven. Paid for in materials, labour and schedule at once. | Issues held at the gate, and rework attributable to a wrong or lapsed item. |
| Downtime avoided | Time lost because the right item was not available, in date, or findable at the moment of work. | Stockout events, and the jobs they held up. |
| Compliance evidence | The cost of assembling proof after the fact, and the work of chasing it across systems that were never designed to hold it. | Hours spent on audit preparation, and gaps found. |
| Store time released | Hours spent issuing, counting, chasing and reconciling. Counted last, deliberately — it is real, and it is rarely what makes the case. | Baseline agreed before go-live from your roster and your rates. |
Judge them on different terms.
Judge on cost to serve
Daily consumables and tools. The comparison is against the unattributed draw and the waste it removes, measured continuously. A modest recovery pays for it because it runs every day.
Judge on the event avoided
Isolation, competency, calibration, revision control. The comparison is against a single failure you cannot afford. It may sit idle for months and still be the best money on the site.
Comparing these two on the same spreadsheet is the most common mistake in this category. A custody application judged on consumables savings will always look expensive, and a consumables store judged on catastrophic risk will always look like overkill. Judge each on its own terms.
Give us some details, and we will tell you what we think.
We do not publish a rate card, and it is a deliberate decision rather than an evasion. A published rate would have to assume a site, a format mix, a location band and a term — and each of those moves the number materially. We would rather ask three questions and give you a figure that is right than publish one that is wrong for almost everybody.
| # | How a price is assembled |
|---|---|
| 1 | The platform, sized on three drivers read individually — people who draw from the store, items under management, dispensing points. |
| 2 | The points, per active point per month, by format and by where the site is. A commitment of twelve months or more prices on the reserved basis. |
| 3 | Inspection, banded on the count of serialised items that actually carry a regime. |
| 4 | The capital route — whichever of the four ways you want the hardware funded. |
| 5 | Set-up, banded by the platform figure, because standing an account up is proportional to your data, not your hardware. |
The hardware sits with you, or it sits with us.
That is the whole question, and you do not have to answer it to get a price. The point price carries the equipment, so whichever way it is funded the hardware element comes out of that point price before any capital line goes on. The same steel is never charged twice.
You own the asset
Bought outright, or funded through your own equipment finance. It is on your books and it is yours to keep, redeploy or dispose of at the end. Usually the lowest cost over five years, and usually the harder approval, because capital moves the decision out of an operating delegation.
Sierra Acuity owns the asset
Carried inside the service, or rented for a term. No capital leaves your balance sheet on day one, and the residual and utilisation risk stays with us. Usually the easier approval, because it clears an operating delegation on a single line.
You do not have to choose before you see the numbers. Every quote prices the routes side by side on your own configuration, with the hardware element stripped out of the point price first, so the comparison is like for like. The choice is made on what your delegation and your balance sheet actually prefer — not on which one we would rather sell, because the point price is the same either way.
The detail behind each route — term, ownership at expiry, security, residual treatment, early termination and the accounting position — is set out in a separate funding note, provided with your quote: transparent, and decision-ready for your finance team.
All figures are AUD, exclusive of GST, and confirmed at a short scoping review.
Give us some details, and we will tell you what we think.
Three drivers and a location is all it takes to start. Our read on the shape comes back with an indicative figure.