"I Don't Get Any of the Part Number History": How Atlas Excavating’s Shop Orders Parts Now

"I will just put a blanket cost, invoice total, in with a generalized description of… hydraulic hose and put that cost in there. That's all I get. So I don't get any of the part number history."

That’s Ryan Golden, VP and Asset Manager at Atlas Excavating, describing how a parts purchase order used to work. He’d manually key in the lump sum and have no record of what was bought. If the team wanted to track a common part, they’d have to add the number into a notes field and go digging for it later.

But now with Gearflow that’s changed. No POs, No Paper Trail

Before Gearflow the shop bought parts with no purchase orders at all. As Ryan put it:

“We do not do any formal type of POs for anything that the shop purchases"

And almost every order ran through one person. “Somebody will just come in my office and say, I want such and such filter, and I order it," describes Lane Quigle, Atlas's service manager. On days he was out, anyone checking whether a part had been ordered had to wait for him.

For accounting, it meant waiting for the invoice to show up. The controller, Deanna Wojnar, had no way to see what was committed. 

"If we had a purchase order system, our AP team would just have to match that purchase order…Maybe we would be able to accrue those costs, or know what those costs are that are out there which we currently don't have visibility on."

But the cost that bothered Ryan most was the one he couldn’t measure: the time.

"Over 20-some-odd years of doing this, you don't even think about it…But I'm sure we spend way more time trying to get those parts than anybody realizes. It's probably a number we can't put our finger on."

Every Part Gets a PO

Atlas started using Gearflow in May 2026. Since then, every shop purchase order has been priced and order status is no longer something only Lane can answer. The team files a request and it goes out to their own dealers for quotes.

For Atlas, that mattered: Gearflow didn’t send them looking for new suppliers. Nearly all of those POs went to the dealers they already used, which is how Ryan describes the fleet: “we use [our dealer] for 99% of our stuff.”

Gearflow gave Atlas one front door to the vendors they already trust with the quote, the price and the record all in one place instead of scattered across phone calls and invoices.

Quotes Back in Minutes

The time that matters in a shop is the one between “I need this part” and “it’s ordered.” Atlas’s dealers now send a first quote in a median of about 16 minutes, and the team gets to an approved order in about 37 minutes.

For Ryan, the back-and-forth that used to live in scattered texts and phone calls now sits in one thread linked to the order. When he used to work through a tricky wrong item with a vendor, it was time consuming.

"I probably had 10 messages going back and forth, just trying to figure out the right item.” Even his main dealer came around after seeing the quote flow: "They're like, oh, well, yeah, this is way easier."

The Part About Parts History

Lane noticed something else ordering this way.

Each request starts on the machine it’s for, so every order leaves behind the part number, the dealer it came from and what it cost. Before, the books got a lump sum and a one-line description and nothing else.

"I wanted to go through Gearflow because I like it," Lane said. "Four years from now, I can go back and see every part number that's ever been bought for this. It'd be nice to know everything that's been bought for a pickup truck."

The record isn’t just numbers either. A vendor’s parts diagram that used to live in a one off text is now linked to the machine.

“He would normally just text me that picture, and I would text him,” Lane said. “I can go back to that machine later in life and look at that coupler’s breakdown.”

Field mechanics liked being able to attach a photo straight to a request. As Cody Gillen, a field technician, put it, “Photos are amazing.”

Taking the Load Off Lane’s Shoulders

In October 2026, Atlas moved parts ordering onto Gearflow’s newest platform. Mechanics don’t have to walk into Lane’s office or open an app. They can text, call or send a photo to one number, the same way they’d reach Lane. AI writes the ticket, asks clarifying questions, matches it to the machine, and starts the request.

As Lane put it: “They technically don’t have to open up an app, no different than calling or texting me.” From a lump sum and a phone call to a part number you can find four years later. That's the difference Atlas was after.

See how Gearflow can do the same for your operation.

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