Everyone knows the difficulty of working with hand-written inventories. They can be hard to read, there are differences in terminology and they can get lost or torn.

But they are simple to use and road crews are familiar with them. Electronic systems, by contrast, can be hard to use and are not always popular with the movers/removalists.

Back in March 2020, when the whole world was being locked down and preparing to change forever, a moving subcontractor from Brisbane, Australia, Damien Pahulu, was busy solving the problem. 

Damien has run his own subcontracting business for many years.  That means he had plenty of experience at working with other companies’  move management systems. He didn’t like any of them.  Neither did most of the on-road crews he worked with.  “They were designed by people who have never done an inventory on the road,” he said. “The displays were not optimised for the small screen, you couldn’t see them properly and the drop-down menus were far too long and complicated. I am decent with technology, and I couldn't stand to use them.  There had to be a better way.”

So, Damien set about the task of building an app that the movers/removalists would like but would still provide the information the office staff needed.  He had some form, back in 2012 he had designed an app that would allow customers to cube-up their own houses.  

His new system is called Kika. It’s a simple app that allows packers to compile an inventory on a tablet and provide it as a pdf either to any back-office system or as an e-mail to the customer, agent or controlling organisation such as a corporate account or an RMC. Then during delivery the inventory is checked off by the destination agent on the tablet.

“It’s a light system,” said Damien. “It just does inventories.  It’s cheaper and faster than doing it on paper, but they are easy to understand, prevent any risk of the inventory being lost or damaged, yet still provide the office staff with everything they need.”

Kika can also be used to help with transhipping and screening.  Items required to be extracted for inspection by quarantine officials can be identified within the app, without the need for a paper copy.  Also, when packing goods from the container into lift vans for transhipment or storage, the app identifies which items are in which lift van.  “I don’t know of any other system that can do that,” said Damien.

Damien started using his app on his own jobs with Chess Moving Brisbane and quickly the other road crews decided that they wanted it too.  Chess Moving Brisbane has been using the system for some time now. "We needed a better way to manage our inventories,” said Dale Durant, Managing Director of Chess Moving Brisbane. “Using Kika has made it much easier and saved us a lot of time and money."

For more information, click here to e-mail Damien.

Photos: Damien Pahulu; Kika is a simple way to compile usable inventories.