Extinguisher inspection software is bought for one reason and sold on twenty. The reason is that somebody will ask, months later, what was found on a device in a building, and the answer has to be producible. Everything else on a vendor's feature list is either in service of that or it is not. This page is the short version of what the software has to do, written by people who built one, and it is deliberately unflattering about the parts that look impressive in a demo and do nothing on a Tuesday afternoon in a plant room.
It has to hold the device, not the count
The difference between fourteen extinguishers and a list of fourteen extinguishers is the whole product. A count cannot be short by one, because a count that says fourteen when the site has fifteen is simply a count that says fourteen. A list can: the fifteenth device is a row with a location, a serial and a last-checked date that is older than the others, and the person walking the site can see it. Any software that lets you record a site total rather than the devices on it has quietly given up the only guarantee it was bought for.
It has to carry the next due date on the device itself
Monthly is easy to hold on one site and hard on eleven with different fitting counts and different anniversaries. When the due date lives in a diary, the round is a memory. When it lives on the device, the round is a query: what is owed this week, on which site, in what order. That is the difference between a company that does the checks and a company that can be shown to have done them, and it is worth more than every dashboard in the category.
It has to record who signed, because that is the question
The question asked six months later is almost never "was it checked". It is "who checked it and when". A record with a technician and a timestamp against each device answers that in a second; a spreadsheet updated at the end of the week answers it by being a spreadsheet updated at the end of the week. The federal rule for extinguishers asks for the annual maintenance date to be recorded and kept, and the software's whole job is to make that record a by-product of the work rather than a second piece of admin after it.
It has to let the record leave
Every device record is a hostage risk. The building owner may change contractor, the contractor may change software, and a device history that cannot be exported in full is a history that ends the day you stop paying. Ask for the export before you buy, not after: a vendor who will show you a CSV of every device, every check and every finding is a vendor who has thought about the answer, and one who says "contact support" has thought about something else.
What the federal rule asks for, device by device
29 CFR 1910.157(e) is short and it is written per extinguisher. A visual inspection monthly, or at more frequent intervals where conditions warrant: is it in its place, is it charged, is it accessible. An annual maintenance check, with the date of that check recorded and the record kept for a year after the last entry or the life of the shell, whichever is less. And, under paragraph (f), a hydrostatic test on an interval set by the type of extinguisher, five years for a carbon dioxide or a pressurised water unit and twelve for a stored-pressure dry chemical one, with the test date on the device. Three clocks, three intervals, all running per device from the last date, none of them running from the last visit to the site. Software either models those three clocks on the extinguisher or it does not, and if it does not, the person on the round is carrying them in their head.
The six-year internal examination, and why it is the one that gets missed
Between the annual maintenance and the twelve-year hydrostatic test sits a six-year internal examination for stored-pressure dry chemical extinguishers, the interval the maintenance standard the federal rule points to sets out. It is missed more than either of the other two because nothing on the monthly walk prompts it: the device looks fine, the gauge is in the green, the annual tag is current. It is a date, six years from the last one, stamped on a label that most people never read. A device record that carries it as a due date turns it back into a row on a list; a diary cannot, because a diary was started less than six years ago.
A round of eleven sites, worked
Eleven sites, a hundred and sixty extinguishers between them, one technician. The monthly walk is a minute or two per device, so about four hours of checking a month before travel. Annual maintenance falls on each device's own anniversary, so in a portfolio assembled over years it lands in every month rather than in one, and on a device list it reads as a rolling column of what is due this week. Add the hydrostatic and six-year dates and the list carries perhaps a dozen devices a year that need to leave the site for a workshop. None of that is hard to hold in software and all of it is impossible to hold in a diary once the sites stop sharing an anniversary, which is exactly the situation the free fire and safety inspection sheet on this site sizes: the year's hours and the year's dollars, from your own counts.
The tag on the device and the row in the record are the same fact
An extinguisher wears its history: the inspection tag punched monthly, the maintenance label with last year's date, the hydrostatic test date on the collar or the shell. The software's row is the same history in a place a person can query. When the two disagree, the tag is the evidence an inspector reads and the row is the evidence a manager reads, so a check that updates one without the other has created a dispute for a future date. The practical rule is that the row is written standing at the device, at the moment the tag is punched, which is the whole reason the check is recorded on a phone rather than at a desk.
What to ask a vendor, standing at a device
Take the demo to a corridor. Scan this extinguisher: does the row that opens carry its serial, its type, its location, the last monthly check with a name and a time, the last annual maintenance date, the hydrostatic test date, and the six-year date, each with its next-due worked from the device's own history. Record a finding on it, a low gauge, and watch where the finding goes: onto the device, or into a form that closes when the visit does. Then ask for the export of that one device's whole history as a file. A vendor who can do those three things in front of you has built the product this page describes. One who needs to get back to you has built the dashboard.
Questions people ask about extinguisher inspection software
Is extinguisher inspection software different from a general inspection app?
In practice, yes, and the difference is the device. A general inspection app models a form that gets filled in; extinguisher software models the extinguisher, which persists between forms and has its own due date and its own history. You can run a fire round on a general app, and plenty of companies do, but you will be keeping the device list somewhere else, which is where the missed device lives.
Does it need barcode scanning?
It needs a way of being certain which device was checked, and a barcode or QR label on the device is the cheapest way of being certain. Typing a location into a form works until two extinguishers are in the same corridor. Scanning is not a feature, it is the identity of the row.
What does it cost?
Most of the category is priced per user per month and quoted rather than published, which makes comparison hard for a two or three technician company. Extinvo Pro is $49 a month for the whole company, however many technicians and sites you run, and the two worksheets on this site are free with no account. Size your own round with the fire and safety inspection sheet first: the year's hours and the year's cost are the numbers to hold any price against.
Does the software replace the physical tag?
No, and it should not try. The tag on the extinguisher is what a fire marshal reads standing in the corridor, and the federal rule's record of the annual maintenance date is satisfied by a tag as well as by a database. The software is the second copy: the one that can be searched, exported and shown to a building owner without a site visit.