The Convalescent Aid Society of Pasadena, California currently serves over 14,000 clients and has loaned medical equipment for free since 1923. They have run on our software since 2012 and the features of their system, refined over 14 years, are part of Business Engine in use from California to Florida.
Business Engine offers a complete system to run medical equipment loan charities (and more). You get a set of best practices right out of the box, but also no feature you don't use — as each customer gets a setup customized for them. Be live in just weeks.
Bring your messiest spreadsheet.
The biggest benefit we've seen with Mighty Ant is that the system has been designed to fit us, our mission, and the way we work.
Owen O'Neill, Executive Director, Clinics Can Help — West Palm Beach, FL
Clients can see for themselves what's available to borrow. They apply through a guided application, book appointments, or donate — from a computer, their phone, or a tablet in your office. Applications arrive with all required info filled in, so you aren't chasing people down for paperwork or retyping anything. And once clients apply, all their info is automatically in your system.
Business Engine handles all aspects of your program in one place. Search a name and everything about a person is on screen: every loan, visit, donation, family contact, and note, going back years. Business Engine works in a web browser on any device — including your phone, so you can run your organization from your pocket. It's also simple enough to use that a volunteer that only helps out on Tuesdays can look up a client and answer a phone call themselves.
Loan out a wheelchair and every record updates itself — the item is marked as out on loan,
the customer is marked as a client, inventory is automatically updated, the Actions Report shows the wheelchair loan, the Demographics Report shows who it went to under that person's demographics, the visit / equipment / people served report automatically shows every action your team does as needed by granting agencies, your board, or your head of operations.
When it's time, Business Engine automatically emails clients (or their helpers) to check if they still need the equipment. When equipment comes back, scan it in by QR code right from any staff member's phone (no special QR code / barcode readers required.)
The system has been refined over many years to provide the reports and features DME charities actually need while providing automation freeing your team to serve more people.
Families who borrow often also give back, sometimes the same day they apply. Business Engine accepts online donations — on their own, or optionally with the equipment application. Every gift lands on the same record as that person's loans, so donor history and client history are one. Thank-you letters and receipts go out with one click — for one donor, or in a batch automatically for everyone in the system you haven't yet thanked.
Every loan, gift, and return above was recorded the day it happened, by the person doing the work. That's why the next part is a button.
Every loan, visit, and donation was recorded the day it happened, by the people doing the work. So when the grant officer, the board, or the accountant asks, the answer is a report you run, not a spreadsheet you rebuild.
People served vs. visits — the distinction funders always ask for, computed automatically: distinct clients by month, quarter, and year, deduplicated correctly, new vs. returning tracked without anyone maintaining a list.
Demographics your granting agencies want — age range, ethnicity, gender, income level, region, medical condition, education — cross-tabbed against service activity, because you were collecting it at intake all along.
Your funder's own format, as a one-click report. We've built reports shaped to a specific grantor's requirements — anonymized identifiers, eligible-population filters, per-visit cost math. Yours can be built the same way. Your funder changes their format next year? We just add a button.
Equipment activity and inventory in stock — counts and estimated value of everything loaned, donated, returned, or retired, by category and durability, plus what you had on the shelf as of any date.
Things your accountant wants that you'd rather not think about: inventory valuation with a full audit trail, in-stock value as of any date, purchase-vs-sold price on disposed assets, and the somewhat infamously complicated depreciation reports (don't ask).
Bring the report that took you longest last year.
Business Engine is used across a wide variety of industries, from university offices, industrial equipment companies, non-profits, and even with groups building space probes! Anything built for them is available to you. So, yes, your group probably does NOT need an inventory system that can track the full thermal history of every screw you put into your orbital telescope -- but there ARE a surprising number of features developed initially for different groups over the years that multiple groups do use, for example:
Every field is a search field. Everyone you haven't thanked yet, everyone who borrowed a hospital bed last winter, every donor from last spring's event — each gets an individual email, not a visible mass blast.
Proof of residency on the client. A photo on the wheelchair. The grant agreement on the funder. Nothing lives in a shared drive nobody can find.
When this happens, do that. Set a rule and the system carries it out for you — the same rule engine that keeps application season moving at a top research university can be sending automatic follow-ups to users asking if they still need their equipment. Like everything on this page, it's there the day you're ready for it.
Most of what you do is free. For the rare thing that isn't — an optional delivery fee, for instance — take payment online the moment it's agreed to, and schedule the delivery afterward.
Her daughter is the cosigner, her son is the emergency contact, her husband borrowed the bed in 2019. One household, connected — with a caution note if a delivery went badly once.
Send out event registration forms, online surveys, request payments for your charity golf game, or survey family of clients -- optional online form and event features let you set up your own forms for people to fill out.
Software custom fit to exactly how your program works — live in weeks. We make software customers actually like. Some of them even love it. A few have given their system a pet name — and one added a cartoon mascot (really) — but we'd rather you hear it from them. Set up a reference call.
Business Engine is built by Mighty Ant DataWorks — delivering custom systems since 1989 — and the people who build your system are the people who answer the phone after you're live.
Your application, your spreadsheet, your funders' forms. The messier the better — that's what we're setting up around.
Your intake questions, your service area, your funders' report formats — set up for you, not configured by you.
Your clients, equipment, and donors come in from your spreadsheets or your current database, so day one doesn't start from a blank screen.
Training and support are included. Live in weeks — and you keep the same people on the phone afterward.
Plain answers. Where we don't do something, we say so.
Software that runs a charity's equipment-lending program end to end: online client intake, the equipment ledger (loans out, returns, donations in, disposals), borrower follow-up and waitlists, donor records with receipts and thank-you letters, and the reports funders ask for — with one record per person everywhere they appear. It differs from lending or library-of-things software, which manages items and check-outs but not the client, the donor, or the grant report. Business Engine's medical equipment loan features were developed with The Convalescent Aid Society, which has loaned medical equipment free since 1923.
Yes. A guided, step-by-step application from a computer, a phone, or a tablet in your office captures the client, a cosigner, additional contacts, proof of residency, and the acknowledgements you require. When the client submits, the application and the equipment request are already in your system with nothing re-keyed. Your version asks the questions your organization needs.
Yes. Donors give online on their own or right inside the equipment application, with memorial and tribute dedications and a choice of who receives the tax receipt. Every gift lands on the same record as that person's loans. Thank-you letters and receipts go out with one click — for one donor, or for everyone you haven't thanked yet — and in January the system produces a year-end giving statement for every donor in one pass.
Yes. The Client Demographics report counts distinct clients by month, quarter, and year against total visits, deduplicated, with new versus returning clients tracked automatically. Demographics collected at intake — age range, ethnicity, gender, income level, region, medical condition, education — are cross-tabbed against service activity. Every report exports to PDF or Excel.
We've built reports shaped to a specific grantor's requirements — anonymized identifiers, eligible-population filters, per-visit cost math — delivered as a one-click report. Yours can be built the same way. Your funder changes the format next year? We add a button.
No. Keep the catalog; it answers “what's available.” Business Engine runs alongside it and picks up everything after someone finds the item — intake, the record, the follow-up, the funder report.
Weeks, not months. You show us how you work today — your application, your spreadsheet, your funders' forms — we set the system up around it, your clients, equipment, and donors come in from your spreadsheets or current database, and your staff are trained before you go live.
Business Engine is priced for funded programs: organizations with paid staff plus often various volunteers. It arrives set up for your program rather than as a blank system to configure. Ask us and we'll tell you plainly. Owen O'Neill, executive director of Clinics Can Help, said it this way: “Our biggest question up front was whether we could afford a custom system. As a non-profit, our funding is really restricted. In the end, I do feel the system we got was worth the cost.” So, it costs more than a computer, but a lot less than staff -- and it greatly increases what your staff can do.
Our biggest question up front was whether we could afford a custom system. As a non-profit, our funding is really restricted. In the end, I do feel the system we got was worth the cost.
Owen O'Neill, Executive Director, Clinics Can Help — West Palm Beach, FL
Bring your messiest spreadsheet.
Prefer to hear it from a peer first? Set up a reference call.
