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Cohiva Control vs Hippo CMMS: an honest comparison

In short

Hippo CMMS has a reputation for being approachable and quick to set up, which suits teams that want maintenance basics without a long implementation. Cohiva Control covers the same maintenance core and then carries each asset through to a native fixed-asset depreciation ledger, posting monthly journals to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Crunch, with a contractor-compliance gate that has no override. Choose on whether you need maintenance on its own, or maintenance and asset finance joined in one system.

Cohiva Control vs Hippo CMMS: an honest comparison

Hippo CMMS and Cohiva Control are both computerised maintenance management systems, so on the maintenance basics they overlap heavily. The real decision is narrower than feature counts: do you want maintenance software, or do you want one system that runs maintenance and then carries each asset through to its depreciation on your books? This page sets out where each product is the better fit, with no invented pricing or fabricated feature claims.

At a glance

CapabilityCohiva ControlHippo CMMS
Asset register, work orders, preventive maintenanceYesYes
Inspections and parts or inventoryYesYes
Approachable setup for a maintenance teamYesYes, a recognised strength
Fixed-asset depreciation in the same systemYes, six methods including AASB 16Not the product’s focus
Posts depreciation journals to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuiteYesNot the product’s focus
Contractor-compliance gate with no overrideYes, a hard 422Configurable as the product allows
Data isolationDatabase per tenantAs the vendor provides

Treat the right-hand column as category framing rather than a line-by-line audit of Hippo CMMS. Confirm current Hippo CMMS capabilities and pricing on their own site before you decide.

Where Hippo CMMS is strong

Hippo CMMS built its name on being approachable. For a maintenance team that has never run a CMMS, or that has been getting by on a spreadsheet and a whiteboard, a system that you can stand up quickly and that a technician understands without a long training course is worth a great deal. Plenty of facility and operations teams want exactly that: work requests, work orders, preventive maintenance schedules and an asset list, without the weight of a long implementation. If your selection is being driven by speed to value and ease of adoption for a maintenance team, and you have no need to connect maintenance to your finance system, Hippo CMMS is a credible, well-regarded choice, and you would not be wrong to pick it.

Where Cohiva Control is strong

Cohiva Control starts from the same maintenance core and then keeps going into finance. Every asset you maintain is the same asset your accountant depreciates. The depreciation engine runs six methods, straight-line, diminishing value, double declining balance, units of production, sum of years digits and AASB 16 leases, and each monthly run writes to an append-only ledger and can post journals to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Cohiva Crunch. The monthly run is idempotent, so re-running it does not double-post, and posting state is tracked separately from the immutable ledger row so the ledger itself stays clean.

Money is held as a fixed-precision decimal, rounded half up, never as a floating point number, so a worked example on a method page matches what the product computes to the cent. Depreciation never takes book value below the residual value, a deliberate floor.

The second differentiator is the contractor-compliance gate. A contractor whose public liability insurance, trade licence or site induction is expired, missing or unverified cannot be assigned to a work order. The block is a hard 422 at the API with no override, not a soft warning, which means a busy supervisor cannot wave through an uninsured contractor under time pressure. The gate enforces the document set you configure; what is not configurable is whether the rule is enforced.

Cohiva Control is database per tenant, so each operator’s data sits in its own isolated database rather than sharing rows in a multi-tenant table.

Choose Cohiva Control if

  • You want maintenance and fixed-asset depreciation in one system, with journals posted to your accounting suite instead of re-keyed.
  • You run regulated or insured contractors and want a hard, non-overridable compliance gate before anyone is assigned work.
  • You value an append-only audit and depreciation ledger and database-per-tenant isolation.
  • You are an Australian operator and need AASB 16 lease treatment alongside the standard methods.

Choose Hippo CMMS if

  • You want a maintenance system that is quick to set up and easy for a team to adopt.
  • Your finance team already depreciates assets elsewhere and you want maintenance software to stay in its lane.
  • Your priority is the core maintenance workflow rather than the finance layer behind it.

Both can run a maintenance operation well. The deciding question is whether your assets should leave the maintenance system to be depreciated, or stay in it. For more on that wedge, see CMMS with fixed-asset depreciation, and for the wider field, the best CMMS software buyer guide.

Part of the Cohiva platform

Cohiva Control is one product in the Cohiva platform. Leisure and aquatic operators often pair it with Cohiva Complex for centre management, and finance teams connect it to Cohiva Crunch for the general ledger and consolidation. See the whole platform at www.cohiva.app.

Frequently asked questions

Is Cohiva Control a direct replacement for Hippo CMMS?
For the maintenance basics it covers the same ground: an asset register, work orders, preventive maintenance, inspections and parts. The difference is what happens after the work order. Cohiva Control keeps each asset on a depreciation ledger and posts journals to your accounting system, which a maintenance-only tool leaves to a separate process.
Where is Hippo CMMS the stronger choice?
If you want a system that a maintenance team can pick up quickly with little training, and your priority is getting work orders and preventive maintenance running without a heavy rollout, Hippo CMMS is known for that approachable, get-going-fast style. Teams with no need to touch the general ledger may find it a closer fit.
Does Cohiva Control work for a small maintenance team?
Yes. The maintenance core suits a single site or a small team, and the finance layer is there when you need it. The point of difference is the depreciation ledger behind the work orders, not a claim about ease of setup over any one competitor.
What is the contractor-compliance gate?
A contractor with expired, missing or unverified public liability insurance, a trade licence or a site induction cannot be assigned to a work order. It is a hard block at the API, returned as a 422, with no override, not a warning that a manager can click past.
Can I move my data across?
Cohiva Control imports an asset register and open work orders from a structured export. Talk to the team about the format and we can scope the migration with you.