Read the code.
Understand the age.
Manufacturers often encode a production date in the serial number. The trick is knowing which characters to read, and which rules apply.
1719A23086
In Carrier, Bryant and Payne serials the first two digits are the week (17) and the next two are the year (2019). The letter after them is the factory. → April 2019. The unit’s data plate prints the same month.
The brand comes first.
The same characters can mean different things for different manufacturers. Some use weeks and years, others use month letters, and formats change over time. That’s why we ask for both the brand and the serial.
Reading a photo (coming soon).
When photo scanning launches, image recognition will only read the characters on the label: manufacturer, model and serial number. It will never estimate a date. If a character is hard to read, we’ll ask you to confirm it.
Confidence you can see.
- High confidence
A documented format with a single possible date and no unresolved ambiguity.
- Medium confidence
A known format with something to keep in mind: the brand’s rules are in Beta, a character was corrected, the equipment type was assumed, or the code repeats every 20 years. All current Beta brands are capped here.
- Low confidence
An uncertain interpretation. Verify the date with the manufacturer before relying on it.
Some manufacturers encode a week number. We show the approximate month, which can be off by about a week.
We use manufacturer-specific serial-number rules rather than guessing with AI. If we can’t decode a serial with confidence, we’ll tell you instead of making something up.
A manufacture date isn’t an installation date.
A unit may have been installed months after it was built. Age is useful context, but it can’t tell you the condition of the equipment or when it should be replaced.