Equipment Rental

Overview

TrackAbout clients rent Rental Equipment (also called “Machine Rental”) that is very different than cylinder rental. This is typically used for renting welding machines and other large pieces of equipment.

This equipment is rented more like a rental car than a cylinder. Cylinders are rented in aggregate, but equipment is rented individually – again more like a rental car. It is rented with a daily, weekly, and monthly rate. Here is an example of a common set of rates for a small welding machine:

• Daily: $10.00
• Weekly: $25.00
• Monthly: $62.50

After 3 days the customer switches to a weekly rate because paying for one week is cheaper than paying for 3 days at the daily rate.

There are few enough machines and they are expensive enough and easy enough to find that TrackAbout will require that they are rented uniquely. Not scanneds are not allowed the end customer or our client must track down the serial number if it was not correctly entered into TrackAbout during the delivery or return.

The typical TrackAbout client will have 10 to 200 machines that are rented this way. This is a two orders of magnitude fewer assets than the typical 10,000 to 200,000 cylinders our clients will typically want to rent.

Equipment Rental Calculations

Uniquely Tracked Assets Only

• Individual, uniquely tracked assets are rented rather than assets in aggregate. Not scanned assets may not be rented using the Equipment Rental functionality.
  • There is a rental run prerequisite check that ensures that no customers had any Not Scanned activity during the period for Asset Types that are rented using this rental method.

Restarting the clock

• The delivery of an asset 'restarts the rental clock'.
• It can even be the same asset, but if returned and then delivered to the same customer it 'restarts the rental clock'.
• Saying this in a different way: Holding 1 asset for a month is typically cheaper than having that same asset for 2 weeks and returning it and getting another asset just like it for 2 weeks - or even getting that same asset back and holding it for 2 more weeks.

Calculating rental days

Rent is calculated using daily, weekly, and monthly rates.

• The customer is given the lowest of the daily, weekly or monthly rate.
• Rent is charged every day including weekends and holidays
• Look at time of day rented and returned for rounding up to the nearest day.
• If an asset is delivered and returned within 5 minutes of each other, then don't charge any rent at all. This will be used by clients to purposefully not charge any rent for an asset. Example is when a machine is not working and must be picked up by the client. We still want to track the correct movement of the asset, but will not want to charge rental. So the override return date is pushed back to within 5 min of the delivery date.
• Any fraction of a day is rounded up to a full day. Example deliver and return time and the accompanying number of days to charge rental:
• Examples:
  • • Monday 10am to Mon 10:05am = No Rent (Within 5 minute minimum)
    • Monday 10am to Mon 10:06am = 1 day
    • Monday 10am to Tues 10:00am = 1 day
    • Monday 10am to Tues 10:01am = 2 days
    • Monday 10am to Tues 1pm = 2 days

Week

• A week is 7 concurrent days

Month

• The number of days in a month is a client configuration set by TrackAbout support for you.
• Note: This will probably either be 28 or 30 days. The TrackAbout recommendation will be for 28 days, though clients are free to set it at 30 or whatever other number they wish. This would also conceivably allow clients to change this setting every month so that the number of days reflects the actual number of days in the month - though today this must be done by TrackAbout support.

Fractional weeks and months

• Each asset on a rental bill will only have one type of time period (days, weeks, months). So for instance the system will always rent for 1.14 weeks rather than 1 week and 1 day.
• Fractions of a week and month greater than 1.0 can be allowed.
• Days cannot have fractions.
  • Round up any fractions of a day to a full day
• So if for instance a customer only wants a monthly rate all the time, if you set the daily and weekly rates really high then the monthly will always be cheaper and that is what the customer will see on his bill.

Choosing whether to use Day, Week or Month

• Once the number of days/weeks/months are calculated then they are multiplied by the appropriate rates and the customer gets the option that provides the lowest price.

Overrides

Special Rates

• Special rental rate can be set during one deliver/return cycle for a unique asset. For example a special price of $10 a day for asset #123. This special price is only for this asset and it goes away when this asset is returned. This is set on the delivery record itself.
• Rates may also be set as Standard Rates, Bracketed Rates, Customer Rates and Customer Rates on a specific Department (Ship-To)

Overriding Delivery and Return Date

• The start/end date of rental can be different than the actual deliver/return date of the asset.
  • The returns case is common: End customer calls and says "I'm done with it, come pick it up. Oh, you can't pick it up for a few days... well can you stop the rent today?"
• The override of the delivery date happens on the delivery record
• The override of the return date also happens on the delivery record. In this way all overrides are all in the same place.
• There is a special permission for creating/changing/removing these rental date overrides.
  • There is an audit entry on the delivery any time that the rental date override is added, changed or removed.

Purchase Order

• The PO (Purchase Order Number) shown on the rental bill is the PO from the delivery of the asset to the customer. Be sure this is set correctly on the delivery.

Flat Fees

• Flat fees are extra charges added to a rental bill
• Flat fees can be added to equipment assets on the delivery record to the customer.
• There are three kinds of flat fees for equipment:
  • Equipment, Recurring Charge. These are billed on every rental bill that the customer gets for this asset - including the first bill and the last bill
  • Equipment, Delivery Charge. This kind of flat fee is only charged on the first rental bill for the asset.
  • Equipment, Return Charge. This kind of flat fee is only charged on the final rental bill for the asset - after the asset has been returned.
• It is ok for Flat Fees to be negative numbers
• In the original Flat Fee setup, each kind of flat fee can be set to "Accrue Revenue to Asset". This means that the charges will be applied to the running rental revenue accrued to the asset.
• It is possible to override the standard price for a flat fee. This is done on the delivery record.
• It is possible to override the description text shown on the rental bill for each flat fee. This is done on the delivery record.
• On the Rental bill we do not aggregate similar flat fees for different assets, but instead show each flat fee on it's own line.

Rental Equipment Description

There is a Rental Description field on each asset. This field is shown on the rental bill for this asset.

Generating Bills

Creating Rental Bills

• Rental equipment bills are generated in one of two ways:
  • Generating a bill on the return record for a piece of equipment
  • Periodically generating bills for all outstanding equipment at customer sites or returned but not yet billed

Billing Frequency

• Bills may be generated at any time.
• The system does not enforce that bills must be generated every week or month or any other such schedule.
• Any billing that was not completed already is searched for and billed in the current rental run.

Configuration: Bill for all equipment each period?

• There is a configuration in TrackAbout that dictates whether or not ALL equipment is billed at the end of each period (including equipment still held by the customer that was only delivered on the last day of the period) or only equipment that either:
  • Has been returned
  • Has been held for a month since it was delivered or last appeared on a rental bill

Note this field is visible only to TrackAbout support. It is called "Include All Assets on Balance for Equipment Rental"

Configuration: Which Assets are Rented Together

• There is a configuration that dictates which assets are billed together on the same invoice. The choices are:
  • Equipment is billed together only if it was delivered together
  • All equipment for a give customer/department (ship-to) is billed together - even if delivered on different deliveries.

Note: This is a configuration only visible to TrackAbout support. It is called "Generate Separate Bill For Each Delivery?"

Other Features

Tracking Rental accrued to each asset

• Total rental accrued to date for each individual asset is tracked
• A full history of a given asset's rental revenue can be seen and linked back to how much revenue came from each rental invoice.
• This accrued rental does not include tax.
• This accrued rental does include flat fees if those flat fees have the property checked to 'accrue revenue to asset'
• During conversion to TrackAbout, a value of 'Rental Revenue Accrued to Asset before TrackAbout' can be uploaded and stored on the individual assets