TrackAbout Feature
Feature Name:	Equipment Rental
In Module:	Rental
Short Description	This is typically used for renting welding machines and other large pieces of equipment.
Available In:
← Back to list

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-Scanned Assets 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.

Rental Method: Equipment

When setting rental rates anywhere, only use the "Equipment" rental method for rental equipment.
- When using this method the system requires a Daily, Weekly and Monthly Rate. If you only want to rent a piece of equipment monthly, then enter values for the Daily and Weekly rate that are much higher than the Monthly rate and so will never be used. It is probably best to use something consistent as this 'do not use this rate' place holder. A large number like $9,999 works well for this and stands out as being a 'special' number.
The "Monthly" rental method should not be used. (It only bills for assets held at the end of the last day of the period - not usually what you would want. It also does not display correctly on the rental bill.)

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'.
Each rental bill also 'restarts the clock'. Once a bill is generated then the next month is starting over from scratch. In other words, the customer does not get any kind of a discount because they held the asset for some or all of last month. If the customer returns a piece of equipment on the 2nd of a new month then that customer will be billed for two days of rental at the daily rate. The system will NOT take into account the fact that this customer had this equipment for the past year and so might expect to pay at a lower monthly rate.

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

Counting Rental Days

Note that December 15th to January 15 is 32 days. This is not necessarily intuitive. A way to think about this is that the 1st to the 31st is 31 days. Then the 31st to the 31st is 32 days. So then the 15th to the 15th is also 32 days.

Week

A week is 7 consecutive days.

Month

The number of days in a month is a client configuration set for you by TrackAbout support.
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 rates 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 for 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.
- This is important! The flat fee must be assigned to an asset on the delivery record -- the fee will not appear on the rental bills unless it has been assigned to the asset on the delivery record.
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

Rental Bill Example

Here is an example of the main section of an equipment rental bill:

The "Item" column shows the following information about the asset.

The serial number of the asset. "#8435" in the example. The "#" is shown by default. It is not part of the serial number.
Asset Type's description. "BOBCAT 250 ON WHEELS" in the example.
Rental description of the asset. "PURCHASE PRICE $5,499, CALL STEVE IF CAN'T FIND 555-1212" in the example.
The record this asset was delivered on. "Delivery Ticket#: 155897" in the example.

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.
  This can be used to create a bill when a customer returns a piece of equipment and wants their rental bill generated on the spot so that they can pay for the equipment before they leave. Refer to the page Special_Bill_Generation:_Equipment_Rental for step by step instructions.
- Periodically generating bills for all outstanding equipment at customer sites or returned but not yet billed.
  This is normally done monthly or weekly, but can be done on any schedule.

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). So the choices are:

1) Bill ALL equipment for each customer at the end of the period.

2) Bill 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: Generate Multiple Bills Per Billing Period (Which Assets are Rented Together)

There is a configuration that dictates which assets are billed together on the same invoice. If a customer receives multiple machines over several deliveries, are these machines all billed together on the same bill (because it is the same customer) or are they billed separately? The choices are:

1) Yes - When set to Yes/True, a separate bill will be generated for each delivery record that originally delivered the equipment. In this mode, a customer can have multiple equipment bills in a billing period. Equipment is billed together only if it was delivered together.

2) No/False, a single bill will be generated for all equipment rentals in the billing period. All equipment for a given customer/department (ship-to) is billed together - even if delivered on different deliveries.

Notes:

This is a configuration only visible to TrackAbout support. It is called "Generate Separate Bill For Each Delivery?" (Config: GenerateSeparateEquipmentBillForEachDelivery)
The rental bill API will return all bills for the customer and rental billing period to respect this.

Setup

TrackAbout will create a rental billing period type for you for Equipment Rental.
TrackAbout will load some new asset attributes into the system that are used by Equipment Rental. You can see these by looking at the asset history of any asset and clicking to Edit Properties.
- Purchase Date
- Purchase Price
- Rental Equipment Description
- Rental Equipment Manufacturer S/N
- Rental Equipment Accrued Rental Before TrackAbout
- Rental Equipment Last Bill Date Before TrackAbout
You will want to create an "Equipment Rental" Rental Class. Check that the Accounting Code is set to what you want it to be set to.
You can then assign assets to the new Equipment Rental rental class. This will change how they are handled and rented.

Other Features

Accrued Rental

TrackAbout can track all of the rental accrued for each piece of equipment.

Viewing Accrued Rental -

For every piece of Equipment there will be a link on the Asset Details page called Equipment Rental History

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'

Include Legacy Data

If you have collected accrued rental data for your equipment prior to joining TrackAbout, this information can be loaded into the system and added to total accrual calculated by TrackAbout. This legacy information is called Rental Revenue Accrued to Asset before TrackAbout.

When in use, the Rental Revenue Accrued to Asset before TrackAbout will be added to the accrued rental captured through TrackAbout and the total amount will display on the Asset's Detail page under Accrued Rental

Queries to calculate accrued rental for a single asset or a group of assets can be found in svn here - \Support\SQL Queries Ad Hoc\Rental

Equipment Rental

Contents