Rentals and Bookings

Rent out your equipment, spaces or anything else you own: reserve it for a customer, hand it over, take it back, and charge for late returns or damage.

The pieces

• Rental assets are the things you rent out. Each one has a code, a name and an hourly, daily and weekly rate. They live in your Rental market's settings, on its Rental Assets tab.
• A rental request reserves one asset for one customer for a set of dates. It shows on the market's Rental tab, under its requests.
• A booking is a confirmed rental request. Once a booking exists, nobody else can book that asset for those dates.
• The renter is the customer account the rental is for. Every rental has one, and it shows on that account's Orders tab.

Start a rental

1. Open your Rental market in the pipeline and choose New Rental Request. (From a customer's account, use New on the Orders tab and the renter is filled in for you.)
2. Choose the Renter: the customer account the rental is for. This is required.
3. Choose the Asset and the Start Date and End Date. Under the dates, Already Booked lists the dates the asset is taken. If your dates overlap one, you'll see a warning and the request can't be saved until you pick free dates.
4. Under Price, choose Charge By (hourly, daily or weekly). The estimate is worked out from the asset's rate; you can type your own.
5. Choose Create Rental Request.

Confirm, change or cancel a request

On the request's page:

• Confirm Booking turns the request into a booking. The asset is checked again, so if someone else booked those dates in the meantime you'll be told and asked to pick other dates.
• Change Dates moves the request to other dates (and lets you change Charge By). The estimate is worked out again unless you type a new price.
• Cancel Request cancels the request. Use it to decline a request too. You can add a reason, which stays on the request.

Hand it over and take it back

On the booking's page:

• Check Out records that the asset has gone to the renter. The booking shows Checked Out.
• Check In records that it came back. You can add a Late Fee and a Damage Fee, which are added to the booking's total, and Condition Notes. When the rental is past its end date, a late fee for the extra days at the asset's daily rate is filled in for you; change it or clear it.
• End Rental is for a booking where nothing was handed over (a room, a time slot). It completes the rental the same way.
• Change Dates moves the booking. Once the asset is out, only the end date can change: use it to extend a rental or end it early.
• Cancel Booking cancels a booking that hasn't gone out yet. Its dates become free for other rentals.
• Open Request goes back to the request the booking came from.

A returned or cancelled booking stops holding its dates, so the asset can be booked again right away.

Switching an asset off

On the market's Rental Assets tab, the Offered switch turns an asset off. It is no longer offered on new rental requests, and its bookings stay as they are. An asset that has been rented can't be deleted; switch it off instead to keep its history.

Changing the renter

On a request or booking, Renter shows the customer account. Anyone who can manage rentals can change it to another account. It can't be removed, because every rental needs a renter. The request and its booking always share one renter.