New Rental System
· February 23, 2014 ·A brand new rental system is in the works. It’s mostly done but a few changes remain to be completed. The new system is much more flexible and much better able to track inventory. It will also work much better online.
At this point it is important to test out the new system and make any suggestions for changes. Over the next few weeks this system will be completed and the old system retired. You will need to do some setup changes. When the time comes I will be able to convert your old items to the new system.
There is a new setup item for Inventory Locations. You will need to setup at least one location. These are used to keep track of where your rental items are situated.
On the Item Setup page there is a new entry called ‘New Rentals’. You can call up existing items on this page. There is a new tab titled ‘Inventory’. It works like the ‘Schedule’ tab in that you can setup the inventory for a period of time (on the left-hand side) or day-by-day (on the right-hand side). This is to tell the system how many items you have at which locations, and in total. Even if you have only one location you need to enter a value in for the ‘Overall Inventory’ amount. The Overall Inventory is used to limit how many items can be rented at a time, in total. If you had 35 kayaks and 2 locations you can set each location to 35 and the overall inventory to 35. That will allow up to 35 be booked at either location, but no more than 35 in total. Alternately, you could have 20 kayaks in one location, 15 in another, and 35 in total.
The Schedule tab is new and works differently than other Schedule tabs. This is where you define the different rental options, such as Half Day, Full Day, Hourly, etc. Contrary to the existing rental system you do not assign a quantity of items to each time (although you optionally can, see below).
Option# – Assign a number starting at one and work your way up. This number will be important later on so do not change the other fields for an option after you have started booking that option.
Description: Half Day AM, Half Day PM, etc. Whatever you like.
Out Time: The time the item is going out.
Return Time: The expected return time.
For Hourly rentals enter in the opening and closing times. These will be used as limits to when the item can be picked up or returned.
Period: What time period is used to measure this rental option: Days, Weeks, etc.
Days: The number of days in the Period. This is set by the system based on the period chosen, except in the case of ‘Specific’ where you have to assign the days. ie, a 3 day weekend, a 4 day special, etc. Monthly has no specific number of days and is calculated when the reservation is made.
Repeat: Can the period repeat? Usually yes, but probably not for a specific period. If the specific period is 3 days and is meant as a 3 day weekend rental then a repeat would be the next 3 days not the next weekend. In that case you would answer No.
Overnight: Is the item kept overnight? The difference between yes and no is best illustrated with an example. If you setup a 9-5 daily rental and the guest reserves for 3 days, then the system will book for three days from 9 to 5. The assumption is the item is available from 5pm to 9am the next day. But, if Overnight is checked then the rental will go from 9-midnight, midnight to midnight, midnight to 5pm, the item is not available for rental outside of those times.
Rate: which rate goes with this option. This will be the default but can be changed at reservation time.
Mon-Sun: Which days of the week this option applies to. A 3 day weekend option would probably only apply to Friday.
Alloc: Do you wish to allocate a specific number of items to this option? Generally no, but there may be cases where you want to restrict how many items can be rented for this option. If you check Alloc, fields will appear that work exactly as the Inventory tab, above.
Web: Is this option available online?
Active: Is this option available to be booked.
On the availability page there is a new tab titled ‘New Rentals’. This will show all rentals, but in a different format. For each day the available inventory will be shown for each hour. The default hours are 9am-6pm but can be changed. The more days and more hours shown per day will slow down the display. Down the left will be each rental item for each location and in total. Each location can be expanded to show the individual options.
On the reservation page there is a new item type to book called ‘New Rentals’. This will call up a newer rental pane that is option aware. Do not try to book an item that has not had options setup, it won’t work. Each option will be listed as well as ‘custom’ – to be used when you want to book a time/day range out of the ordinary. Most fields on the pane are self-explanatory. One difference with the new rentals is that every day booked has to have a from and to time. It’s necessary in order for the system to know how many items are booked hour by hour.
At this point it’s very important for you to test a few items by adding options and booking some fake reservations. Do not use this for real reservations until it is completed.
