View source for Rentals in CMS

If you're considering trying to use CMS to help manage equipment rentals, this article is for you. Officially there is not a rental feature in CMS but one of our clients does rentals so we asked her what she's done in CMS for this. Here is her response:

 The only thing I did through CMS was to make product numbers for all the different types of rentals. Then, on the first of the month, we manually created orders and charged the cards of all the renters for the coming month.  I know we could have automated part of it with a subscription-type part of CMS, but we never did that. Oh, there is one suggestion.  I made product codes for each month.  For example "jan" said "January rental."  We'd add that code to the order, so the customer would know which month they were paying for. 

As she raises here, some thought should be given to how you "sell" the item and handle returns. The price of the item should probably only be for the cost of any deposit you might require which would be the amount you'd optionally refund when the unit was returned. You'd have a separate line item for the monthly (or whatever term) rental fee like she has done. 

From there you need to decide if you want to treat the recurring rental charges as new shipments or new payments. In neither case does CMS support an open-ended "product of the month club" type of standing order, which might be akin to a rental from a processing standpoint, but we do support both scheduled payments and shipments for a set duration. If you need open-ended you'd need to recreate new annual schedules, for example. Again some thought should be given on how to manage this with ToDo reminders in CMS, as one possible solution. Here is more on payments vs shipments:

'''Payments''' - If you have a prearranged rental term you might consider having all of the financials for the whole rental term on one invoice and have [http://help.newhavensoftware.com/CMS_Operation/Order_Entry/Money_Screen/Scheduling_Payments.htm scheduled payments] made against that invoice. Takes a few minutes to set up but once done, CMS will process these automatically as they come due unless canceled. If you allow rentals to be returned before the end of the agreed period, you should have each month itemized on the invoice so you can cancel/return those months and eliminate just that portion of the balance. If they are contractually obligated to pay the full amount regardless, a single line item would do. This is how we manage annual support billing in CMS for our clients.

'''Shipments''' - If there is no term agreement upfront and you'd prefer to just have charges show up month instead of all on the initial invoice, CMS does have a [http://help.newhavensoftware.com/CMS_Operation/Order_Entry/Items_Screen/Using_the_Continuity_Wizard.htm?rhhlterm=continuity&rhsyns=%20 continuity feature] that you can use to create an adhoc schedule of "shipments" that would be fulfilled and paid on your desired dates. Even though you are not shipping anything, this would facilitate the automated creation of invoices and payments. A rental fee product should be configured as [http://help.newhavensoftware.com/CMS_Operation/Managing_Products/Adding_New_Products_in_CMS/The_Tech-Ship_tab/Options_Tech_Ship_tab.htm?rhhlterm=does%20not%20ship&rhsyns=%20 'does not ship'] since nothing will be shipping, it is just a vehicle to facilitate payments.

One other thing to keep in mind is that CMS is not really tracking serialized stock. If you have two units in stock, for example, there is no telling the two apart. If that's something you need you should create unique SKUs for each unit along with perhaps a serial number so you can keep track of which unit is where and when it is available for rental again (back in stock).

You could also add the terms of the rental agreement to the product's Upsell for Invoice/Long Description field which may then be printed on the invoice when it is sold. Your invoice form may need to be modified to include this field and should be tested.

I'd strongly encourage you to explore these features in your training database in CMS to get familiar with their operation and better understand which is best suited to your need.