Rental article management
A rental article may be defined as a product being rented out, and where the profits stem from the price the customer pay to rent the product for a defined period of time. This period may be one hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year. A rental article will usually generate more revenue than an article being sold once.
A product/article range will also need maintenance, and we can say that this process may result in
A new article is registered.
The article is maintained and updated.
The article is discontinued.
Most will think of transport vehicles, construction vehicles or housing units as typical rental articles, but these are limited to the consumer market. The business market for rental equipment is vastly larger, as companies see the cost benefit of using necessary resources for just periods at a time. As long as goods are rented, they will not require maintenance or storage, and the period rental price will be much lower than the purchase price. Typical examples of business rentals are services, facilities, tools, production equipment and offshore-related specialty products.
Either renting out goods in a large quantity or being based off a large product range, these goods must be registered in a system where all elements can be checked and a clear overview can be kept. This is a typical situation where an ERP system will meet the needs.
Pricing the rental goods is an art, as you wish to attract customers, and they will usually look at the rental price for the period(s) needed against the price of purchasing the needed goods. For some rental articles, the price will be set according to the season, with other articles having the same price all year. It is also customary to change the price according to the duration of the rental period, where a long term rental have a lower period price than short term. One example may be car rental, where renting a car outside the high season is cheaper, and also renting it for 6 months instead of 14 days will lower the price.
Tasks involved in this process
Create an article - Define a rental article with information such as a name, manufacturer, image, and a drawing/instruction book.
Add price on the rental article - Define one or several prices on the rental article, and define different periods for different prices.
Activate the rental article - You may wish to sort out rental articles which are ready for rental or not. Activate the rental articles which are ready.