W hich is why you need rental management software that helps you prevent any problems, and deals with damage as it arises. We take a look at some of the common road bumps that rental businesses can encounter when running their day-to-day jobs and how Current can help solve them, plus a couple of solutions to have in place beforehand.
Creating that perfect proposal
A client’s got in touch, you’ve built them a proposal based on their requests, but their event is taking a different turn. You need to adjust their order - quickly.
- Amend orders easily: the Opportunities page is the perfect springboard to tailor your quotes. Once your items are added easily from the picker, you can adjust totals and amounts just by clicking on to them, and use the drag and drop feature to create groups and sub labels to organise your items. Or, simply add additional items to an order at any stage using Free Scan - perfect for last minute additions.
- Set a deal price: reached a charge total that’s a little different to what you want your customer to pay? Use our handy new feature, Do a Deal, to apply a deal price straight to your job, or to any groups on your jobs. Let your documents reflect the price you agreed on the phone and the one your customer would prefer to see. Phew!
- View a clear audit trail: no matter how many changes or alterations your proposals have had through back-and-forth communication with your client, you’ll always have a clear audit trail at hand when you create and send a Discussion from your Opportunity. Current will keep your communication linked to the job automatically, so when you need to refer back to anything, it’s there.
Keeping on top of your gear
It’s a hypothetical nightmare - promising items you thought you had in stock for a client you really want to supply to, but it’s all out! Here’s how to prevent it…
- Clear shortage alerts: as you build an order and add items to a job, a shortage alert will pop up every time an item is running low. Turn on enforced stock availability in your system preferences to stop you from progressing a quote to an actionable order if there are any outstanding shortages on your job, so you won’t be short of stock.
- Get some sub-rentals in! Current makes it easy to select your sub rent supplier and set the rental price against the organization, so you can distinguish your stock from your supplier’s stock. Handle this process completely within the software - add any subrentals you need to a job and store them separately.
- Plan ahead: the great thing about using a cloud based system is that all inventory levels update in real time. So whether you’re looking at a job for tomorrow, or one 3 weeks in the future, Current will show you the real time availability figures for your gear, allowing you to forward plan and make any necessary arrangements.
Avoiding schedule clashes
Schedule clashes are the last thing you need when everything is starting to come together with your jobs. Keep them at bay when managing and finalizing your labor and transport.
- Reallocate your labor: it’s simple to schedule your labor, transport and locations with the highly visual Resource Planner, giving you a clear forecast of who’s doing what, when, and what’s needed on upcoming jobs. Just drag and drop the jobs to swap them around!
- Out of office: if some members of your labor team are unavailable on certain days or have a set schedule, you can set periods of unavailability against them, so they won’t be allocated to a job in that time. Likewise, you can also specify when your transportation is booked in for a repair or service, so you won’t be given the option to select it during those dates.
- iCal feeds for your labor: keep your labor in the loop by ensuring they’ve got access to their iCal feeds from Current. The feeds will update and populate their calendar with any jobs they’ve been assigned to, so they know exactly which bookings they’re on, where they should be and when.
Keeping your warehouse organized
Your job’s ready to head out and it’s all systems go - avoid last minute pandemonium in the warehouse with a few precautionary settings.
- Lock groups in the detail view: got multiple users logging in and scanning gear onto a job? Lock groups in the detail view to ensure everyone is working on their own section and is only allocating products to their group. This avoids having multiples of the same item added to your jobs. Or, switch on simultaneous scan, allowing you to see your colleagues scan on your screen in a different colour, so nobody steps on each other’s toes.
- Revert an item’s status: use the revert status option to quickly revert misadded stock to their previous status. This works if your products are in the allocation, preparation, booking out and checking in stages. You can also do this process in bulk, so if lots of items have accidentally been booked out when they don’t need to be, revert them easily en masse.
- View recent actions: noticed a few problems arising during the warehouse process? Get a clear view of exactly who was doing what with the recent actions log, to spot where things got confused and why, so you can tackle it head on.
Checking in late and broken gear
Not everything’s going to return back to the warehouse in perfect condition, and in some cases, not at all. Here’s how to deal with late check-ins and items that are broken or need attention.
- Using surcharges: before a job, make use of surcharges within Current to apply additional fees to the products you’re renting, for things such as cleaning, or an insurance or damage waiver. For example, you could agree with your customer that if they pay an additional 15% of the rental charges and the equipment sustains reasonable damage, you’ll cover the cost of it.
- Keep track of missing items: if you’ve got items that are missing but want to finalize your job, you’ll be given the option to convert outstanding items to a new Opportunity. This means your availability will reflect that they’re missing, while putting the rest of the gear from that job back into availability, but you’ll still have an open Opportunity to keep track of the missing items separately.
- Place items in Quarantine: use the Quarantine section within Current to store any items that have come back from a job damaged, or not at all. Plus, store the reasons for this against the item, as well as adding any attachments that may be helpful. You can access the Quarantine in the top navigation bar, plus gain an insight into which of your products are in quarantine when exploring your product inventory.
Support, right when you need it
With a few precautions in place, it’s easy to keep your workflow stress-free. But don’t forget, we offer unlimited support to all our users, so if you find yourself in a bind, just reach out to our brilliant support team using the green help bubble in the bottom right of every screen in Current. We’re always more than happy to help.
Alternatively, you can check out our super informative guides or our YouTube channel - they’re both great resources if you want to get to know the system in more detail.
Take Current for a spin and see how our intuitive software can streamline your processes, and reduce your error rate in the process.