The Rental Dates play an important part of our Rental Management solution. This topic provides more information about the usage of them.

The Rental Dates framework is quite extensive, enabling a differentiation between a financial and physical stream. This is important if, for example, it takes 3 days to deliver equipment to the customer. During those days, the equipment is not available, yet you might not want to charge the customer for these days. By splitting the streams, we give full financial and physical control.

For each stream there are mutltiple dates during the rental process and all will be discussed here. Please note that eventhough all dates are always present in the background for a rental transaction, most forms only show the relevant ones. Even though the Rental quote/order header and lines show the Rental dates, the dates itself are always linked to the transaction underneath. In some cases, such as split transactions, this means the Rental dates on the transaction are the only true dates and the quote or order may show some deviations. For ease of use, all dates as mentioned below in the overview, are the transaction dates, but will be referred to as order dates.

Also note that not all dates are used/filled by the system; some are only there to facilitate specific business processes, which means that some of the dates only get filled if they are done manually as part of a business process or they could optionally get filled by using scanning hardware at certain stages in the process for example.

 

Rental Dates

Financial Rental Dates

On rent

• On rent contract: This is the expected financial start date of the order, i.e. when a Rental quote or Rental order is created this field is filled with the estimated start date. This date drives invoicing (unless the On rent executed date is filled).
• On rent executed: This date can be used to enter the On rent date if it differs from the contract date and needs to have an impact on invoicing. If for example it was agreed as part of the Rental contract/order that the On rent would start on the 1st, but there was a delay in delivery of several days and the customer will not have to pay for those days, then instead of adjusting the On rent contract date, the On rent executed date can be filled with the new date that invoicing actually needs to start, making the deviation visible.

 

Off rent

• Off rent contract: This is the expected financial end date of the order, i.e. when a Rental quote or Rental order is created this field is filled with the estimated end date. This date drives invoicing untill the Off rent executed date is filled.
• Off rent executed: This is the true financial end date of a Rental order. This field is filled when the termination is posted. It is the final 'Invoice up to' date.

 

Physical Rental Dates

Delivery shipment

• Delivery shipment expected: The date the equipment is expected to get shipped to the customer and expected for it to be taken out of inventory.
• Delivery shipment confirmed: This is an information only date and can be used to enter the delivery shipment date based on a confirmation sent to / agreed with the customer.
• Delivery shipment actual: This date is populated by the posting of the packing slip. It is the actual date that the delivery was shipped.

 

Delivery receipt

• Delivery receipt expected: This is an information only date and is used to indicate when the customer expects to receive the equipment
• Delivery receipt confirmed: This is an information only date and can be used to enter the delivery receipt date when confirmed with the customer.
• Delivery receipt actual: This is an information only date that can be used to be filled with the actual delivery receipt date, for example when the delivery driver has mobile (scanning) equipment to register when the delivery has taken place. 

 

Return shipment

• Return shipment expected: This is an information only date and can be used to enter the date the customer expects to ship the equipment back to us (or have it picked up).
• Return shipment confirmed: This is an information only date and can be used to enter the return shipment date if confirmed by the customer.
• Return shipment actual: This is an information only date that can be used to be filled with the actual return shipment date, for example when the driver has mobile (scanning) equipment to register when the pick up has actually taken place. 

 

Return receipt

• Return receipt expected: This is the expected date for the return of the equipment from the customer back to our warehouse and into our inventory.
• Return receipt confirmed: This is an information only date and can be used to enter the return receipt date if confirmed by / agreed with the customer.
• Return receipt actual: This is the date that the equipment truly has come back into the warehouse. It is updated by the posting of the check-in note or termination note.

 

Effective dates

For both the Financial and the Physical rental dates, we have multiple fields for all individual dates for each stream as seen above. The level of certainty increases within the fields for a specific date (if used). Some forms, such as the rental transaction, also show effective dates. The effective dates are the calculated result for the start and the end of a transaction (for either the physical or financial stream) based on the most certain available data. These dates are therefore never manually filled or edited, they are calculated and used by the system as the basis for availability calculations etc.