Exploring the Rental Module with Toufic
This guide will take you through the process of managing equipment rentals using the Rental Module, from setting up the initial agreement to invoicing the customer.
We'll start by creating a Hire Contract, where you'll learn to define billing periods and set up specific rental rates for your plant. We'll then explain the critical link between the contract and daily operations, highlighting how an approved Daily Docket is used to record equipment usage.
Finally, we'll return to the main Rental Dashboard to show you how to find these billable items and generate a customer Invoice.
The Rental Dashboard
When navigating to the Rental module, you will land on the Dashboard by default.
It provides visibility and control over both Wet Hire and Dry Hire operations.
The All Rental tab displays the current Month and can be filtered by Job, Company, Plant, and Operator using the drop-downs at the top of the dashboard.
A Total Expected Revenue total is displayed in the top left, as well as any Awaiting Invoices and any Rental items that Require Attention. You can click the Agreement/Contract # to view the specific rental item details.
From this dashboard you can also Generate Invoices, Reports, and Print off this dashboard list.
Let’s navigate to the Hire Contract submenu of the Rental Dashboard.
Create a Hire Contract
The Hire Contract dashboard displays all previous and current contracts you’ve created. It will also display the contract number, the job (if available), as well as details about the customer, the location, and start and end dates.
To create a new Hire Contract, click the New Hire Contract button in the upper right corner.
One of the most useful perspectives to take when building a Hire Contract is the fact that you can duplicate it after you’ve built it - meaning you might prebuild all of your hiring options on a single contract and duplicate this master contract as needed, removing the elements that do not apply.
Let’s start with a simple contract for wet hire of a plant.
Fill out the details at the start of the contract as needed, with a brief focus on these areas:
First Day of Billing Period: This is the start of your billing cycle, the length of which is set in the following field as a flat number of days.
Payment Terms: This is the number of days that defines your billing cycle.
The Wet Hire Conditions section is where you can define the start and end times of a shift, as well as whether the SMU hours of the plant is required.
From the Plant Section of the contract, to begin building a Hire Contract, click the Add New Rate button on the right side next to Plant Dry Hire Rates List.
From the Create Rate menu, you can select the relevant Rate Options: Plant or Plant Group. Select plant to set the costings for that specific plant - select plant group to set it for all plants in the group.
Repeat this for the Plant Wet Hire Rates lists - this is critical, the selected plant must match the same selected plant as the Dry Hire option done previously.
Click the Save button at the top to confirm the new rate and add it to the contract.
Once you have added items to your contract, click Save at the top to confirm the contract. These contracts can be edited at any point forward, so don’t stress if it isn’t perfect yet.
Once a Hire Contract has been created and populated with something to bill for - what needs to occur next is that work or use of that plant or service needs to be recorded in Prestartr.
This is done through the use of a Daily Docket. The Daily Docket form when submitted and then approved, will populate a line on the Rental dashboard, allowing you to create an invoice from that docket.
Invoice a Hire Contract
From the dashboard of the rental module, you will see a break-down of All, Wet, and Dry Hire options. A Rental contract will produce Wet hire rental types, where as a Rental Agreement produces a Dry Hire rental type.
From the dashboard, click the checkbox next to the matching Contract line and click the Generate Invoice button in the top right of the dashboard.
You can produce a progressive or finalised invoice from this menu - click Generate to create the invoice. You can see the status on the dashboard will have been updated to Invoiced.
If you click on that status, you can view the generated draft invoice directly.
From here you can follow your normal invoicing process and procedure.
In this guide we have explored the rental dashboard, examined the functionality available on the dashboard as well as created a new Rental Contract. We also explored how to generate an invoice for a Rental Contract using the Rental Dashboard.