As you’ve seen so far this year, our team has been working hard at building industry-leading technology such as Rental eSign and the Inspection App. The best innovations, however, are often found in the details that make our software more efficient and easier to use. As our customers make suggestions to enhance their day-to-day operations, we build the Point of Rental experience into something better each year. Here are a few of the things that we’ve enhanced in v2017:

First of all, our rate engine has expanded. You can now create a rate engine based not just on the overtime calculation method, hours allowed in a day, days in a week, but also on Customer, Job Site, Contract, Item, or Contract Line Item. This allows you to really customize pricing for each special customer.

You can change your billing to reflect percentages of a base rate. For example, if you want a four-hour rental to be 80% of a day’s rental, a day to be 100%, a week to be 300%, and a month to be 900%, you can set that up quickly. If you want to raise your prices 10% in the future, you’ll just adjust the base rate and the other rates will automatically be computed. You’ll also be able to bill for Saturday or Sunday (or turn off billing for either of those days). This simply deducts 24 hours from the total hours calculated for a rental item.

If you decide to use the new base rate option, we’ve created a tool to help you convert items from standard rates to base rates en masse. (You should probably try this in training first.)

  • At our User’s Meeting at The Rental Show, one request earned a standing ovation: the ability to define a separate pickup address in the contract when creating the contract. Hopefully its inclusion into v2017 will result in standing ovations throughout stores using Point of Rental.
  • With Dispatch Center, you can checkmark and option to maintain your original stop sequence when moving a contract or a route to a different day. This allows you to easily keep a priority stop at the top of the new route.
  • Logistics contracts enable you to break down deliveries that will take more than one truck to deliver onto several trucks or even allow customers to will-call part of the order. This feature makes large orders easier to handle operationally without affecting inventory availability (which is still controlled by the parent contract).
  • Give the bookkeepers the power with Review Billing, which allows you to ensure contracts won’t post until they’ve been reviewed. This can be used on account or cash customers, closed contracts, sales only, or work orders. You’ll even be able to individually select Review Billing options at the customer level, jobsite/venue level, or by individual contract. The accounting team will sleep better at night.

If we tried to list all the v2017 additions here, we’d “need a bigger boat,” as the guy in Jaws might say. To see the full “Quick Summary” of updates, update to version 2017 and then check NetHelp. Innovations like these aren’t possible without our customers. We’re always listening and excited to see what you’ll think of next!