Challenge

When Wilson’s Rental & Landscape Supply in Lincoln, Maine, started up, the company used cheap online software that seemed to work at first – but soon required lots of “dummying” records to make the numbers align. It didn’t come backed with customer service. It had no options when it came to maintenance. When Jeff and Bryan Coons took over managing the business, they knew they couldn’t keep using the software they had.

“As we grew, it never grew with us,” Bryan, who runs the business/IT side of the business, said.

Solution

Jeff, who runs the equipment and the rental side of Wilson’s, and Bryan talked to General Rental Center in nearby Old Town (POR users since 1992), whom they’d worked with several times over the years and respected. The staff there explained how much they loved working with Point of Rental and let Bryan sit in with them for a full day to see how the system worked.

“He came back that day, and that’s when we made the phone call to you guys,” Jeff said.

Results

While General Rental Center uses Rental Expert, Jeff and Bryan decided that they could handle everything they needed to with Rental Essentials. Essentials helped Wilson’s Rental & Landscape Supply in five key ways:

1. They can track register payments. With their old software, there wasn’t any real cash tracking, so Bryan couldn’t track payments made in the register. Rental Essentials’ ability to handle that has already come in handy, allowing him to look through the transactions for the shift and balance the total with the cash in the drawer to prove to a customer that they had given the correct change earlier in the day.
2. Support is there for them. They use Essentials’ chat and email support features and get the answers they need right away. “The support that we get is unparalleled,” said Jeff. Bryan added, “We get a response immediately – and if we need clarification, we can just reach back out and we’ll get it clarified quickly.”
3. They can rent online. Their previous software didn’t feature online store capabilities, so the duo is excited to offer online rentals, especially considering that many of their customers like to plan ahead and set up rentals before they get up to Maine in the spring and summer. It allows them to make quotes 24/7 without having to staff that many hours. Even better, their customers are happy with it, says Bryan: “They pay online, they book online, we have had no issues with it and our customers just love it.”
4. Contract customization is easy. “That’s huge. A power broom’s terms and conditions aren’t going to be the same as an excavator’s terms and conditions,” Jeff said. Essentials allows Jeff and Bryan to set up the relevant terms and conditions for each item to print on the contract, nipping potential disputes in the bud. When items come back damaged, it allows for the ability to backcharge those costs and put them on the contract, and it gives Jeff the opportunity to determine if the item is damaged but still rentable or if it needs to be removed from inventory for maintenance.
5. Reporting is robust. Bryan’s favorite part of the software is the reporting. With 70 customizable reports, he can track the register amounts, Jeff’s maintenance costs and machine downtime, and pretty much anything else he needs to know. He’s able to generate pickup and delivery reports to give Jeff the weekly driving schedule. They can even figure out which products they need to buy more of with Missed Rentals and ROI reporting.

Most importantly for Jeff and Bryan, though, they feel like the team at Point of Rental cares about helping Wilson’s Rental & Landscape Supply be as successful as possible.

“As soon as we started talking to people and needing advice, [Point of Rental] gave it to us,” said Jeff. “That opened us up to Cayan and WordPress. Just by being referred to you guys, you gave us additional referrals that helped us grow our business. We do a lot of online bookings now through our website, all because of Point of Rental.”