Your rental software is the place where you keep track of all your stock changes. With time-based stock changes in Rentman, you can solve shortages on projects in the future when buying new equipment. You can enter a purchase date for new equipment or tell Rentman when you are selling equipment, and your stock levels will change accordingly.
Working with delivery and purchase dates
In Rentman you have two options to enter quantities: treat items like bulk items by inserting a quantity manually or calculate the stock based on the number of serialized items you have.
Bulk items
Items that you do not track individually are bulk items. For these items, you can find a new ‘Stock’ tab within the equipment item where you can enter new stock mutations. The quantity and delivery date you insert there will change your total available stock from that moment on. Let’s say new cables are coming in next Friday and you enter the delivery information. From next Friday on, your stock will be automatically increased.
Your equipment planning is now much more accurate, thanks to the possibility to enter future stock changes. Whether you are buying or selling equipment, your available stock in Rentman is always updated accordingly.
Serialized items
Unique equipment items that you track with serial numbers have their own purchase date for each serial number. Inserting the purchase date now increases your stock from that moment on.
Purchase dates you have entered in the past will not be taken into account for the automatic stock changes. From this point on, every new equipment item you purchase or every new delivery you add to Rentman will be used to update your available stock levels.
Equipment sales now directly influence stock changes
This feature not only has the ability to enter stock increases in advance, but it also allows you to plan when your stock will decrease. Selling equipment and updating your stock based on the sale date is one of the benefits of introducing this feature. You can add a negative quantity when entering a delivery to decrease your stock so Rentman knows the equipment is sold. This way, you create a history of all the stock changes.
Marking equipment as lost or defective
All stock changes are now visible in the equipment timeline. Since lost and defective equipment decrease your stock levels, they now also show up in the equipment timeline. You want to know how much equipment you have available, making the timeline the perfect place to see all the stock mutations in a selected time period. For an entire list of stock mutations for equipment, you can find the ‘Stock’ tab within that specific item.
Why this new feature is a big deal
This feature not only makes your equipment planning more dynamic, with the ability to insert new stock to solve shortages for future projects, but it also opens doors for future development. One feature that is requested often is the possibility of multiple warehousing.
To allow equipment stock changes to be entered in advance, changes in the availability calculations had to be made. This broadens the horizon of stock changes, and thus also the stock changes you will have from moving equipment from one warehouse to another. We want to be transparent by saying that time-based stock changes are the first part of the complex cross-warehouse stock changes. Nevertheless, we are getting closer every day by sending features like time-based stock changes out to the universe.
Time-based stock changes are available from version 236.