The Rental type of inventory item was designed for businesses that rent items for a period of time, typically days. It could be a tool rental, carpet shampoo machine, stage equipment, construction equipment, etc.
Most Rental items are considered "Serialized", which means that you will only have a quantity of 1 per rental item. This is useful for keeping track of the maintenance to individual items. If this is not necessary for your item, you can set it up as "Non-Serialized", which will allow you to have multiple quantities of the item in stock under the same SKU.
Follow these steps to set up a Serialized Rental item:

  1. Create a new item and choose Rental as the Type.
  2. Fill in the Prices, Description and SKU fields as usual, but remember that each copy of an item will require it's own SKU.
    • For example: if you wish to add 3 copies of the movie "Manhattan", you could create the SKUs "MNHTTN01", "MNHTTN02" and "MNHTTN03."
  3. On the Stock tab, fill out Department, etc. as usual, then enter the Rental Period for this item.
    • Example: 3 = 3 days.
  4. On the Rental tab, enter a Maintenance Interval, if desired.
    • This will assist you with keeping track of your Rental item's maintenance. MicroBiz will alert you if the Maintenance Interval has been exceeded before renting then item out, if applicable.
  5. Click update to add the item to inventory.

Follow these steps to process a Rental transaction on the Front Register:

  1. Load a customer to the Front Register.
    • A customer must be loaded to complete the Rental process. If you do not load a customer before choosing F9 to complete the transaction, MicroBiz will prompt you to load a customer at that time.
  2. Load your Rental item to the Front Register.
    • If the Maintenance Interval for the item has been exceeded then you will be notified
    • The Rental Period will be displayed under the Description of the item.
  3. Choose F9-Print to complete the transaction once all items have been loaded to the Front Register and process the sale as usual.

Once the item is returned, you simply scan or enter the SKU to the Front Register (loading the customer is not necessary) and choose F9 to return it.

  • If the item is returned late, MicroBiz will calculate the late fee based on the Rental price, the Rental Period and the number of days since the item was supposed to be returned.
  • This figure is not rounded to the nearest Rental Period but reflects the exact number of days late.
    • For example: a Rental item with price of $5.00 for a Rental Period of 3 days returned 2 days late would generate a fee of $3.34 ($5 divided by the Rental Period of 3 days, multiplied by the late period of 2 days).
  • To get a report of all Rental items that are currently rented out, go to Reports, Rentals – Serialized.