5 Must-Have Equipment Rental Software Features to Harness POS

What is a POS enabled Equipment Rental Software?

No matter what sort of rental business you have, whether it is an AV rental store, a ski shop, car rental, or a book store, you’ll need a business solution that not only manages sales but processes rentals through a point-of-sale point. There are different names for it, but the standard term is called ‘POS’. What does it do? It enables you to track and manage rental orders and related activities from a central repository, a check point where you take payments. An equipment rental software enabled POS solution helps businesses improve rental inventory management, bookings, invoicing, and customer relationships.

It won’t take long before the traditional solutions for managing rentals will be completely outmoded by the easy-to-use and customizable cloud-based equipment rental software. That’s the future! According to a study done in 2014, 69% of businesses are using cloud-based software rather than on-premise. Businesses are opting for cloud-based services over the traditional software mainly because of the way cloud-based software are deployed across the organization. In another survey in 2015, 25% of SMBs in the United States used cloud-hosted services to run their e-commerce systems.

Reasons to have a POS Rental Software at your Front Desk

Who uses Equipment Rental Software?

Though not all cloud-based POS systems offer rental capabilities. However, an equipment rental software enabled POS solution is available for just about every industry out there. In 2017, North American equipment rental revenues are expected to top 51.8$ billion, so there’s a lot of money to be made in rentals! Industries that top this chart include construction and industrial equipment, general tools and supplies, and party and event rentals.

Some of the highlighted industries that use online rental software include construction, furniture & staging, sports & wellness, tourism, AV (Audio Visual), education, assistive technology, event & party rentals, etc.

Features which Qualify Equipment Rental Software for Seamless Point of Sale

1. Robust Inventory Management

Tracking and managing your assets and inventory plays a crucial role for any retail business. Equipment tracking is a feature that lets you look at your items whenever you want. It eliminates the inefficiencies caused by manual calculations. What works best for businesses to have a stand-alone rental software, one that’s integrated with a POS solution. It helps businesses save more money and effort that can be utilized for other productive activities.

For thorough and reliable rental management, you’ll want to be able to track your orders inside and out. For retail stores, this means having the ability to track all the different variations of an item (size, color, style, etc.). This can be done by defining custom fields on items and orders. For eateries and bars, this means having raw ingredient tracking, which allows you to track the quantity of each ingredient that goes into a dish or drink.

What more can be done? With a robust inventory management, you can always jot down information on products and always stock up the most selling and popular rental items in demand in every season. You can also define rules and coupons that can be applied to your least selling products and avoid having ghost assets or stock.

2. Simplified Order and Booking Module

An intuitive equipment rental software enables you to add items to an order in a breeze. It’s helpful during the peak seasons when everything has to be done accurately and rapidly. Having a POS rental software provides you with an efficient order module enabling you to identify unavailable items to avoid booking conflicts. This way you can set bookings, print invoices, offer discounts, and add bundles and so much more. This feature comes along with maintenance management. It restricts you to add items that are not in best shape and sends faulty items to maintenance so no harm can be done to your brand.

A simple to use order module can come handy at the point-of-sale in a store. Imagine having 50 people ordering skis at a time and not being aware of what’s booked or what’s available. It would be a nightmare for life. Order history helps you identify the retail trends as well. Use your point of sale rental software to plan out your inventory stock and make adjustments to deals to help your business grow. Assume it’s Christmas! People will be renting out vacation kits and rental cars, buying gifts for family, booking hotel rooms, and getting orders shipped. All the more reason, to populate your data and orders on an equipment rental software and manage them on the go!

3. Easy-to-integrate Third Party Applications

Though many service providers are trying to fill in the gaps with their own software, there’s a definite market for third-party integrations to support your POS system. If your rental software enables you to integrate with different third party applications, then you’re in for a treat. In rental businesses, the use of accounting, e-commerce, and payment gateways are always helpful. They add an extra value to your SMB, making it easier to handle processes other than rental orders and inventory management. Not to forget, these integrations only work best when the communication or sync between the two applications is strong.

In Accounting, from QuickBooks to Xero, integrated accounting applications is a nice thing to have! A POS rental solution and accounting software can only be helpful to businesses when they perform well when they bring the best of them together. We call accessibility the new black in e-commerce. What better way to boost rental sales than having your customers browse through your entire inventory and make purchases on the go! Your equipment rental software should accommodate online ordering and shipping. The era is no more about cash and cheque only transactions. You have to have credit card transactions enabled and this means integrating with various different payment gateways like Square, Stripe, Authorize.net or PayPal. Set up merchant accounts on your preferred payment gateway and start processing payments.

4. Trackable Customer History

You can also use rental management to help you retain customers by keeping them satisfied. Much like how CRM software collects data on your customers, this feature enables you to track and store your customer’s purchase history. This information is important to most retailers because it lets them pinpoint their best customers based on how much money they spend. By knowing your best customers, you can think of a way to give back and make them feel special. This will help you gain more high-quality customers in no time.

A streamlined rental management solution makes order management efficient. Record all your customers’ data right into one system – making customer engagement a breeze. This helps in identifying the sales trend and forecasting customer behavior towards the items they rent/buy the most. Online rental software also enables you to draft customer and business centric newsletters, targeting deals and items they want the most. Email marketing is a great way to maintain a strong relationship with your customers. Make sure your POS rental software supports automatic emailing and customizable alerts. A customer wants to pick an order from a franchise in another state? Have multiple locations added to the customer details and make the process easy for them.

Therefore, the attention to detail is what will help a small equipment rental business excel – invoice management to keep the cash flow in order, a rental Point of Sale avenue to make renting out equipment far more streamlined, and the automatic application of coupons (both punitive and reward-based) can all help small business owners push themselves that much more in creating and retaining loyal customers.

5. Reports and Analytics

One of the most important features to have in a POS enabled equipment rental software is to have reporting and analysis capability. This way the software will be able to identify which items were reordered and when were they ordered, different patterns of sales in different seasons, and all the necessary insights that can make your business grow.

This feature enables business owners to analyze the in-depth sales data. The answer to questions like which product was popular this season? Which items are least rented out or sold? How much profit did we make on each item sold or rented out? Custom reports can be created to identify precise data you need as per your business requirements. This simplifies the process of generating manual reports and doing all those data crunching. All this can be done with a single click. Focus on what’s more crucial to reach your target sales than spending time on devising all those reports.

Make the decision – Choose a POS enabled Equipment Rental Software!

Without a doubt, a retail and rental business comes with challenges and unique needs. A POS that address these needs is not just useful — it’s essential for your business. When finalizing a POS, take into consideration how large your inventory is likely to be and how often you’ll have to restock it. Now that you’ve waded through the nitty gritty of POS utility, you’re ready to delve deeper into the intricate world of POS.

EZRentOut is the leading equipment rental software that comes with a POS solution making your rental experience even better. Think your business is a bit too different to work with equipment rental software? No worries! We’ll mold our solution to your workflows – the way you like it.

For more assistance regarding our equipment rental software, drop us an email at support@ezo.io.