Key Rentals Group is one of the pioneers in the trench safety rental business in Montana. Promoting the vision of “where safety comes first” since 2018, their trench safety specialists offer top product lines, including steel vaults, trench boxes, road plates, and more, to companies that execute vital but extremely specialized construction-related trenching projects for public works, hospitality, and other diverse project sources. The commitment to sound industry knowledge and exceptional customer service has differentiated their business as a trench safety rental leader across their region.
“For a new business, EZRentOut is definitely the best value out there!”
Adopting an efficient, customized equipment rental solution
Brenton Euler, the business co-owner and manager, evaluated different rental software options to meet their business needs. They tried another leading software solution but found that a lack of invoice customization, the inability to support cycle billings, and an overall mismatch of operational needs drove them to investigate further.
Brenton searched online and found EZRentOut’s positive reviews on the rental software comparison websites after visiting our booth at the American Rental Association (ARA) tradeshow. Exploring the system’s features during a free trial led Key Rentals Group to permanently choose EZRentOut as their trench equipment rental software. Here’s why:
- Value for money:
Key Rentals Group finds the software excellent value for the cost. This was one of the most important factors when compared with ERP systems that cost thousands of dollars to customize. As Brenton said, - Customization:
The system offers the flexibility to create highly customized invoices and rental contracts that are specifically tailored to their customer needs. - One “Man-Year” of time saved:
The system automates 95% of the needed tasks. Key Rentals Group relies on EZRentOut to manage its day-to-day operations effectively, replacing the equivalent of one full-time employee.
“You can save over 2,000 hours per year with EZRentOut. There is nothing comparable. Even spreadsheets would require a dedicated individual, which would be a nightmare.”
Optimizing delivery efficiency and customer satisfaction with EZRentOut
According to Brenton, the organization’s primary focus is to keep customers happy. Key Rentals Group, a low transaction-volume business, must ensure that they meet industry quality and safety standards, and deliver on time. To seamlessly accomplish these goals every time, Key Rental Groups has utilized EZRentout to operate efficiently and with greater visibility.
With a broad customer base, from individual customers to more operationally advanced contractors, the business must stay on top of changing customer expectations. Brenton provided an example of a customer who would phone at 4 pm to request a full truckload of equipment ready and delivered on-site the next day before 9 am – quite a delivery challenge. Key Rentals Group leverages EZRentOut to gather electronic signatures from customers to accelerate the order and delivery process. Brenton appreciates the ease of accessibility and accuracy of the software in these situations.
Another key function within Key Rentals Group is managing equipment deliveries from the warehouse to the customer location. This set of processes accounts for 50% of their day-to-day activities, with hectic periods reaching up to 80%. Getting the basics right is most important to Brenton. Checking out the right item and making sure that the rented-out item is returned is critical for the business.
A convenient dashboard view of “Deliveries due today” helps Brenton and the team to easily start the delivery process. Leveraging automated delivery scheduling reports in EZRentOut greatly reduces the workload and complexity for the team. It is a simple operation to compare the data in the report with the information they post on their in-shop whiteboard, and they’re ready to deliver.
Engineering end-to-end order management
Complete visibility into order history has made it easy for Key Rentals Group to track order statuses. Brenton described an example, where a walk-in customer arrives to request quotes. Previously, the representative provided verbal quotes taken directly from the system as its normal course of action. And having no record of this occurrence, the customer would return and demand the quote offered, causing confusion and degrading the customer experience.
Drafting orders in EZRentOut simplified this process and provided accurate order history. The Key Rentals Group uses the system to create an order draft that includes the customer name, trench equipment, and quotes offered. If the customer returns to place an order, the drafted order is emailed directly from the software as evidence of the quote offered, making the process smooth and accurate, for employees and customers.
Since orders are repeated frequently – from a couple of days to three months – the Key Rentals Group team automates the process with the Recurrence capability in EZRentOut. The order date field is populated with billing dates to keep staff informed on the billing cycle month and allow them to print invoices accordingly.
“I got everything down on my end-of-month processes. Really it only took a day, which was good.”
Billing accuracy using custom fields
Brenton sees custom fields as one of his favorite features to use. He adds multiple-choice custom fields to know whether orders have been invoiced or not. This is combined with several custom fields that allow him to attach original order numbers and dates to every order. Brenton explained these is important to know the actual billing cycle of an order. A usual three-month order can be charged a combination of retail plus discount rates – the first two months of the billing cycle at a retail rental rate and then the next month at a discount – so clear tracking is very important for accuracy.
Another single-text custom field is for truck weight. This custom field acts as an alert to avoid overloading the trucks because Key Rentals Group strictly abides by the permitted weight limits for serialized or bulk commodities. It also helps them to print the weights on the pickup ticket that is sent to customers for signature and becomes part of their invoices.
Brenton also creates customized invoice templates after pickup tickets and rental contracts are signed from the customer’s end. These specifically include rental duration, order number, and bill charged. At the month’s end, all invoices are reconciled with the accounts receivables list in Quickbooks.
Effective and automated billing capabilities in EZRentOut provide an end-to-end invoicing solution to streamline these complexities for Key Rentals Group.
Managing serialized assets with groups
Trench safety equipment is a valuable asset for the completion of a construction project. Brenton explained a use case to highlight the importance of the issue: The $500 million Big Sky Montana project required that all equipment operate at maximum efficiency. Even though the cost of renting equipment from Key Rentals Group amounted to a small fraction of their construction spending, any minor inconvenience, such as using spreaders that are the wrong size, can greatly impede the entire process. It became crucial for Key Rentals Group to have in-demand assets available, operational, and efficient for use for this project.
Brenton appreciates the way the software manages asset stocks. His team counts items in the physical inventory against those listed in the system. The physical count can occasionally be lower than what the system indicates, which is typically the case for damages and replacements. In these situations, the asset swap, retirement, and replacement functionality are especially useful.
Key Rentals Group organizes similar-functioning assets into EZRentOut’s Groups. Road plates and trench boxes are a few examples of the groups made. This has helped them drill down to an item quickly. Brenton can simply change the prices of an asset group by exporting the group data to a spreadsheet, adding a price column, and re-importing the data back into the system.
“Uploading and updating price is ridiculously easy and simple. That’s another function I really enjoy with EZRentOut”
The future with EZRentOut
Brenton found the software customization to be a great value for the business. They have effectively mitigated risks and reduced distress expenses owing to user-friendly and intuitive software. Concurrently, he appreciates the robust ongoing support of the EZRentOut support team.
