Understanding Equipment Availability

RentalDesk has been designed to dynamically calculate the availability of your equipment each time an equipment list is opened and then subsequently edited in any way that could impact availability. The rules for the availability checking are listed below.

Rental Equipment.

1.	Quote status. Equipment lists set to Quote do not take into account the impact of any other rental occurring within any part of the rental period it covers; nor do any other equipment lists take Quote status lists into account.

2.

Provisional, Confirmed & Completed statues. All equipment lists with these statuses compete equally for equipment going out in overlapping time frames, so the difference between each status is semantic, not functional. Equipment that has been returned (Back column > 0) is automatically made available for competing rentals, regardless of the return date of the list it was sent out on, making a strong case for actually dispatching your equipment in RentalDesk and returning it as it comes back.

3.

Late Returns (Overdue rentals). Equipment that is not returned from rentals by the back date will impact the availability on the system for all other hires that are starting TODAY. For all rentals that start after TODAY overdue equipment is treated as returned as RentalDesk has no way of knowing that such items will not be returned. In other words, if late returns only have an impact of availability in real-time.

Sales Stock.

To prevent double selling the equipment for your sales inventory is removed immediately from stock when the order is entered, unless the list has a status of "quote" in which case the availability reflects the current stock level and ignores the stock required by the quotation.


Working with the equipment editors

The Av column in the Popstock window shows the amount of available equipment in stock before your order has been placed. However on an equipment list, the Av column shows you the amount of available equipment after your order has been placed. A red negative number indicates a shortage for the time period of your equipment list and you need to address this problem by either raising a subhire or substituting a new piece of equipment.