Catering hire is counting. One wedding is nine hundred pieces of crockery, four hundred glasses, a run of cutlery, table linen, and a mobile cold room, all leaving on the same load and all due back on Tuesday. Part of the stock is serialised kit worth thousands — combi ovens, hot cupboards, glasswashers — and part is counted in dozens and written off by the box. Deliveries land in the venue's access window, not yours, and the difference between what went out and what came back is a real number that has to be evidenced before you can charge for it. Renttix handles both kinds of stock on one order.
Equipment categories we support
Common challenges in catering hire
Counting in hundreds, twice
Every order is counted out of the store and counted back in. Six crates of glassware and a dozen boxes of plates is an hour of someone's day at each end, and the numbers rarely agree first time.
Two kinds of stock, one order
A single event order mixes a serial-numbered combi oven with six hundred glasses counted by quantity. They need different availability logic, different return handling and different charges, but they go out on the same van.
Venue access windows
The kit has to be in before service and out after the last guest. Loading bays, service lifts and marquee ground access all narrow the slot, and a late van is a problem the client sees immediately.
Breakages argued about later
Fourteen broken glasses and a chipped platter turn into a phone call three weeks after the event. Without a counted return and photographs, the charge is a negotiation rather than an invoice line.
Stock that drifts out of the yard
Crates come back to the wrong shelf, get pulled onto another job at the last minute, or never come back at all. The book figure and the shelf figure drift apart quietly until a big order cannot be filled.
Electrical and gas paperwork
Ovens, fridges and glasswashers need testing on a cycle, and venues ask for the certificate. Keeping track of which unit was last tested, and stopping an out-of-date one going out, is easy to lose in a busy summer.
How Renttix helps
Quantity lines counted in and out
Crockery, glassware and cutlery are set up as quantity-based products. The order records what went out; off-hire records what came back. Renttix compares the two and flags the shortfall per line rather than as one lump.
Serialised kit and bulk stock together
A combi oven can be tracked as an individual asset with its own number and history, while the glassware next to it on the same order is tracked by quantity. Availability and returns work correctly for both.
Scan-driven picking and book-in
The warehouse queue lists orders by delivery date. Staff scan barcodes or asset numbers to pick against the right line, and scan on return with a condition. Booking an asset back in as damaged or missing flips its status there and then, so it stops being offered as available until it is dealt with.
Breakage charges or a waiver
Damage reports carry photos, a description, a responsibility decision and a charge that needs approving. If you would rather sell cover, damage waiver tiers can be configured with a premium and coverage amount, and claims tracked against them.
Delivery slots the venue will accept
Orders carry a delivery time window and a site contact. The dispatch board schedules the drop and the collection separately, and vehicles can carry weight and volume limits so a load is not planned onto a van that will not take it.
Stock takes that settle the argument
Run a stock take across everything, a category or one depot. Renttix shows the expected figure against the counted figure with the variance per line, and committing the count adjusts the book. Low-stock levels flag lines before they run out.
Key workflows
Enquiry and quote
Take the event brief — covers, service style, date — and build a quote with the crockery, glassware, linen and cooking kit. Availability is checked at the hire dates before you send it.
Confirm and schedule the drop
Convert the quote to an order, record the venue address, delivery time window and site contact, and let the dispatch board raise the delivery job on the right date.
Pick and count out
The order lands on the warehouse queue. Staff scan or count each line, the picked quantity is recorded against the order, and the load is marked prepped so dispatch can see it is ready to go.
Deliver into the window
The driver works the run from the dispatch job, with the venue contact, access notes and time window on screen. Proof of delivery captures a signature, the receiver's name and photos of what was left.
Collect, reconcile and invoice
The collection job brings everything back. Counted returns are compared against the order line by line, shortages and breakages raise a damage report with a charge, and the hire goes onto the invoice run.
Relevant integrations
Xero
Send hire invoices, breakage charges and credit notes to Xero, so the event's paperwork closes in the ledger without being retyped.
Stripe
Take card payment on invoices and deposits, including from the customer portal, so a venue or private client can settle without a phone call.
Google Maps
Address lookup on orders and the mapping behind route planning, so venue addresses geocode properly and the day's drops are sequenced sensibly.
Twilio
Connect your own Twilio account. When a driver marks a job en route, the venue contact can be texted an ETA and a live tracking link.
WooCommerce
Sell smaller party and consumer hires online with live availability, and have those orders drop into the same stock and dispatch as your trade work.
Calendar feed
Subscribe to the dispatch schedule as an iCal feed so the week's deliveries and collections show up in the ops team's Google or Outlook calendar.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Set them up as quantity-based products and the order records the quantity that went out. When the hire is off-hired you enter the counted return, and Renttix compares it line by line against the original quantity and flags anything short. The shortfall sits on the order, so the breakage charge is based on a recorded count rather than a memory.
Yes. Products are either asset-based, where each unit has its own number and service history, or quantity-based, where you hold a pool. Both types sit on the same order with the right availability logic applied to each. A single event order can therefore mix a serialised combi oven with crates of glassware and linen.
Two ways. You can raise a damage report against the order with the items, photos, a description and whether the customer is responsible, then set a charge that goes through an approval step. Or you can run damage waiver tiers, each with a premium and a coverage amount, and record claims against the cover the customer bought.
Orders carry a delivery time window, a site contact and access notes, and the dispatch board schedules the drop and the collection as separate jobs. Stops can be pinned so the route optimiser will not move a time-critical delivery, and vehicles can carry weight and volume limits so a load is planned onto a van that can take it.
Yes. You define inspection regimes with an interval — PAT is the common one for catering electricals — and scope them to a category or product. Renttix tracks what is due and what is overdue, and each regime has a policy: ignore, warn, or block the asset from going out until it is retested.
Cross-hire it. Renttix has a sub-rentals record that links the supplier, the kit, the agreed rate, the hire period and the order it covers, along with the transit legs between supplier, depot and customer. You keep the cost of hired-in stock visible against the job rather than finding it on a supplier invoice later.
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