Sports and leisure hire is a counter business with a warehouse behind it. Bikes, skis, boards, wetsuits and camping kit go out in sizes, come back wet, and have to be dried, checked and reset before the next customer walks in. Most of the year's money arrives in a handful of weeks — half term, the first snow, a bank holiday with sun — and in those weeks the queue at the counter is the constraint. Kit gets crashed, walks off, or comes back with a buckled wheel. Software earns its keep where it takes bookings before the day arrives, tells you what is genuinely free, and keeps each unit's service history attached to the unit.
Equipment categories we support
Common challenges in sports hire
Peak weeks decide the year
Half term, the first proper snow and one hot bank holiday deliver most of the season's takings. If your counter staff are taking bookings while twenty people queue, you lose hires you already had the kit for.
Sizing and fitting at the counter
Bike frame size, ski boot size, wetsuit thickness, binding settings — all of it has to match the person in front of you. Get it wrong and you get a swap, a refund, or a customer who does not come back.
Kit that goes out in groups
A ski package is skis, poles, boots and a helmet. A family booking is five bikes in five sizes. Booked as separate lines, orders go out half-picked and somebody drives back for the missing helmet.
Turnaround between hires
Wetsuits need rinsing, bikes need a check over, boards need a wax. In peak week the checks get skipped, and a fault that should have gone to the workshop reaches the next customer instead.
Damage, loss and deposits
Bent derailleurs, cracked fins, and kit that simply never comes back. Charging for it fairly needs evidence taken at the counter, and deposits are easy to take and easy to forget to release afterwards.
Knowing what is genuinely free
Some stock is serialised — a numbered bike, a specific board. Some is a pile of forty identical wetsuits. Counting next weekend's hires against a rack by eye is how a Saturday gets double-booked.
How Renttix helps
Availability for pooled and serialised stock
Renttix checks a date window against a pool — forty wetsuits — or against one numbered unit like a specific bike. Availability is depot-aware, so the second shop's stock does not quietly fill your Saturday.
Bundles for ski and bike packages
Define a bundle — skis, poles, boots, helmet — and adding it to an order drops each item on as its own line with the bundle discount applied, grouped on screen under the bundle it came from. Every line keeps its own rate and tax class, so the package still reads clearly on the invoice.
Sizing details held on the record
Custom fields let you add height, weight, boot size, ability or binding setting to customers, orders and products. A returning hirer is set up from what you recorded last time instead of measured again.
Scan-driven picking and check-in
Warehouse picking scans each unit against the right order line, and returns check-in captures condition on the way back. Marking a unit damaged or missing flips its status on the spot, which takes it off the availability list and sends a damaged one to the workshop rather than back to the rack.
Service history per unit
Each unit keeps its own service history. Jobs land on the workshop planning board with a checklist seeded from the task type, and inspection types with intervals and certificates can block a lapsed item from hire.
Counter sales and stock take
With point of sale switched on, Quick Sell handles the wax, tubes and gloves that go over the counter alongside a hire. Stock Take reconciles what is on the shelf against the system without shutting the shop.
Key workflows
Booking taken
A group books online or rings ahead. Availability is checked for the dates across pooled and serialised stock, sizes go on the booking, and a deposit or full payment can be taken up front.
Prep and pick
The order appears on the picking queue, soonest first. Staff scan each unit against its line, a short pick blocks completion unless someone overrides it, and completing the pick flips the order to prepped for the counter.
Fitting and handover
Kit is fitted and adjusted at the counter. The hire agreement goes out as a signing link and is signed on any device, any deposit or damage waiver is taken, and condition is recorded before it leaves.
Return and check-in
Units are scanned back in with condition captured. Anything damaged raises a report with photos and a responsibility decision; anything due a service goes to the workshop rather than back on the rack.
Off-hire and invoice
Off-hire prices the hire, adds any late return or damage charge, applies the waiver if one was taken, and releases the deposit. The invoice goes out with the next run and posts to your accounts.
Relevant integrations
Shopify
Sell hire from a Shopify store with live availability, rate tiers and cancellation terms on the product page. Season-long rentals can bill on a recurring cycle through Shopify's selling plans.
WooCommerce
Run the same booking flow from a WordPress site, with availability, bundles, coupons and cancellation terms shared with the counter rather than kept in a separate calendar.
Stripe
Take card payments and refundable deposits online, save cards for repeat hirers, and send invoice payment links that clear without anyone chasing by phone.
Square
Connect Square as your payment provider so customer card payments settle into the same account as your shop takings, with webhooks keeping payment status in step.
Airwallex
Run the security deposit on the order: place a hold or a charge, capture part of it against a bent wheel when the kit comes back, and release the rest. Every call uses your own Airwallex credentials, so the money settles into your account rather than through us.
Xero
Push sales invoices, credit notes and journals into Xero so a season of small hires reconciles without anyone re-keying it.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Renttix connects to Shopify and WooCommerce, so your site sells hire with live availability, a day-by-day calendar, rate tiers and your cancellation terms on the product page. If your site is on neither, there is an embeddable widget that takes reservation requests into an admin inbox — those are enquiries for you to confirm, not paid orders.
With custom fields. You define your own fields on customers, orders and products — text, number, date, dropdown or yes/no — so height, weight, boot size, ability level or binding setting sit on the record rather than in a notebook. You set them up once in system setup, up to thirty per record type, and they render on the customer, order and product forms themselves; mark one required and it cannot be skipped at the counter.
It goes on in one action rather than as one line. Define a bundle — skis, poles, boots, helmet — and adding it to an order expands it into a line per item with the bundle discount applied, grouped under the bundle name so staff can see what came from where, with each line carrying its own rate and tax. Bundles work on orders, not on quotes. Kit definitions are a separate thing: a parent product with its components, each marked required or optional, checked against what is physically attached to the unit at return inspection — so the inspector is told a pole is missing at the counter instead of the next customer finding out.
Rate definitions cover the shape of the hire — hourly, daily, nightly, weekly or fixed blocks, with a minimum hire period, chargeable days and an extra-day rate beyond the base period. There is no automatic date-driven seasonal switch. To move rates for a season you run a bulk pricing run, which previews every affected product and can be undone in one click.
Returns check-in captures condition as each unit is scanned — ok, damaged or missing. Damaged or missing flips that unit's status straight away, so it drops off the availability list before anyone books it again, and a damaged unit routes to the workshop rather than back to the rack. The charge conversation runs off a damage report, raised by your driver on a collection with photos or submitted by the customer through the portal, which you then resolve from the order with an amount. If the customer took a damage waiver, the waiver level absorbs the charge up to its limit, and whatever is left goes onto the final invoice or against the deposit.
Yes, per unit rather than per product line. Work lands on the Maintenance Schedule and the workshop planning board, where the checklist is seeded from the task type. You can also define inspection types with their own intervals and numbered certificates — PPE periodic examination, for instance — and set them to warn or block hire when one lapses.
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