AV and production rental runs on kit lists, not single lines. A conference ballroom, a festival stage or a corporate roadshow goes out as hundreds of items — desks, amps, line array, moving lights, truss, motors, distro, comms and cable — packed into flight cases and loaded in a set order. The dates do not move. Load-in is Thursday whether or not the spare radio mic came back from the last job. Most companies run a mix of owned stock and cross-rental, and the prep bay is the bottleneck: everything has to be tested, packed and checked against the spec before the truck leaves. Software earns its place by holding availability, prep and paperwork in one place, so the warehouse and the office are looking at the same job.
Equipment categories we support
Common challenges in AV and production hire
Kit lists with hundreds of lines
A single show spec runs to several hundred items across sound, lighting, video and cable. Rebuilding that list by hand for every inquiry is slow, and the missed adapter gets found on site rather than in the warehouse.
Get-in dates that never move
Events do not slip. If the returning job comes back late or an item fails its PAT test, the next crew still loads at six on Thursday morning. You need the clash days ahead, not on the day.
Overlapping shows, one prep bay
A busy weekend stacks three or four jobs on top of each other. The same amp racks turn around overnight between two of them, and the warehouse has no reliable order of work beyond whoever shouts loudest.
Cross-rental nobody wrote down
When you are short, you sub-rent from the company down the road. The kit arrives, goes out on the job and comes back. Six weeks later the supplier invoice lands and nobody is certain which show it belonged to.
Chasing kit after de-rig
Load-out happens at two in the morning in the dark. Cases go back on the wrong truck, cable stays in the roof, and the missing item only surfaces when the next job needs it and the truck is loading.
Test certificates venues ask for
Venues want paperwork before they let you through the dock door. Every mains item needs a PAT record and every chain hoist and sling needs a LOLER date, held per unit rather than per catalog line.
How Renttix helps
Kits and bundles that book together
Kit definitions record what a complete unit contains — the desk, its PSU, its looms — and Renttix checks the live composition against that list when the unit is inspected back in. Bundles are catalog-level packages: adding one writes every child product onto the order as its own line, each with its own rate snapshot and tax and the bundle discount applied, tagged with the bundle it came from.
Availability across the whole fleet
The availability view on the booking calendar is a per-product, per-day grid for the window you choose, filtered by depot or category. You see the clash days before the job is confirmed, not after.
Scan-driven prep and dispatch
The warehouse prep queue lists orders by soonest delivery. Pickers scan barcodes, RFID tags or asset numbers against the order line, so the wrong case fails at the shelf. Completing a pick marks the job ready for dispatch.
Sub-rentals held on the order
A sub-rental records the supplier, quantity, rental rate, agreed cost and rental period against the order line it covers, with a linked purchase order and whether it comes to your depot or goes direct to site.
Inspection regimes that gate bookings
Set up PAT, LOLER or your own regime with an interval and a scope. When a unit is overdue you choose the policy: track it quietly, warn at booking, or exclude it from availability so it cannot reach a venue.
Check-in with condition capture
Returns are scanned in at the triage gate against a checklist, with a condition grade and photographs. A failure routes the unit to the workshop queue and raises a repair job, and damaged kit will not book to the next show.
Key workflows
Spec and quote
The inquiry arrives as a tech spec. Build the quote line by line, with service lines for crew and delivery alongside the kit, and send it to the customer portal to view, comment on and accept. An accepted quote converts straight to an order.
Confirm and allocate
Firm dates, delivery window and site address go on the order, with a site contact and special instructions for the driver — gate code, dock time, access notes. Assets are allocated to lines, and the job lands on the booking calendar and the dispatch board.
Prep and pack
The order hits the warehouse prep queue. Each item is scanned against its line, and the picking list and delivery note print. Completing the pick marks the job ready to load.
Load-in and hand over
The dispatch board shows the day's runs. Drivers work the route, capture photographs and a signature as proof of delivery, and the customer can follow the job on a tracking link.
De-rig, check-in and invoice
Kit is scanned back at the triage gate with condition recorded. Damage raises a report against the order. The job then goes into the invoice run, with sub-rental costs and any damage charge attached.
Relevant integrations
Xero
Invoices and credit notes push into Xero against mapped account codes, so what your office raises for a show is what your accountant sees, without rekeying.
QuickBooks
The same push route for QuickBooks, with customer records and tax codes synced between the two systems so account details do not drift apart.
Google Maps
Geocodes venue and site addresses so delivery points sit correctly on the dispatch map and route planning works from real coordinates rather than a typed postcode.
Twilio
When the driver marks a run en route, the site contact gets an SMS with the ETA and a live tracking link, so someone is on the dock when the truck turns up.
Calendar feed
Subscribe the dispatch schedule as an iCal feed in Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar, so project managers see the week's runs without logging into the system.
HubSpot
Customers push across as contacts and companies, and each order becomes a deal whose stage follows the job through to paid, so inquiries and repeat show work stay in the CRM without rekeying.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Bundles are catalog-level packages: you build the package once, and adding it to an order writes every child product on as its own line, priced from its own rate with the bundle discount applied and labeled with the bundle it came from. Kit definitions are a separate thing — they record what a complete unit contains, and the live composition is checked against that list when the unit is inspected back in. You adjust the expanded lines for the specific show rather than typing the list out again.
Availability is checked against the dates on the order, and the availability view on the booking calendar shows a per-product, per-day grid for the window you pick, filtered by depot or category. Stock already committed to a job is not free for another. Units with an overdue inspection can also be excluded from availability.
Yes. A sub-rental records the supplier, product, quantity, rental rate, agreed cost and rental period against the order line it covers. You set whether it comes into your depot or goes direct to site, link a purchase order, and move it through Confirmed, On-rent and Returned with movement records for tracking and proof of delivery.
Yes. Inspection types are set up with an interval, a scope and a policy for overdue units — ignore, warn at booking, or block the unit from availability. PAT and LOLER ship as presets alongside other regional regimes. Reminders fire before expiry, and the maintenance due report lists what is coming up by depot.
A prep queue of orders sorted by soonest delivery. Pickers scan barcodes, RFID tags or asset numbers, and every scan is validated against the order line, so the wrong item fails at the shelf rather than on site. Completing a pick marks the order ready for dispatch. Returns are scanned back in with condition and photographs recorded.
Service lines sit alongside rental lines on the same order and can be billed per visit, per hour, per day, per week or as a fixed amount, so technician time and delivery charges are quoted with the equipment, carried onto the order when the quote converts and totaled with their tax on the pro-forma. The scheduled invoice run bills the rental lines — service charges do not flow into it on their own. Staff rotas, availability and timesheets are handled separately under Workforce.
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