Tool rental moves fast. A customer walks in at half seven wanting a breaker for the day, and expects it tested, fueled and out the door before the traffic builds. Behind that counter sits a catalog of hundreds of lines — a few serialized, most held as bulk quantities — turning over between depots, vans and sites all week. The money is in turnaround and utilization rather than headline rates, so idle kit and unbilled days hurt. Software earns its keep when it answers three questions without anyone walking to the yard: what is free on those dates, what is due back today, and what has not yet been invoiced. Renttix puts the counter, the yard and the office on the same records.
Equipment categories we support
Common challenges in tool hire
Counter queues and paperwork
Trade customers will not wait. Checking availability, opening an account order, printing a rental agreement and getting it signed has to happen in the time it takes to load a van.
Bulk stock and serialized kit
You rent 300 identical props by the quantity and 20 generators by serial number. One system has to hold both accurately, or the counter promises kit the yard cannot actually find.
Day, week and long-rental rates
The same drill has three prices. Charging a Friday-to-Monday weekend properly, honoring minimum rental, and dropping to an extra-day rate past the first week is where manual pricing loses money.
Test dates and defect kit
PAT dates, inspection intervals and defect tags are easy to lose across thousands of items. Nobody wants a transformer or a 110V lead leaving the yard with an expired test on it.
Off-rentals nobody wrote down
A customer rings to off-rent and it never gets logged, or they insist they rang and did not. Kit then sits on site for weeks, earning nothing and blocking the next booking.
Deliveries planned on a whiteboard
Twenty drops and collections a day across two vans, and every customer wants a time window. Routes get built from memory, and the office cannot say where a driver actually is.
How Renttix helps
Quick Order at the counter
The Quick Order screen takes a walk-in from customer to live rental in one pass — customer, rental dates, lines and rates, transport, then depot, invoice run code and payment terms. The rental agreement goes out for electronic signature and comes back signed against the order.
Availability that counts both ways
Renttix holds bulk quantities and serialized assets in one catalog. Availability is worked out live from committed rentals across every depot, and a clashing booking is blocked rather than quietly double-allocated.
Rate definitions built for rental
Set a base unit of hour, day, night, week, month or block per product, with minimum rental, chargeable days and an extra-day rate for days past a full week. Billing follows the real dates.
Testing and inspections that block
The Testing and Inspections setup holds a regime per item type — PAT, PUWER, LOLER — with its interval, reminder days and certificate record. Set it to block and overdue kit drops out of availability.
Off-rental and extension requests
Customers raise off-rental and extension requests in the portal, so the date is on record with a timestamp. Renttix also sends pre-return and overdue reminders, and Quick Off Rental closes a rental in one step.
A dispatch board, not a whiteboard
Today's drops and collections sit on the dispatch board by route, driver and vehicle. Drivers confirm each stop with photos, a signature and GPS, and the customer gets a tracking link once the van is en route.
Key workflows
Inquiry at the counter or on the phone
A trade customer asks what you have for Thursday. Check live availability for the dates, price the line from its rate definition, and raise a quote or go straight to an order.
Rent out and sign
Confirm the order, allocate the serialized asset or bulk quantity, set the depot, invoice run and payment terms, and send the rental agreement for signature. The kit is now committed and off availability.
Pick and deliver
The warehouse picks against the pick list, scanning each item as it goes on the van. The driver runs the route from the driver app and captures photos, a signature and location at the drop.
On rental and chasing
The rental runs and charges accrue. Pre-return reminders go out, the customer can extend or off-rent through the portal, and anything overdue shows up on the active rentals report.
Book in, check and invoice
Scan the return at the depot, record damage or missing parts, and route the item to the wash bay, inspection or workshop. Final charges are added and the order is picked up by the next invoice run.
Relevant integrations
Xero
Invoices, credit notes and payments raised in Renttix push through to Xero as each invoice run completes, so the rental desk is not re-keying anything into the accounts.
Sage
For yards running Sage as the ledger, invoices and credit notes from Renttix sync across, keeping rental billing and the accounts in step without a monthly export.
Stripe
Take card payments against invoices and let account customers pay online through the customer portal, with the payment recorded back on the invoice in Renttix.
Airwallex
Take a security deposit against a rental as a card hold or a straight charge, with the customer authorizing it from a link. If kit comes back damaged, capture part of the hold against the repair and the balance goes back to the customer.
WooCommerce
Publish the rental catalog on a WooCommerce site with live availability and rate tiers. Online bookings land as orders in Renttix rather than in a separate inbox.
Calendar feed
Subscribe once to a signed iCal URL and the depot's deliveries and collections appear in Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar with their time windows. Take every route or a single one, and the calendar app refreshes it on its own.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Quick Order is built for counter and phone rentals — pick the customer, check availability, price the lines and go. Quick Off Rental closes them the same way. If you also sell consumables, the point of sale screens handle counter takings and sit alongside rental orders on the same customer record.
Through rate definitions. Each product carries a base unit — hour, day, night, week, month or block — with a minimum rental period and a list of chargeable days. Set Monday to Friday as chargeable and weekend days stop adding to the bill. Days beyond a full week can be charged at a lower extra-day rate rather than triggering a second full week.
Yes, if you want it to. Set up an inspection regime — PAT, PUWER, LOLER or your own — with an interval and the products it applies to. Each regime has a block policy: ignore, warn or block. On block, an item with an overdue or failed test is taken out of availability and cannot be assigned without an override permission.
Set the product to bulk stock and Renttix tracks quantity rather than individual units, per depot. Serialized products get an asset number, barcode or QR label, and their own rental and service history. Both live in the same catalog, and stock take reconciles counted quantities against the book with a variance you approve before it commits.
The return scan flags what did not come back. A damage report records the item, the notes and photographs, and the charge sits against the order so it lands on the final invoice. If a kit is incomplete, the kit definition tells you which component is missing. Anything genuinely lost opens an investigation case that closes as recovered, lost or written off.
Yes. Products hold stock per depot, availability is calculated per location, and stock transfers move units between branches with a receive step at the other end. The asset locator report tells you where a given item is, and depot stock shows what each branch is holding. Head office still sees the whole picture across the group.
Ready to modernize your rental operations?
Payments + deposits enabled • Quick setup • No credit card trial