Whether you’ve just starting your small hire/rental business journey, or you’re looking for better ways to run your company, you will undoubtedly ask yourself, “How can I better manage my rental inventory”
That’s a great question, but what exactly do you mean by managing your rental inventory? The question you need to be asking on behalf of your business is; are we currently tracking our rental inventory or are we managing it? To help you answer that question, we have outlined the three core differences between tracking and managing rental inventory;
Tracking Rental Inventory Provides Surface Level Information
Inventory tracking is all about quantity and location. Inventory can be tracked manually via spreadsheets and white boards to provide basic information for your hire/rental business including;
- How many items do I currently have on rental?
- How many items do I currently have available for rent?
Any changes to this information will need to be manually updated at each of your record points. You will generally require a resource within the business to take ownership of the accuracy of the data. This information is absolutely vital to your rental business but it starts and stops at this point.
Managing Rental Inventory Provides Business Insights
Managing inventory allows rental businesses to convert surface level information into deeper insights resulting in better decision making for the business. As an example, utilisation reports and service history reports provide rental businesses with valuable information when considering what inventory the business should be investing in.
Managing Rental Inventory Provides a Foundation For Growth.
Effectively managing rental inventory requires the use of software to ensure a standardised system is followed for each of your rentals. Rental management software is made up of many rules that greatly reduce the opportunity for human error in double bookings or incomplete information. You can set permissions of each of your users to only see the information that is relevant to their role and a user log provides total visibility and accountability for all changes and updates that are made to your inventory and rentals.
With an effective inventory management system in place, rental businesses can spend more time chasing new opportunities knowing that an increase in demand will not strain the operations of the business. Furthermore, providing everyone access to the same, accurate information means the business is not reliant on key individuals to hold all the knowledge!
So now it’s your turn, are you tracking or managing your rental inventory?
Try managing your rental inventory with Viberent for free today and watch your rental business grow.