If you run an AV rental company you already know how demanding it is to provide the right equipment for a successful event. Many companies use a combination of planning and communication tools such as Excel sheets, phone calls, emails, Word documents, etc.
Working with this mix of tools takes up a lot of time, and can create issues such as losing track of your equipment, crew and other planning mistakes.
Luckily, there is an alternative: rental software. With a rental software program, you will be able to take care of every aspect of your activity on the same platform. What are the advantages of this solution? You will save time, communicate more easily, and have better control over your AV rentals
If you intend to start using a rental software program, you want to make sure you’re choosing the best one. What should this solution offer to make your life easier?
Rental Software Essentials
Project planning: Know what’s happening on each event and what’s coming up.
Collaboration: Allow your whole team to collaborate through tasks, notes, and comments.
Visual Inventory management: Keep track of your audiovisual equipment availability, movements, and repairs.
Fast quote building: Build your quotes and invoices in a few clicks.
Crew communication and scheduling tools: Always know your crew’s availability, and quickly communicate the planning.
CRM & External Communication: Interact with customers and other rental companies, directly from the software
Cloud-based: Be able to always access important project information and not be limited to one device
All-in-one: Keep all the information in one place, so that you don’t have to use separate software tools anymore.
High-quality support: A team of experts always willing to help in case you run into trouble.
Practical use and benefits
You might be wondering “how will these features help me in my daily work?”. Here are seven practical examples of how a rental software will help you to equip that perfect show, save time and reduce mistakes.
Build professional quotes in a flash
Creating a new quote can be a time-consuming activity, and if the quote isn’t accepted you lose a lot of time for nothing. With a good rental software package, you can create a database of information about your inventory and crew.
This way you’ll be able to add the items and work-hours you need with just a few clicks, and build even the most complex quotations in less than 10 minutes! Once the quotation is ready you can send it from the software, and the customer will be able to accept straight from the email.
Main benefit: Save time building precise and professional quotes.
Know the availability of your equipment
When planning sound, lighting or rigging equipment for an event, knowing the availability of all your items can be a real struggle.
A good rental software solution will provide you with a visual timeline overview of how much equipment you have available and where are the unavailable items currently planned on. So you will never have to guess where your gear is.
Main benefit: Always know what you have available at any point in time
Schedule your crew
Especially if you work with freelancers, knowing your crew’s availability probably requires you a lot of back-and-forth calling and emailing. That’s a lot of time wasted, right?
With the visual calendar offered by a rental solution your team can indicate their availability, or respond to your invitations. Once you know who’s free to work, you’ll be able to quickly schedule your staff.
Main benefit: Have a clear overview of who’s available to work, and schedule your crew in seconds
All your crew communication in one place
After scheduling, you spend just as much time communicating schedules and call sheets. And using phone, messages, emails, and whatnot this phase can get pretty messy too!
Having a solution that automatically sends your schedule (and schedule changes) to anybody that you planned can save a lot of time. Your crew members will be able to easily access details and their call sheets from their personal calendar, so communication will always be precise. And thanks to custom notifications every member will be up to date on their tasks.
Main benefit: Communicate event schedules to your crew members directly from the planning
Book equipment in and out of the warehouse
Once the event is planned, it’s time to send out the equipment. When several members are using a traditional packing slip it’s easy to get confused, and mistakes are around the corner. Plus, if you need to add an article last-minute you might forget to report it in the invoices (read: losing money).
An interactive packing slip of a rental software solves these problems. Once a crew member scans equipment out through a bar/QR code, it will disappear directly from the list of the others. And they’ll be able to add or subtract equipment, resting assured that the packing slip and the invoice will automatically be updated.
Main benefits: Make no mistakes when packing your equipment; don’t give out items for free; let your team collaborate more efficiently
Keep an eye on lost or damaged equipment
After the event, all the equipment comes back… except for that one microphone. Sounds familiar? A good rental software provides you with all the information about the event where you lost items, so it might be easier to find them.
What if one of your amplifiers or projectors comes back damaged? Book it for maintenance, and your repair personnel will receive a notification with the serial number of the item and all the specs of the repair.
Speaking of maintenance, have you ever sent out an item past its inspection date? Organizing your repairs through a software you’ll always be aware of these details, and won’t do the same mistake again.
Main benefit: Keep track of the lost or damaged equipment, and manage repairs and maintenance.
Work on the go
If you run your rental in the “old way”, you have to be in your office to access any information about jobs. But with a rental software operating in the Cloud, you and your crew will be able to work from any device, follow your projects from wherever you are and check out events details while on the go.
Main benefit: Be free to work whenever and wherever you want.
Choosing the right software program
A rental software program brings you many important advantages: working faster, better and more easily.
The market offers several generic solutions targeted on rentals of every industry (bikes, construction tools, vehicles). But if you operate in the event industry, you are going to want specific features that these software products can’t provide.
Created by professionals of the industry, Rentman is tailored to the needs of AV rental companies. Rentman is the leading online rental software provider in Europe and quickly growing all around the world.
Want to experience how it can help you work with less stress? Try it for 30 days, free and with no obligations!