The normal business hours of the rental company must be entered to calculate the rental period properly. Complete the following steps to set the business hours and grace periods:
Go to Rental > Options and click on the General tab as show below:
The normal business hours of the rental department should be entered for each day of the week.
The Day of the week column lists each day of the week. The order or contents of this column cannot be altered.
Enable the Closed option on the right side of the list if the rental department is closed on a specific day. Note that the rental period will ignore this day if the Closed option is enabled. In the example above, the rental department is closed on Sunday. The rental period will ignore the time within all days that are marked Closed. For example, a rental from Saturday till Monday will calculate the same length of time as between any weekday such as Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Hours in Day entry should reflect the amount of hours in a day. For example, if the number 10 is entered, 10 hours is considered a whole day and 5 hours would be considered a half day. This is an important value when determining the amount of time in a rental day. The number of Hours in Day value should be the same for each day the rental department is open including partial days. Do not enter the actual hours the rental department is open which may vary among days. For example, if the rental is open a ½ day (from 8:00am to 12 noon), enter the same value (10) for the partial day.
Enter the Opening Time and Closing Time of the rental department.
The Morning Grace Period (Hours) and the Evening Grace Period (Hours) settings are used to give a user some grace period time when returning their rental. For example, if a person checks out a rental at 7:30am and returns the rental by 8:45am the next day it is to be returned, the rental period equals one day. The grace period allows the user to return the rental by 9:00am (2 hours beyond opening time at 7:00am) and receive the same rental period as if the renter returned the equipment by the opening time. The evening grace period has a similar effect. The user can return the rental anytime between 4:00pm and 6:00pm (in the example above) and the length of the rental period remains the same. Set the Morning or Evening Grace Period settings to zero to disable the grace period option.
Click on the Normal Days tab to set up the following options:
This Hour Reduction setting will reduce the rental time for driving or pickup time for all rentals that are less than 1 day. In the example above, all rental times will be reduced by .5 hours to compensate for rental checkout or delivery time. Set this value at zero to eliminate any partial day time reduction.
The ½ day is replaced by one day setting can be used to charge a full day rental if the user rents the item in the middle of the day. In the example shown above, if the rental is checked in between 12:30 and 3:59pm (checkout between 7:30am and 10:59am or earlier), the user will be charged with a full day's rental rather than a partial day's rental. Blank both time fields to disable this adjustment.
The charge a fill day's charge for each holiday setting is used to charge rentals over a holiday. Blank the days setting to disable this adjustment.
The Round up to a full day option is used to round multiple day rentals to whole days. This option will eliminate fractions of days when there are multiple day rentals. Blank the time setting of this option to disable this adjustment option.
Click on the Holidays tab to enter holiday hours and enter the following settings:
Enter a description of the holiday into the Holiday column.
Enter the Date of the holiday and enable the Closed option if the rental department is closed the entire day.
Enter the Hours, Opening Time, and Closing Time entries for each holiday.
Enter the Morning and Evening Grace Period entries in hours. Refer to step 2 for more details on the grace period settings.
Repeat these steps for each holiday.
Click Ok to save the hours and grace period settings.
Continue with the following sections for more details on calculating rental costs.