Ledgr/Documentation/Rental & Hire

Rental & Hire

Watch the lesson: Book a hire, send it out and take it back (2:01).

For a business that hires things out — plant and tools, scaffolding, generators, marquees and party equipment. The hire register knows every item you own for hire and where it is today.

Items and pools

Everything you hire out is one of your fixed assets, so it is depreciated with the rest of your assets and never counted as stock. It goes on the hire register in one of two ways:

• One item — a plate compactor, a 20 kVA generator. It goes out on its own and is in one place at a time.
• A pool of units — 120 scaffold frames, 300 chairs. One asset holding identical units that go out by the count, so 40 frames can be on a site while 80 are in the yard.

Register an item

1. Capitalise it first

   In Reports → Fixed assets, if it is not there already.

2. Rental & Hire → Register item

   Choose the asset, say whether it goes out as one item or as a pool, and for a pool how many units it holds. A class (Compaction, Scaffolding, Power) groups the register.

An asset can be on the register once, and an asset you have disposed of cannot be registered.

Where every item is

Each unit is in one place: in the yard, on hire with a customer, or in service. A unit can also be booked onto a hire that has not gone out yet — it is still in the yard until it does. A unit lost on a hire is charged to the customer and written off, and leaves the register (see when an item is lost, or sold).

You never type these counts. A unit moves only when a hire, a service or a write-off moves it, so every unit that is not in the yard is explained by the record that took it there. You can rename an item, change its class, or change how many units a pool holds — but a pool cannot shrink below the units that are booked, out or away, and an item with units out cannot be taken off the register.

Rates, and what a hire costs

Tap an item on the register to give it its rates: a day rate, and if you have them a week, a four-week and a weekend rate, and a minimum hire. Rates are per unit. An item with no rates of its own is priced from a card for its class, so one card for Scaffolding prices every frame; an item with neither says No rates and cannot be priced until it has some.

A hire is charged the cheapest mix of four-week periods, weeks and days that covers it. A compactor at R450 a day and R1 350 a week, out for nine days, is one week and two days — R2 250 — not two weeks (R2 700) and not nine days (R4 050). A week is charged in place of six days whenever the week is cheaper. The weekend rate is a flat price for a hire out on a Friday or Saturday and back by the Monday, charged when it is the cheaper reading.

Which days are charged

Charge hires by on the register sets it for the company:

• Calendar days — every day the item is out.
• Mon–Fri or Mon–Sat — working days only. South African public holidays are not working days, including a holiday moved to the Monday because it fell on a Sunday.

The day it goes out and the day it is off-hired are both counted. On working days a week is the working week, so a weekly rate always buys one calendar week of hire. Out on a Friday and off-hired on the Monday is two chargeable days on Mon–Fri, three on Mon–Sat — and one on Mon–Fri when that Monday is a public holiday.

Contracts: booked, out, off-hired, back

1. Rental & Hire → Contracts → New booking

   Choose the customer, the site, the day it goes out and the day it is due back, and how many of each item. The price is shown as you type, from the rates above. The items are reserved for those dates: a booking that would put the same compactor on two contracts at once, or ask for more frames than the pool holds on any day, is refused, and the message names the contract in the way.

2. Send out

   Everything at once, or part of it — the rest goes out later. A unit on hire leaves the yard on the register.

3. Off-hire

   When the customer says they are done. The charge stops on the off-hire date, not on the day you collect.

4. Take back

   The return inspection: how many came back and how many are missing, and a cleaning or damage charge if there is one. A missing unit is charged at the item's replacement value and moves to lost on the register. Take photographs of any damage from the contract. Items can come back in part; the contract closes when everything that went out is back or accounted for.

Your customer can off-hire it themselves

The statement link you send a customer from Contacts lists what they have on hire. While a hire is out, they can off-hire it there: they choose the day it stops — today, or up to 30 days ahead, never a day already gone — and type their name. It is the same off-hire as the desk's own: the charge stops that day, and the contract says the customer gave notice and who. You are told, so you can arrange the collection. A customer sees only their own hires, and once a hire is off-hired the page offers no second date — to change it, they call you.

A booking that has not gone out can be cancelled, which frees its items. If you deliver or collect, put the contract on a logistics trip as a stop; the contract shows the stop and whether it was completed with proof of delivery.

Meters and service

An item with a meter — hours on a generator or a compressor, kilometres on a trailer — is read when it goes out and when it comes back. Set Meter when you register it. Going out, the reading is the meter as it was last read unless you type another; coming back, the inspection asks for it, and a reading below the one it went out at is refused.

On the item's rates, Allowed a day is how much use each chargeable day includes, and Each one over what each hour or kilometre beyond it costs. A generator allowed 8 hours a day, out five days, is allowed 40; back after 46 hours it is charged the 6 over, on the hire's own invoice.

Service every — so many hours or kilometres, or so many days — is when the item is serviced. Back from a hire past its service, it goes into service on a job card raised for it, and no booking can take it until the card is closed: the booking is refused naming the card. Completing the card records the service, and the next falls due from it.

Invoicing a hire

Choose how a hire is invoiced when you book it — Invoice it on the booking:

• On return — one invoice, raised as a draft the moment everything is back: the hire from the day it went out to the off-hire date, and the inspection's cleaning, damage and missing-item charges.
• Monthly in arrears — each month of the hire is invoiced on the month's last day, so its VAT falls in that month, and the rest is invoiced when it comes back.
• Monthly in advance — each month is invoiced on its first day. Off-hired inside a month already invoiced, the hire is credited the days it did not use: the credit is what that month was charged less what the days it was really out cost, so the customer pays exactly for the hire they had.

A month runs from the day the hire went out to the day before the same date the next month. No day is ever on two invoices: an invoice that would charge a day another has already charged is refused. If a hire could not be invoiced on its return — an item with no rates, say — open the contract and choose Invoice the hire. Monthly invoices are raised as drafts; send them from Invoicing as you would any other. Hire and its charges go to Hire Income (4050), except the charge for a missing unit, which is compensation for an asset lost and goes to Profit on Disposal (4130), beside the loss on the unit.

Each month carries the hire of its own days. Every hire line on an invoice records the days it hires. At each month end Ledgr moves the part of a month billed in advance that is not yet earned into Deferred Revenue (2150), and books the hire that is out but not yet invoiced as Accrued Hire Income (1336), then reverses both the next morning. So a generator out from 20 September and invoiced on return on 2 November shows its September and October days in September and October, and the invoice leaves November only its own two days. The invoice itself, its VAT and what the customer owes are unchanged. The Sales & Margin report counts invoices on their dates and shows these month-end entries as their own line, so it still ties to the income statement.

Utilisation and what each item earns

Rental & Hire → Utilisation shows, for the last 30 days or any dates you choose, how much each item worked and what it earned:

• Utilisation — days on hire over days owned. A compactor you have owned for 30 days and hired out for 9 is 30% used; for a pool it is unit-days, so 10 of 40 frames out all month is 25%.
• Income — the item's share of what its sent invoices charged, less any credit for days not used. Drafts count nothing until they are sent.
• Depreciation and Service — its asset's depreciation for those dates, and the parts its service job cards used.
• Net — income less both. An item owned and never out is marked Idle.

Each figure is read from your books, so the report agrees with your hire income, your depreciation and your cost of sales. Classes are totalled too.

When an item is lost, or sold

An item on the register is a fixed asset, so when it leaves the business it is disposed of as one — never sold as stock.

• Lost on a hire — when the return inspection charges a missing unit, that unit is written off at its book value: its share of what the asset cost, less its share of the depreciation charged so far, goes to Loss on Disposal. One frame of a pool of 100 that cost R65 000 is R650 of cost; after R65 of depreciation it is written off at R585. The pool is one frame smaller, and the customer pays the missing charge on the hire's invoice, where it is coded to Profit on Disposal rather than to hire income.
• Sold — tap the item on the register and choose Sell it: the buyer, the price before VAT and, for a pool, how many. The units must be in the yard and free of bookings. The invoice to the buyer is issued at the sale, coded to Profit on Disposal, and the units' book value is set against it, so the sale is one gain or a loss on Loss on Disposal: five frames carried at R540 and sold for R300 are a R240 loss. The invoice cannot then be deleted or voided; raise a credit note if the sale changes. An item whose last unit is sold or lost leaves the register.

Hiring in from another hire company

When every unit of an item is booked, a booking can still be taken by hiring one in. Open the contract and choose Cross-hire: the item, how many, the supplier, what they charge a day and a week, and their reference. The customer is charged your own rates for the item, exactly as for one of yours; the units are the supplier's, so they never move on your register.

Off-hiring the line off-hires the supplier on the same day, and the supplier's bill is raised for the days their units were out, at their rates, to Hire-in Costs (5080). Rental & Hire → Cross-hires puts each one on a line: what the customer was charged, what the supplier's bill cost you, and the margin.

Deposits

A refundable deposit is your customer's money until you keep any of it, so it is held, not earned: it goes to Refundable Hire Deposits Held (2156), a liability, and carries no VAT. Open the contract and choose Take a deposit:

• Card, EFT or cash at the counter — say which bank account it went into. The deposit is a line on that account, for the bank's statement to confirm, and a refund is a line out of it.
• Pay link — Ledgr makes a link for the amount; send it to the customer by WhatsApp or email. They pay through your own Yoco or PayFast account, connected in Settings → Payments, and the deposit is held the moment the gateway confirms it. Until the gateway pays out, the money is with the gateway; when the payout reaches your bank statement, settle the payout line against it in Banking, exactly as you would a card payment on an invoice. A new link replaces one the customer has not paid yet.

When the hire is settled, the deposit is applied to the customer's invoice as a payment, up to what the invoice owes — anything you keep against damage or a missing item is charged on that invoice, with VAT, never taken out of the deposit on its own. Whatever is left is refunded from the contract with Refund deposit. A contract that still holds a deposit cannot be cancelled or deleted; refund or apply it first.

Who can do what

The Rental & Hire permission in Users & roles decides it: view reads the register, create registers items, edit changes them, their rates and which days are charged, and delete takes them off. Taking, refunding and asking for a deposit need edit; applying it to an invoice needs edit on Invoicing as well. A Viewer reads the register and changes nothing.