When you manage rental equipment, part of the critical workflow is the managing of damaged or lost equipment and if necessary, charging the customer for this.

Managing this within OnRent is simple and straightforward, yet powerful.

When confirming a Return Request or when you Book In you can specify whether the items are damaged or lost.

For more information around booking in items, see this article: Book in your equipment off rent

The Unavailable Items view includes columns to show the quantity of items and includes three important fields to manage the workflow.

Two out-of-the-box custom views are available to assist with navigation of this process. To access them, click views next to the search bar.

When doing a Return Request (Collection) - Drivers Signature view:

If you have created a Return Request - when you are signing off the return of the goods from the customer you can find the items and click on Actions > Book in Details.

From the Order screen when the action "Book In" has been selected:

When you Book In an item and enter the quantity damaged, the damage description box will pop up for easy entry. You can also click on Action > Book in Details or via the blue shortcut as shown in the screenshot below.

This will open the following screen:

Here you can also mark the item as damaged. If it's a bulk item you can put in the quantity returned ok, damaged or lost.

Enter a damage description if you haven't already.

You can also add photographs of the damaged equipment. You can select files from your storage or you can use the integrated camera if on a phone or tablet. If you'd like to take multiple photos you can do so. You can also edit or upload photos later so if you don't have them at this stage don't worry.

If you need to, you can also upload other document types at this stage.

The item is then booked into the Unavailable Items area under the type of "Repair".

Follow the same process as above but mark the items as lost instead. Note that when you are marking an item as lost you don't need to enter the description or add images / attachments. If, at this stage, you mark an item as lost and the customer later reports they've found it, the item can be returned to stock through the book out process from the unavailable items.

Once the Return Request or Book In has been carried out, the item will be booked in to Unavailable Items under the type of "Lost".

When you have confirmed a book in, the information entered during the above processes will appear on the Returns Note. You can send this to your customer to confirm that there have been damaged or lost items on their order.

As you can see, the captured book in details for damage are displayed underneath the relevant item line.

If you look on the relevant order, you can easily see the unavailable items that have been created from it to easily link the two things together.

At the appropriate time you can go in to the Unavailable Items overview page and book the items out of repair to make them available again and later on charge for the damage - or charge for damage before it's booked out of repair - it's completely flexible!

Let's have a look at the process for issuing a damage notification.

Enter the Unavailable Items list - then filter by "In Repair" or use a saved view to find them or even search for the item.

Click the blue text to drill down and see more details of the item in Repair.

If you know what the damage charge is, or what it will be, you can add it by clicking the edit button on the unavailable item and entering a price. You can also enter a discount percentage, as well as choose a run code, payment term or revenue group.

You can also enter the customer reference number, for example, a purchase order number, which will be reflected on any resultant invoice later on.

When the time comes to raise the damage or loss letter, just click the document link from the overview page of the unavailable item.

The damage letter will include the damage images.

Once you have come to an agreement with the customer around charges, go ahead and click on the "Finalise" button on the overview page.

When the unavailable item is finalised, you can then raise the invoice by clicking on Invoice Unavailable Item.

You can also include the damage & lost items within the invoice run. To do this, simply enter a charge and finalise the Unavailable item.

Then, when you carry out the invoice run you can select to include damage and loss charges (available on the Pro Plus subscription).

When an invoice is created as an outcome of a damage or loss, you will be able to see a label on the invoice screen as shown below. You can also see a link back to the unavailable item for reference purposes.

If you have created a draft invoice in error, you can delete the invoice and regenerate it.