Safely renting with deposits or insurance

From the first day on

Matilde Rasgado avatar
Written by Matilde Rasgado
Updated over a week ago

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While managing a rental operation, there are different strategies to increase safety in your rentals. As a starting point, many rental businesses ask customers to sign a Statement of Responsibility undertaking the responsibility for any damage or theft. In this article, we will talk about the three main additional strategies you might use to safely rent.

Ask for a deposit

As a first option, you can always apply a deposit for every rental: the customer pays you a determined amount before collecting the item and if the items are returned in good condition and on the scheduled date, you return the deposit. There are several aspects you might consider when determining the deposit amount: it might be a fixed amount or a percentage of the P.V.P. of the item, or you might change it accordingly to the duration of the booking or the conditions where the item will be used, or you might decrease it if you already know the customer or if the booking includes more than one item. Flecto allows you to personalize the deposit amount for any circumstance:

  1. After selecting the customer, date, and item, you can personalize the deposit amount, clicking on the little pencil on the right

    1. If you change the quantity of the item, the total deposit adjusts automatically

  2. When you collect the deposit, register the receiving of the deposit payment. Just click on Register payment - you can edit any of the received amounts

  3. By the end of the booking, register the return of the items and next the returning of the deposit payment. Just click again on Register payment - you can edit any of the amounts

Charge your own insurance

As a second option, you can also create your own insurance - you charge an extra amount to the customer and, in case of any damage, you will not charge the customer for it. The difference is that you are never returning this amount to the customer by the end of the rental, not even if the item is returned in perfect condition. Once more, you might take different aspects into consideration from the item price, the booking duration and usage conditions, the number of items, or customers’ previous rentals. You can count on Flecto to add this service to your booking as well:

  1. After selecting the customer, date, and item, you can add your own insurance as a service to the booking. Just go to Services, and click on “Add services”

  2. Then select the Insurance check box and fill in the amount you want to charge to your customer

  3. This amount is added to the other Services you are charging to your customer

Contract insurance from an external entity

Third, you might contract insurance for your equipment with an external entity, such as an insurance company. Even if you are contracting insurance with an external entity, you might still apply a deposit or charge the customer insurance as an additional service. Your business, your rules. We know how complex this might be, and this is why we are building insurance solutions for your rental business, to be launched soon. Do you want to be the first one to know about it?

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