Basic Facts about Rentpro Rental Purchase Software

Inventory Management is very extensive. Rentpro manages items such appliances, electronics, furniture, videotapes, video games, construction equipment, tools, vehicles, bulldozers, tractors, trailers, costumes, formal wear, wedding items, garden equipment, exercise equipment, automobiles, boats, accessories, computers, and many other items.

• Four contract types may be created: rentals, rent-to-own, layaway, and sales.

• The Corporate Office System manages satellite store operations, consolidating information from multiple store sites. Store comparison reports as well as division reports may be printed or viewed on screen.

• The exclusive built-in report generator provides ultimate flexibility in creating reports. Reports are customized by the user and may be printed on the screen, on disk, or to a printer. Reports are searchable, so find your answers fast!

• Multi-user capabilities allow several users to collect payments, print reports, query agreements and inventory, and perform a host of other transactions simultaneously.

• Complete inventory and agreement transaction history is available on screen at any time.

• Flexibility, speed, and control are engineered to provide customization for all printed forms, coupled with a multilevel security system for sensitive functions. Multilevel rate control is achieved by a unique SKU system that puts the owner in control instead of the employee.

Details

The system features extensive control mechanisms while still preserving flexibility and speed. This system is unsurpassed in its combination of control, flexibility, and speed.

Agreements, payment receipts, and reports can be printed on separate printers if desired. Unlike many other software systems, all forms may be customized without changing the program code. Below are some examples:

1. Customer Agreements

2. Sales Invoices

3. Delivery Tickets

4. Ledger Cards/ Chase Cards

5. Payments Receipts

6. Pick-up Tickets

7. Return Merchandise Receipts

8. Exchange Inventory Agreements

9. Cash Option / Buy-Out Tickets

10. Inventory Transfer Log

11. Up to 22 configurable letters/forms, such as notice of termination, notice of bad check, notice of delinquency, etc.

12. Option-to-Own chart showing payment dates with the corresponding payment number, payments left, and the amount on that date needed to purchase the equipment.

13. The End of Day Summary Report provides various types of summary information for the day’s business, including income, delinquency, billing amounts, the number of rented items, and cash-optioned items. Month-to-date and year-to-date figures are also available.

In addition to these forms, a wide variety of reports can be configured and saved. Security levels may be set to allow only certain individuals to configure these reports while allowing others to print them. Security levels may be established to prevent lower-level employees from printing specific reports, including customer listings, inventory listings that display unit costs, and inventory listings that include trust receipt numbers. All reports may be printed on a screen, disk, printer, or other devices. Wide reports display well on the screen, allowing users to adjust the viewing window to see more of the report. The 81 reports are divided into nine different categories, each with nine configurable reports. The nine categories are as follows:

1. Delinquency reports

2. Customer reports

3. Mailing Labels (including Postcards and Billing Statements)

4. Inventory reports

5. Transactions reports

6. Profile of customers (includes demographic analysis, advertising analysis, etc.)

7. Unit depreciation (includes income forecasting, straight line, income averaging, etc.)

8. SKU rate control reports

9. Pricing Labels

Four different agreement types are supported: Rent-to-Own, Rent-to-Rent, Sales, and Layaway.

Pay periods may be set as yearly, monthly, semi-monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly. The monthly, semi-monthly, and weekly pay periods may be interchanged during the term of an established agreement.

The system can be configured to determine the types of questions that are asked when creating an agreement. The system can ask if insurance is accepted, the processing and delivery fees, or if the agreement is tax-exempt. Furthermore, a new agreement may have the first payment discounted automatically for coupons or specials.

Processing fees may be automatically assessed or determined at the time the agreement is established.

The agreement allows for the automatic establishment of a specific payment due date when it is created. Some customers, and some companies, want their payments always due on a specific day of the week or month. For example, payments can be scheduled for every Friday or on the 1st of each month. The system automatically assesses the appropriate first payment amount to have the customer start their payments on a specific date.

Agreement transactions can be easily reversed when mistakes occur.

Equipment may be entered either as individual stock items or as quantity items. Quantity items would be things like chairs, scaffolding, etc., for which individual tracking is not required. For example, a shipment of chairs can be recorded as 100 chairs and rented out in various lots.

Devices such as pagers, beepers, and cellular telephones are supported, and their modes can be categorized as active, disabled, or blinded.

Whether the equipment is new or preleased is tracked. Equipment can also receive automatic discounts based on whether it has been preleased or not.

Complete transaction histories are maintained for all agreements and inventory, and they can be queried on screen at any time. Transaction reports can be configured and printed to a screen, disk, printer, or other devices.

Users have the ability to post payments to multiple agreements simultaneously. All agreements are automatically listed and totaled. Partial amounts may also be posted.

The most flexible payment posting method is available. Either the employee can enter the amount that the customer is paying or he can enter the new due date for the agreement, and the system will tell the employee how much money is needed. Pressing the space bar adds additional payments to the system.

Partial payments to agreements may be handled in two different ways: 1) the due date is maintained and a partial credit is carried forward on the agreement, or 2) the due date is advanced as far as possible, and any remaining change is carried forward as a credit amount. If method 1 is used, a user-definable full payment percentage rule can determine whether agreements appear on delinquency reports and if late fees will be assessed. For example, agreements with at least 80% of their payment completed may be considered paid regarding collections and the assessment of late fees. The actual percentage is specified in a configuration file during the system installation. A different percentage is used for generating reports and assessing late fees.

The system automatically assesses reinstatement fees, late fees, damage waiver fees, insurance fees, and club fees. Late fees may be set up to be called by any name (late fee, reinstatement fee, etc.). Likewise, insurance may be set up to be called by any name (insurance, damage waiver, GRP, etc.). Late fees may be assessed once or every day, week, month, or year. Alternatively, they may be assessed as a percentage of the rental rate. Caps may be set on them as well. Insurance can be assessed as a percentage of the rental rate or as a fixed amount tied to the inventory unit. Minimum damage waiver fees may also be established.

The system supports user-defined grace periods for assessing late fees. Different grace periods may be established for each of the possible agreement pay periods. Consider the following example: If the grace period is set for 3 days, and an agreement is only 2 days late, no late fee will be assessed. If the agreement is more than 3 days late, the late fee may still be waived, but the amount of the waiver is added to the operating reports, and the agreement record keeps track of the event. The total number of times an agreement has had a payment posted late and the number of times late fees have been waived can both be viewed by querying the agreement.

The system may be used to immediately debit agreements when the bank returns bad checks.. The system keeps track of the number of bad checks and their total amount for each agreement. You can view this information simply by querying the agreement.

You can add additional fees when collecting a payment, or additional charges may be automatically assessed when the payment is taken later. Charges are categorized as: 1) Deposit / Layaway, 2) NSF (bad check), 3) Trip (Delivery/Pickup), 4) Insurance / Damage Waiver, 5) Late/RIF, 6) Rent, 7) Miscellaneous, and 8) User-Definable (Club, Damage, etc.)

Support for Rent-to-Own Clubs, such as Foresight, or for extended warranty plans. Automatic fees are assessed, and a special report is printed at the Home Office for easy club management.

Support for a bonus bucks program that can provide credit to customers who make their payments on time.

Support is provided for any number of cash drawers that can properly maintain the amounts of cash, checks, money orders, and credit cards used.

Support for processing miscellaneous receipts that are not associated with any agreement.

Support for up to six user-definable delinquency periods for summarizing delinquency information.

Support to divide agreements among different area managers for collections.

Early buyout prices may be calculated using different discount percentages based on three different time periods defined by the number of months remaining on the agreement. Several other methods, such as term factoring, may also be used.

Support for 90 days is equivalent to cash plans. The actual number of days that qualifies as "same as cash" is defined in a configuration file during the system installation.

The system can accept refundable deposits from customers. The deposits are kept separate from rental income so that they may be applied to rent or refunded at a later date.

The ability to change a customer’s address and phone number when making a payment.

The sequence in which partial payment amounts are applied to charges can be changed. For example, suppose there was a $20.00 bad check charge, a $5.00 late fee, and a $4.00 insurance fee. Further, suppose that the payment being made was $20.00. The payment could first be applied to returned check amounts, followed by late fees, insurance, and finally rent; in this scenario, the entire bad check amount would be covered, but the late and insurance fees would remain unpaid. On the other hand, the payment could be applied first to late fees, then insurance, returned check amounts, and then rent, in which case the late fees and insurance fees would be paid, but not all of the bad check amounts would be paid.

The system may be set up to tax any or none of the eight charge categories it supports. Furthermore, tax rates can be determined based on a customer's zip code. Tax-exempt agreements may also be established.

The ability to apply credit to agreements is contingent upon the security level being sufficient.

The ability to debit charges to agreements includes fees for bad checks, delivery, pick-up, in-home service, deposits, insurance/damage waivers, late fees, and more.

The system allows the assignment of 99 different levels of security to any number of employees. Security is in place for changing prices, editing important information, changing the system date, writing off unpaid debts, managing security access, setting up reports, printing sensitive documents, giving full refunds, and applying non-cash adjustments like free time.

The system features an unsurpassed rate control mechanism that utilizes SKU numbers for easy input of new inventory and provides unparalleled security levels to manage rates. Complete audit exception reports are produced for any agreement where an employee’s security level allows them to decrease rates or decrease terms on agreements.

Supports placing agreements in a special skip status.

It supports electronic inventory transfers on diskettes between stores, as well as between stores and the home office system.

The system includes a petty cash system designed to monitor expenditures at the store. Month-to-date and year-to-date figures are maintained.

The Home Office and Corporate Office systems can communicate with each store every night to update their respective databases. A complete mirror of the data at the stores can be managed on the corporate office system, which is up-to-date as of the close of the previous day. The home office system can run all reports available at the store.. There is virtually no limit to the number of stores the home office system can handle.

The Home Office system has a warehouse inventory management system built in that allows it to manage its own inventory.

The Home Office system can interface with comprehensive accounting systems, facilitating the electronic transfer of store figures to the accounting system.

The Home Office system can manage employee security and rate control. Inventory costs and trust receipts can also be managed for the Home Office and updated to the stores during normal, nightly communications over the phone lines.

The Home Office system can manage lists of bad customers for each store system. For example, if a customer who owes money in store 1 tries to rent an item from store 2, the store 2 computer can warn the employee that the customer owes a particular balance at store 1. The employee can then try to collect the amount owed.

A Note on Rentpro Report Features

When it comes to operating your business, computers are one of the most valuable assets at your disposal. They can provide you with the ability to access the information you need to manage your business with outstanding speed and effectiveness.

When contemplating the acquisition or leasing of a software system to oversee your rental purchase operation, it's crucial to pay close attention to the reporting features. The configuration of the reporting features significantly influences the system's usefulness for you.

Several packages provide you with a menu of “canned” report titles. This means the software providers have decided what information you need and how you need it. This approach restricts the user’s freedom to print reports in a manner that suits the individual’s needs. If this situation applies and a specific report configuration is missing from the menu of available reports, you can either hire software engineers to implement the change (which would likely incur significant additional costs) or forgo the change altogether.

One of the most powerful and versatile features of Rentpro addresses this problem. Rentpro gives the user the freedom to create reports in a format that they define. The configurations can be given a unique title and saved for repeated use. We have provided examples of some possible configurations on the following pages. To show a sampling of all the possible configurations would be impossible because they are virtually endless.