Rental software for equipment and vehicles, from booking to return

In a rental company, the same question comes up every day: “is such-and-such a machine free from Thursday to Tuesday?” Equipment rental software answers it without phone calls to the depot, because it knows at any moment where every item in the fleet is: with a customer, in transit, in for servicing or on the shelf.

The same skeleton serves tools and construction machinery as well as generators, event equipment or a fleet of vans. The details differ: with vehicles, mileage and documents with expiry dates matter; with machinery, operating hours and accessories.

Equipment rental software: availability, by item and by quantity

There are two ways of counting. An excavator, a van or a generator is tracked as an individual item, by serial number or registration number. Scaffolding, temporary fencing or event chairs are tracked by quantity: you have a total and want to know how many are free in a given period.

Real-time availability means an item shows as free only if the period requested does not touch another booking, a scheduled service or the turnaround time between two rentals (cleaning, checking, refuelling). Overlap is prevented by the database itself, so two colleagues at different counters cannot promise the same machine.

A booking comes from the office, from a sales rep or from a public page, as a request that you confirm.

The template contract, the deposit and the handover report with photos

The contract is generated from your template: the application fills in the customer’s details, the items, the period, the rate and the deposit, and produces a PDF ready to sign. The wording of the template comes from your lawyer; it is also with them that you settle whether an on-screen signature is enough or another form of electronic signature is needed.

The deposit has its own record: how much was taken and how, how much was withheld and why, when it was refunded. Some payment processors allow an amount to be held on a card without being charged, for a limited time, often shorter than a long rental; the conditions are checked with the processor you choose. The handover report is completed on the phone, next to the machine.

• Condition at handover: a checklist for the type of item, ticked off point by point.
• Photos: from set angles, with date and time attached, linked to the contract.
• Meters and accessories: operating hours, kilometres, fuel, everything that leaves with the item.
• The return: the same checklist, set beside the one from handover, so the differences stand out.

Pricing by period: rules written once, applied the same to everyone

A rental rate is rarely a simple multiplication. The application calculates from the rules you define, and the operator sees how the total was arrived at and can step in only with a specific permission, leaving a note.

Before development we pin down the definitions, because this is where most disputes start: what a day means (a calendar day or one counted from the time of handover) and what happens when a return is a few hours late.

• Duration tiers: a rate per day, per week, per month, with an automatic switch to the more favourable tier.
• Calendar: weekends, public holidays, season.
• By customer: negotiated price lists for companies with a framework agreement.
• Extensions and late returns: how the price is recalculated when the period changes along the way.

Servicing, faults and items temporarily out of circulation

Each item has a maintenance plan: a service after a number of operating hours, after a number of kilometres or on a fixed date. The meter readings taken at return feed the plan, and the application gives advance notice and blocks the item in the calendar for the duration of the work. For vehicles, add the documents with expiry dates, such as the periodic roadworthiness inspection, the insurance or the rovinieta (the Romanian road vignette). For machinery subject to mandatory technical inspections, you confirm the list and the intervals with the person responsible for technical compliance.

A fault found at return opens a record: description, photos, whether it is charged to the customer, how much the repair costs. Until the record is closed, the item does not show as available.

From the fleet inventory to the first booking put through the application

The data lives in PostgreSQL, a database that has types for time ranges and can forbid them from overlapping for individually tracked items (for those tracked by quantity, the check is done inside a transaction); the application itself is written in PHP, with Laravel.

The part used in the yard, at handover, is a web interface for the phone, with access to the camera. Invoices are issued in your invoicing software, to which we send the data; the tax requirements are something you settle with your accountant.

• Inventory: the list of items, by category, with serial numbers, accessories and current condition, cleaned up by you.
• Rules: rates, deposits, turnaround time, contract template, who is allowed to do what.
• Calendar and bookings: the first part put to real use, alongside the register kept until now.
• Documents and handover: the contract, the handover report, the photos.
• Maintenance and reports: servicing, faults, utilisation by category.

This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.