Rental Item Groups

The top-level fleet category ("Excavators", "Dumpers", "Generators"). Groups carry the defaults that cascade down through Item Types and Rental Items, so they're the right place to set up posting groups, depreciation defaults, and dimensions once.

How it fits in

A Rental Item Group is the top of the master-data hierarchy: Rental Item Group at the top, then Rental Item Type below it, then individual Rental Items. The Group is where you set up the defaults that everything below inherits: Price Term, Base Calendar, posting groups, Fixed Asset configuration, and dimensions.

When configuring a brand-new fleet from scratch, build the Groups first. Each Item Type you create then has a single mandatory field (Item Group No.) that, once set, populates that Type's posting groups, FA settings, and Price Term automatically from the Group. Each Rental Item under a Type inherits the next layer down.

Groups are also the natural reporting axis: Profitability by Group, Utilisation by Group, Fleet age by Group are all easy because every transaction involving a Rental Item carries the Group dimension automatically (when Enable Rental Dimensions is ticked on Rental Setup).

Header fields

General

General
No.required
Auto-assigned from the Item Group No. Series defined in Rental Setup. Read-only after saving.
Description, Description 2
Human-readable description of the Group. Used on lookups and in reports that show Group rather than just the No.
Automatic Ext. Texts
When ticked, the Extended Texts held against this Group drop onto a rental order or quote line automatically when a line references an item or type in the Group and no more specific text exists. When unticked, the texts can still be pulled in by hand. See Extended texts for the full feature.
Base Calendar Code
The default working calendar used for date arithmetic on rentals against this Group's Items. Determines which days are billable. Cascades down to Item Types and Items unless overridden.
Price Term Code
The default Price Term (Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year) for items in this Group. Cascades down to Item Types and Items.
Rental Item Types (count)
A read-only counter showing how many Rental Item Types belong to this Group. Click through to drill into the Item Types list filtered to this Group.
Rental Items (count)
A read-only counter showing how many Rental Items belong to this Group (across all its Item Types). Click through to drill into the Rental Items list.

Posting

Posting groups that apply by default to Rental Item Types and Rental Items underneath this Group. These are the values that cascade down when an Item Type's Item Group No. is set, so getting them right at Group level saves repeated work below.

Posting
Gen. Prod Posting Group Rental
General Product Posting Group used for rental income postings (revenue from rentals of items in this Group).
General Product Posting Group
Standard BC General Product Posting Group used for non-rental postings (sales-on-disposal, write-offs).
Inventory Posting Group
Standard BC Inventory Posting Group driving the inventory side of the chart of accounts.
VAT Prod. Posting Group
Standard BC VAT Product Posting Group; combined with the customer's VAT Bus. Posting Group on a rental line, drives the VAT rate.

Fixed Asset

Default Fixed Asset configuration that flows down to Item Types and onto FA records created from Rental Items in this Group (via Stock-to-Fleet or Create Fixed Asset on a Rental Item).

Fixed Asset
FA Posting Group
Default Fixed Asset Posting Group driving which FA G/L accounts the acquisition, depreciation, and disposal entries hit.
FA Class Code, FA Subclass Code
Standard BC Fixed Asset classification codes used as defaults for FA records created from Rental Items in this Group.
Depreciation Book Code
The default Depreciation Book that newly acquired FAs in this Group post to.
Depreciation Method
Default depreciation method (Straight-Line, Declining-Balance, etc.) for FAs in this Group.
Depreciation Months / Depreciation Years
Default depreciation period expressed in months or years (alternative ways to express the same period).
Straight-Line%
Default annual depreciation percentage when using a percentage-based straight-line method.

FactBoxes (right-side panel)

Utilisation: a utilisation summary for the Group, rolling up how much of the fleet in this Group is currently out on rent.

Dimensions: the standard BC dimensions FactBox showing analysis dimensions assigned at the Group level.

Dimensions

Each Rental Item Group auto-generates a Dimension Value on the Item Group Dimension configured in Rental Setup, with the Dimension Value Code matching the Group's own No. So creating Group "EXCAV" automatically creates a Dimension Value "EXCAV" under (e.g.) the RENTAL_GROUP dimension.

Default Dimensions assigned at the Group level (via the Dimensions action) cascade down to Item Types belonging to the Group (and from there to Rental Items belonging to those Types). The Group is the most efficient place to set dimensions you want to apply across the fleet, since the cascade does the rest.

For the full mechanics, see the Dimensions section on the Rental Items doc.

Actions

Dimensions: opens the standard BC dimensions page for this Group; lets you set the Default Dimensions that will cascade down to Item Types and Items.

Related pages