Rental Item Types

A category of rental fleet ("10-tonne Excavators", "1-tonne Dumpers"), sitting between the top-level Rental Item Group and the individual Rental Items. The level customers usually request when they don't care which specific serial they get.

How it fits in

A Rental Item Type is the middle layer of the master-data hierarchy: Rental Item Group at the top (e.g. "Excavators"), then Rental Item Type (e.g. "10-tonne Excavators"), then individual Rental Items (e.g. "EXC10-001", "EXC10-002", "EXC10-003"). The Type is what most customers actually request: "I need a 10-tonne excavator for two weeks", not "I need EXC10-002 specifically".

On a Rental Order, a line of Type "Rental Item Type" reserves capacity at the Type level; the system allocates a specific Rental Item from the Type's pool at allocation or shipping time. This gives operations flexibility to substitute one serial for another within the type without re-quoting.

A Rental Item Type also acts as a default-source for the Rental Items belonging to it: Price Term, Base Calendar, posting groups, Fixed Asset settings, and dimensions all cascade down from the Type to its Items unless overridden.

Header fields

The Rental Item Type card has FastTabs covering identification, physical attributes, accounting setup, and Fixed Asset configuration.

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Item Group No. is mandatory and gates the rest of the page. Until you've set the Group, every other field on the card is uneditable. Set the Group first; then the rest of the page becomes editable, with defaults inherited from the Group (Price Term, posting groups, dimensions).

General

General
No.required
Auto-assigned from the Item Type No. Series defined in Rental Setup. Read-only after saving.
Item Group No.required
The Rental Item Group this Type belongs to. Setting this populates a number of defaults from the Group (Price Term, posting groups, dimensions) and unlocks the rest of the card.
Description, Description 2
Human-readable description of the Type; appears on rental documents when a line of Type "Rental Item Type" is added.
Automatic Ext. Texts
When ticked, the Extended Texts held against this Item Type drop onto a rental order or quote line automatically when a line references the Type. When unticked, the texts are still there to pull in by hand. See Extended texts below.
Price Term Code
The default Price Term (Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year) used by Rental Items belonging to this Type and by rental lines that reference the Type directly. Inherited from the Item Group; overrideable per Type.
Base Calendar Code
The working calendar used for date arithmetic on rentals against this Type and its Items. Determines which days are billable and which are excluded.
Non-Returnable
When ticked, items of this Type are treated as consumable rather than returnable: shipping consumes them and there's no Return Order on the way back. Used for sundries or single-use equipment.
Rental Items (count)
A read-only counter showing how many Rental Items belong to this Type. Click through to drill into the Rental Items list filtered to this Type.

Technical Attributes

Default physical attributes for Items of this Type. Each Rental Item can override but typically inherits.

Technical Attributes
Make, Model, Year
Manufacturer, model identifier, and year of the Type. Pick the Make from the Makes list, then pick a Model from the list filtered to that Make. Changing the Make clears a Model that no longer belongs to it.
Length / Width / Height / Weight (each with UOM)
Default physical dimensions and weight for Items of this Type, each paired with its unit of measure.

Posting

Posting groups that drive which G/L accounts transactions involving this Type's Rental Items hit. All four are flagged mandatory on the page (visual red-asterisk indicator). In practice you don't fill them in by hand: they are populated automatically when you set Item Group No., cascading from the Group's own posting groups. Override here only if a Type needs to differ from its Group.

Posting
Gen. Prod Posting Group Rentalrequired
General Product Posting Group used for rental income postings (revenue from rentals of this Type). Cascaded from the Item Group.
General Product Posting Grouprequired
Standard BC General Product Posting Group used for non-rental postings (sales-on-disposal, write-offs). Cascaded from the Item Group; setting it triggers a default VAT Prod. Posting Group from the Gen. Prod. Posting Group's defaults.
Inventory Posting Grouprequired
Standard BC Inventory Posting Group driving the inventory side of the chart of accounts. Cascaded from the Item Group.
VAT Prod. Posting Grouprequired
Standard BC VAT Product Posting Group; combined with the customer's VAT Bus. Posting Group on a rental line, drives the VAT rate. Cascaded from the Item Group, with a fall-through default from the chosen Gen. Prod. Posting Group.

Fixed Asset

Default Fixed Asset configuration for Rental Items of this Type that are linked to FA records. Used by the Stock-to-Fleet wizard and the Create Fixed Asset action on Rental Items.

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

Components

A Rental Item Type can carry a list of Components: items, resources, or other content that are bundled with the Type whenever it ships. Used for "structured" Item Types that always go out with accessories or paperwork (e.g. a generator that always ships with cables, fuel can, and a manual).

Each component line carries:

Component Lines
Component Type
What the component is: Item, Rental Item, Resource, Comment, etc. Same line type set as elsewhere in Essential Rental.
No.
The identifier of the chosen component, filtered by Component Type.
Description
Defaults from the chosen component; editable per line.
Location
Where the component is picked from when shipping.
Quantity
How many of this component go with one of the parent Type.
Non-Billable
When ticked, the component appears on the rental documents but doesn't get its own price; the parent Type's pricing covers it. Typical for accessories included with the equipment.

When a Rental Item Type with Components ships, the Components are added to the Shipment Order automatically (see the kit-parent auto-ship behaviour described on the Rental Shipment doc; the same logic applies to structured Item Types).

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Components nest to any depth. A Component on one Item Type can itself be another Item Type that has its own Components, which in turn can be Item Types with Components of their own. The structure is theoretically unlimited; ship-time expansion walks the tree top-down so the full set of items, resources, and accessories ends up on the Shipment Order regardless of how deep the parent/child nesting goes.

FactBoxes (right-side panel)

Utilisation: a utilisation summary for the Type, rolling up how many units of this Type are currently out on rent.

Dimensions: the standard BC dimensions FactBox showing the resolved analysis dimensions for this Type (combination of inherited from Group and Type-level overrides).

Dimension inheritance

Rental Item Types inherit dimensions from their Rental Item Group, and pass dimensions down to the Rental Items belonging to them. Each Item Type also auto-generates its own dimension value on the Item Type Dimension configured in Rental Setup, so reports can slice by Type without manual setup.

For the full mechanics, see the Dimension inheritance section on the Rental Items doc; the model is the same at every level of the hierarchy.

Actions

Dimensions: opens the standard BC dimensions page for this Item Type; lets you set or override analysis dimensions inherited from the Group.

Extended Texts: opens the Extended Text list for this Item Type, where you author the standing descriptive text that drops onto rental document lines.

Extended texts

Extended texts are standing blocks of descriptive text you set up once and have appear on documents automatically, for things like safety notes, hire conditions, or a fuller specification than the line description carries. Essential Rental extends Business Central's own Extended Text feature down to the rental hierarchy, so you can hold texts against a Rental Item Group, a Rental Item Type, or an individual Rental Item.

Author them from the Extended Texts action on the card. Each text can be dated (a Starting and Ending Date) and language-specific, the same as standard Business Central. A new Rentals section on the Extended Text page controls where a text shows: tick Rental Quote, Rental Order, or both. A standard inventory Item's own extended texts come through on rental lines too, as long as the text is enabled for rentals.

When you put a line on a rental order or quote, the text is chosen by a fallback chain, most specific first: a Rental Item uses its own text, or failing that its Type's, then its Group's; a standard Item uses its own. If Automatic Ext. Texts is ticked at the level the text is found, the text drops in by itself as comment lines attached under the document line; otherwise use the Insert Ext. Texts action on the line to pull them in by hand.

The comment lines follow the line they belong to: they refresh when you allocate a Type line to a specific unit, they are removed if you delete the source line, and they carry across without duplicating when you convert a quote into an order.

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