Rental Items

Individual rental fleet asset records: one Rental Item per physical thing you rent out, with serial number, fleet status, fixed-asset link, and the technical attributes the customer might care about.

How it fits in

A Rental Item is the master record for a single, identifiable piece of fleet. Each one represents one physical asset, tracked individually through its lifecycle: acquired, available, on a rental order, shipped out, returned, in maintenance, eventually disposed.

Rental Items sit underneath two layers of categorisation: Item Groups (top-level: e.g. "Excavators") and Item Types (sub-category: e.g. "10-tonne Excavators"). Many operational behaviours default down from these layers (Price Term Code, dimensions, posting groups), which means Rental Items typically inherit their setup rather than configuring it from scratch.

Rental Items can be added in two ways: created directly on the Rental Items list (typical for new fleet acquisitions purchased explicitly as fleet) or via the Stock-to-Fleet wizard (typical for existing stock items being moved into the fleet).

Header fields

The Rental Item card has 5 FastTabs covering identification, physical attributes, accounting setup, supplier, and sale-on-disposal pricing.

!
Item Group No. and Item Type No. are mandatory and gate the rest of the page. Until both are filled in, every other field on the Rental Item card stays uneditable. Set the Group first (which filters the Type lookup), then the Type, then the rest of the page becomes editable with defaults inherited from the Group and Type.

General

General
No.required
Auto-assigned from the Rental Items No. Series defined in Rental Setup. Read-only after saving.
Item Group No.required
The top-level Rental Item Group this Item belongs to. Setting this populates a number of defaults (Price Term, posting groups, dimensions) from the Group. Mandatory: see the editability note below.
Item Type No.required
The Rental Item Type within the Group this Item belongs to. Drives the more specific defaults (Type-level Price Term, default Base Calendar) and is what Rental Item Type lines on a Rental Order allocate against. Mandatory: see the editability note below.
Description, Description 2
Human-readable description of the item; appears on rental documents and printed paperwork.
Current Location
Where the item is right now. Updated as the item ships, returns, or is moved between depots.
Owning Location
The home depot the item belongs to. Independent of Current Location: an item owned by Depot A might be currently sitting at Depot B because of how the last return was processed.
Serial No.
The physical serial number of the asset, used to identify the specific unit during shipping, allocation, and return.
Automatic Ext. Texts
When ticked, the Extended Texts held against this item drop onto a rental order or quote line automatically when a line references it; a Rental Item with no text of its own falls back to its Type, then its Group. When unticked, the texts can still be pulled in by hand. See Extended texts for the full feature.
Price Term Code
The Price Term (Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year) used by default when this Item appears on a rental line. Inherited from Item Type / Item Group / Rental Setup chain; overrideable per item.
Base Calendar Code
The working calendar used for this item's date arithmetic (which days count as billable, which are excluded as non-working). Affects rental-period and invoice-period calculations.
Non-Returnable
When ticked, the item is treated as consumable rather than returnable: shipping consumes it (it doesn't come back through Returns). Used for sundries, single-use items, or items that wear out in one rental.
Rental Status
The current lifecycle state of the item. One of: Not-Ready (newly created, no stock against the item yet so it can't be rented), Available (in stock and rentable), Rented (currently out on a rental), Maintenance (planned servicing), Service (ad-hoc repair), Unavailable (off the road for some other reason), Sold (disposed by sale), Scrapped (written off), Lost (gone from the fleet without a sale or scrap event). Updated automatically as stock movements, rental documents, and the Toggle Maintenance action move the item through its lifecycle.
On Rental Order
If the item is currently allocated to a Rental Order, this shows the Order No. Click through to navigate to the Order. Empty when the item is available.
Qty On-Hand
The quantity-on-hand for this Rental Item. For serial-tracked items this is typically 1 or 0 (each physical asset is one unit); for non-serial items it can be higher.
Link to Fixed Asset
Switch controlling whether the item is integrated with the Fixed Asset module. When ticked, the Linked to Fixed Asset field becomes meaningful and acquisition/disposal can post to FA G/L.
Linked to Fixed Asset
The Fixed Asset record this Rental Item is linked to. Set automatically by the Stock-to-Fleet wizard or via the Create Fixed Asset / Link Fixed Asset actions.

Technical Attributes

Physical attributes of the asset. Captured for reference, customer-visible quotes, and reporting.

Technical Attributes
Make, Model
Manufacturer and model identifier. Pick the Make from the Makes list, then pick a Model from the list filtered to that Make, so values stay consistent across the fleet. Changing the Make clears a Model that no longer belongs to it.
Year
Year of manufacture. Useful for fleet-age reporting and customer questions about the equipment.
Length, Length UOM
Physical length plus the unit it's measured in (mm, cm, m, in, ft).
Height, Height UOM
Physical height plus its unit.
Width, Width UOM
Physical width plus its unit.
Weight, Weight UOM
Physical weight plus its unit (kg, lb, t).

Posting

Posting groups that drive which G/L accounts the Rental Item's transactions hit. Most are inherited from the Item Group / Item Type and rarely overridden at the Rental Item level.

Posting
Gen Prod Posting Group Rental
The General Product Posting Group used specifically for rental income postings (revenue from this item being rented out).
General Product Posting Group
The standard BC General Product Posting Group used for non-rental postings (e.g. sale-on-disposal, write-offs).
Inventory Posting Group
Standard BC Inventory Posting Group that drives 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 the rental line, drives which VAT rate applies.

Purchase

Purchase
Vendor
The vendor this asset was purchased from. Used for warranty queries, repeat purchases of the same model, and supplier reporting.
Vendor Item
The vendor's identifier for this item, useful when raising purchase orders for spares, replacements, or matching back to the original purchase invoice.

Sales

Used when an end-of-life Rental Item is sold off (sale-on-disposal).

Sales
Sales unit Price
The default price the item would be sold for at end-of-life. Doesn't affect rental pricing.
Price Includes VAT
Whether the Sales unit Price is VAT-inclusive or net of VAT.

Making a new Rental Item Available

A newly created Rental Item starts at status Not-Ready: the record exists, but there's no stock against it (Qty On-Hand is zero), so it can't be allocated to a Rental Order. Stock has to exist first.

There are two paths to creating that initial stock entry:

Path 1: via the Stock-to-Fleet wizard. If the item is being moved out of existing BC stock, run Stock-to-Fleet from the source Item card. The wizard creates the Rental Item and posts the Item Journal entry to add stock against it as a single guided process; the resulting Rental Item is Available straight away.

Path 2: via the Positive Adjustment action. If the item was created directly on the Rental Items list (typical for a brand-new fleet acquisition not previously held as stock), use the Positive Adjustment action on the Rental Item card to post an Item Journal entry adding the unit to inventory. Once that posts, the status moves to Available.

Copying an existing Rental Item

When you're adding a new fleet asset that's structurally similar to one you already have (same Item Group, same Item Type, often the same model), the Rental Items list has a Quick Copy Item action that creates a new Rental Item from an existing one without retyping the shared fields.

Quick Copy Item copies across:

- Description, Item Group No., and Item Type No. from the source Item.

- The picture (if the source Item has one), so the new Item carries the same image without re-uploading.

A notification confirms the copy with the new Item No. After copying, open the new Item to fill in anything that's unique to that physical asset (Serial No., Owning Location, Vendor, etc.) and then make it Available via Positive Adjustment as described above.

FactBoxes (right-side panel)

Several FactBoxes appear on the Rental Item card:

Utilisation: a utilisation summary for this unit, showing whether it is currently out on rent and how heavily it has been used.

Picture: a thumbnail image of the asset. Particularly useful for quick visual identification when a customer rings asking about a specific item.

Meters: the meters tracked against this item (such as hours or mileage) with their latest readings.

Certificates: the active certificates held against this item, so you can see its compliance status at a glance.

Dimensions: the standard BC dimensions FactBox showing the resolved analysis dimensions for this item (a combination of inherited and item-level overrides; see Dimension inheritance below).

Attachments: any documents attached to this Rental Item (manuals, certifications, service histories).

Links: the standard BC record links, for pinning related URLs or notes to this item.

Notes: the standard BC notes pane for free-text notes about this item.

Dimensions: how they're generated and inherited

Rental Items participate in a two-part dimension model: each rental entity automatically gets its own dimension value generated from setup parameters, and dimensions cascade down through the master-data hierarchy.

Auto-generation from setup parameters

When a new Rental Item Group is created, a Default Dimension is created against it with Dimension Code from Setup → Item Group Dimension and a Dimension Value Code matching the Group's own No. (a Dimension Value with that code is created if it doesn't exist).

When a new Rental Item Type is created, the same pattern applies using Setup → Item Type Dimension; the new Type's No. becomes a Dimension Value under that dimension.

When a new Rental Item is created, the same pattern applies using Setup → Item Dimension; the new Item's No. becomes a Dimension Value under that dimension.

The net effect: every Group, Type, and Item is also its own dimension value, ready to be used for reporting without any manual dimension-value setup.

Inheritance down the hierarchy

In addition to its own auto-generated value, a Rental Item inherits the Default Dimensions of its parent Rental Item Type (which in turn has inherited from its Rental Item Group). When you change a Rental Item's Item Type, the dimensions cascade afresh from the new Type. When you change a Rental Item Type's Item Group, the same cascade runs down through the Type to every Item under it.

A dimension set explicitly at a lower level overrides whatever was inherited from above; you typically only set dimensions at the Group or Type level (or wherever in the chain makes sense for your reporting) and let the cascade and overrides do the rest at Item level.

All of the above only applies when Enable Rental Dimensions is ticked on Rental Setup. With that switch off, the auto-generation and cascade are both skipped and dimension assignment is fully manual.

Actions

Fixed Asset integration

Create Fixed Asset: creates a new Fixed Asset record from this Rental Item and links the two together. Used when a Rental Item exists but doesn't yet have a corresponding FA record.

Link Fixed Asset: links this Rental Item to an existing Fixed Asset record. Used when the FA was created independently (e.g. through standard BC fixed asset acquisition) and you want to associate it with this Rental Item.

Unlink Fixed Asset: removes the link between this Rental Item and its Fixed Asset record. Used when separating the two records for any reason; doesn't delete either record.

Maintenance and stock

Toggle Maintenance: flips the item's maintenance flag, taking it out of (or back into) the available pool. Use when an item is going in for service so that the allocation logic won't try to ship it while it's off the road.

Positive Adjustment: posts an Item Journal entry that adds this Rental Item to inventory. Two common uses: making a brand-new Rental Item Available (the standard path when not using Stock-to-Fleet, see "Making a new Rental Item Available" above), and reconciling when an item appears on the floor but isn't in the system.

Negative Adjustment: posts an Item Journal entry that removes this Rental Item from inventory. Used to reconcile when an item is in the system but not on the floor.

Navigation

Dimensions: opens the standard BC dimensions page for this Rental Item; lets you set or override analysis dimensions.

Rental Ledger Entries: opens the rental ledger filtered to this Rental Item's history. Each entry corresponds to a billing period or kit-fan-out posting against this asset, which is how you see lifetime utilisation revenue per item.

Rental Lines: opens a filtered view of every rental line (across Quotes, Orders, Shipments, Returns) that has referenced this Rental Item. The chronological history of where this item has been.

Reservation Calendar: opens a calendar view of the item's reservations and bookings, so you can see at a glance when it's free and when it's booked.

Related pages