Rental Kits

A pre-defined bundle of items, types, resources, and other content that ships and prices as a single unit. Use Kits when the customer always rents these things together.

How it fits in

A Rental Kit is master data describing a bundle: a parent kit plus a list of components (Items, Rental Items, Rental Item Types, Resources, even Comments). When a Rental Order line of Type "Kit" is added, the parent line is what the customer sees and is priced; on Release, the kit explodes into its components on the order so each piece can be allocated, shipped, and tracked individually.

Kits differ from Rental Item Type Components in two ways: a Kit is its own master record with its own price and invoice behaviour, whereas an Item Type's Components belong to that Type and inherit its pricing. Kits are typically used for sellable bundles ("Standard Site Set: 1 generator, 2 cable reels, 1 fuel can"); Item Type Components are typically used for inseparable accessories that always ship with a specific equipment type.

How a Kit gets billed and how it appears on the invoice are governed by two settings on the Kit master: Price Method and Invoice Method, both detailed below.

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flowchart TD
  G["Rental Item Group · Generators"] --> T["Rental Item Type · 5kVA Generator"]
  T --> I1["Rental Item · GEN001"]
  T --> I2["Rental Item · GEN002"]
  T --> C["Type Components · 10m cable, earth spike"]
  K["Rental Kit · Site Set"] -. references .-> T
  K -. references .-> OT["Other types / items"]
A kit sits on top of the way your fleet is already organised: groups sort your equipment into families, a type is a model within a family, and the serial-numbered machines are the items beneath a type. A type can carry its own always-with components, and a kit references the types and items it bundles together.

How a kit explodes: Fanned vs Pooled

When you add a kit to a rental order and release it, the kit opens up into the individual lines that are actually allocated, picked, shipped and billed. If you only ever rent one at a time there is nothing to decide. But when a customer takes several of the same kit, there are two ways the order can lay those lines out, and you choose which on the kit itself. The setting is called the Explosion Method.

Fanned: every unit in full

Fanned gives every unit its own complete set of lines. Rent three Site Sets and the order shows three separate copies of the kit, each with its own generator, its own two cables and its own fuel can. Choose it when you handle each unit in its own right, for example where every generator is a tracked asset that is shipped, serviced and returned on its own.

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flowchart TB
  F0["Site Set ×3"] --> F1["Site Set #1"] & F2["Site Set #2"] & F3["Site Set #3"]
  F1 --> F1a["Generator ×1"] & F1b["Cable ×2"] & F1c["Fuel Can ×1"]
  F2 --> F2a["Generator ×1"] & F2b["Cable ×2"] & F2c["Fuel Can ×1"]
  F3 --> F3a["Generator ×1"] & F3b["Cable ×2"] & F3c["Fuel Can ×1"]
Three Site Sets, laid out as three complete copies of the kit.

Pooled: one tidy block

Pooled gathers the whole quantity into a single block. Rather than three copies you get one Site Set heading, the three generators still listed individually beneath it (they are serial-numbered, so each is tracked on its own), and the interchangeable parts collected onto one line each: six cables together, three fuel cans together. Choose it when the smaller parts are interchangeable and you would rather see and bill them as one pool than repeat them for every unit.

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flowchart TB
  P0["Site Set ×3 · one block"] --> PU1["Generator #1"] & PU2["Generator #2"] & PU3["Generator #3"]
  P0 --> PC1["Cables · 6 together"]
  P0 --> PC2["Fuel Cans · 3 together"]
The same three Site Sets, rolled up into a single block.
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You set the Explosion Method on each kit's card, and separately on any rental item type that carries its own components. New kits and types start from the company-wide default in Rental Setup (Default Kit Explosion Method and Default Component Explosion Method), and you can override it on any individual one.

Header fields

General

General
No.required
Auto-assigned from the Rental Kits No. Series defined in Rental Setup. Read-only after saving.
Description, Description 2
Human-readable description of the Kit; appears on rental documents when a line of Type "Kit" is added.
Price Method
Controls how the Kit is priced on a rental line. Kit: the Kit's own price (set on the parent line) is what the customer is charged; components are non-billable. Components: each component is priced independently from the Rental Price List and the line totals add up to the customer charge. Most kits use Kit; choose Components when the customer expects to see itemised component pricing.
Invoice Method
Controls how the Kit appears on the generated Sales Invoice. Kit: only the parent line, with the kit's price; the customer sees no breakdown. Kit w/Components: parent line with the price, plus component lines underneath as a non-billable breakdown so the customer sees what's in the kit. Components: only the component lines, no parent (used with Components Price Method).
Explosion Method
Whether a quantity of this Kit explodes into Fanned (a full copy of the kit per unit) or Pooled (one rolled-up block with quantities scaled) lines when the order is released. Defaults from Default Kit Explosion Method in Rental Setup. See How a kit explodes above.
Base Calendar Code
The base calendar associated with the Kit. It flows through to the exploded rental lines, where it governs the billable-day arithmetic (which days count when working out how long each component has been on rent).

Invoicing

Invoicing
Gen. Prod. Posting Group
Standard BC General Product Posting Group used when the Kit's parent line posts to G/L. Drives which revenue accounts the Kit's billed amount hits.
VAT Prod. Posting Group
Standard BC VAT Product Posting Group; combined with the customer's VAT Bus. Posting Group on the rental line, drives the VAT rate on the Kit's billed amount.
Tax Group Code
The tax group used to find the sales tax rate for this Kit when it is sold or rented in a tax jurisdiction. Used in sales-tax regions in place of the VAT posting groups.

Kit Lines

The Lines subpage holds the Kit's components: what gets bundled in. Each line carries:

Kit Lines
Type
What the component is: Item, Rental Item, Rental Item Type, Resource, Comment, etc. Same line type set as elsewhere in Essential Rental.
No.
The identifier of the chosen component, filtered by Type.
Description
Defaults from the chosen component; editable per line.
Quantity
How many of this component are part of one of the Kit.
Component Requirement
Whether the component is essential to the Kit. Mandatory components cannot be removed from an exploded kit - they can only be swapped for an approved substitute. Optional components can be removed when configuring the kit.
Kit Price Factor
A decimal between 0 and 1 representing this component's share of the Kit's per-period revenue when the Rental Ledger fan-out runs. Only meaningful under Price Method = Kit; ignored under Components. The factors across all lines of a Kit must sum to 1 or less. See the walkthrough below for how this is used and how to populate it automatically.

FactBoxes

The Rental Kit card carries the standard Business Central FactBoxes on the right of the page:

FactBoxes
Attachments
Files attached to this Kit (spec sheets, photos, packing lists). Drag a document in or use the attachment actions to add one.
Links
Hyperlinks to related records or external pages associated with the Kit.
Notes
Free-text notes for internal reference against this Kit.

Walkthrough: choosing Price Method and Invoice Method

The combination of Price Method and Invoice Method determines what the customer sees on the invoice and what gets posted to the Rental Ledger. Three common combinations and what they produce:

1
Kit price + Kit invoice (the typical case)

Price Method = Kit, Invoice Method = Kit. The customer sees a single parent line on the invoice at the Kit's own price. Components are flagged Non-Billable on the rental order and don't appear on the invoice. Behind the scenes, the Kit's revenue is fanned out to each component's underlying Rental Item via Kit Price Factor for utilisation reporting (see Rental Invoice for the ledger detail).

2
Kit price + Kit w/Components invoice

Price Method = Kit, Invoice Method = Kit w/Components. The customer sees the parent line at the Kit's price, plus each component listed underneath as a non-billable breakdown so they can see what's in the bundle. Use when transparency about the kit's contents matters to the customer (e.g. for compliance or matching to their own asset register). Ledger fan-out via Kit Price Factor still runs.

3
Components price + Components invoice

Price Method = Components, Invoice Method = Components. Each component is priced independently from the Rental Price List, and the invoice shows the components individually with their own line amounts (no parent kit line). Use when the kit is really just a convenient way to add a set of items to an order, but each item should be billed at its own rate. No ledger fan-out is needed because each component generates its own ledger entries via the standard rental-line path.

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The same Kit can be referenced from many Rental Orders; the Price Method and Invoice Method on the Kit master apply consistently across all of them. The actual values get snapshotted onto the rental line at Release time, so changes to the Kit master after Release don't retroactively change orders.

Walkthrough: populating Kit Price Factors automatically

When Price Method is Kit, each component line needs a Kit Price Factor so the Kit's revenue can be fanned out to component ledger entries. You can set them by hand, or have the system calculate them based on each component's current rental-list price.

1
Make sure each component has a price-list entry

For each component on the Kit, ensure there's a matching line on a relevant Rental Price List with a non-zero Unit Price. Components without a price-list entry will be left at their current Kit Price Factor (typically 0) and surfaced in a message after the calculation runs.

2
Run Calculate Factors from Component Prices

On the Rental Kit ribbon, use the Calculate Factors from Component Prices action. The system sums up the priced components, then assigns each component's Kit Price Factor as its share of the total (component price divided by total priced).

3
Review and adjust if needed

If any components had no price-list entry, a message lists them so you can decide whether to add a price-list entry and re-run the calculation, or set the factor manually on those lines. Factors must sum to 1 or less across the Kit; the system enforces this on edit.

Edit Kit Structure

When a Kit's components include other structured records (like Rental Item Types with their own Components), the lines on the Kit subform only show the immediate children. The Edit Kit Structure page (accessible from the Kit, and also from a Kit-Type rental order line) opens a separate view that walks the full nested structure top-down. Use it to inspect or audit what a Kit will actually expand into at ship time, especially when the nesting goes more than one level deep.

Actions

Calculate Factors from Component Prices: auto-populates Kit Price Factor on every line of this Kit by proportioning each component's current rental-list price against the sum of all priced components. Components without a rental-list price are left at their current factor and listed in a message.

Related pages