A proposed rental booking. Use this page to put pricing in front of a customer before they commit, then convert the Quote into a Rental Order when they say yes.
How it fits in
A Rental Quote is the front of the document flow. It captures the customer, the equipment they want, and the price you're willing to do the rental at, so you can put a credible figure in front of them without committing the equipment or starting the billing clock.
When the customer commits, the Quote is converted into a Rental Order using the Make Order action. The Order picks up the Quote's lines and pricing; from that point, shipping and invoicing happen against the Order. The Quote stays in the system as a record of what was proposed.
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A Rental Quote replaces the standard Business Central Sales Quote for any rental transaction. Standard Sales Quotes remain available for non-rental sales.
Header fields
The Rental Quote header carries customer, scheduling, and pricing information for the proposed rental. Fields are grouped into three FastTabs: General, Invoice Details, and Shipping and Billing. The shape closely mirrors the Rental Order, with a couple of Quote-specific fields described below.
General
General
No.required
Auto-assigned from the No. Series defined in Rental Setup. Read-only after the document is saved.
Customer No.required
The customer the rental is being quoted to. Setting this populates the customer's address, default Bill-to, currency, and tells the Quote which customer's pricing applies.
Customer Name
Defaults from the Customer card; editable.
Contact No., Contact Name
The contact person at the customer for this Quote. Lookup is filtered by the selected customer.
External Document No.
The customer's own reference (their RFQ number, project reference, etc.). Appears on printed and emailed documents.
Document Date
The date that appears on the printed Quote. Defaults to the work date.
The Rent-to sub-section holds the rental-specific fields plus the address the equipment would be going out to:
Rent-to
Address, Address 2, City, County, Post Code
The Rent-to address (where the rental would happen). Defaults from the customer card; editable on the Quote.
Quote Valid-to Date
The date the Quote stops being valid. Sets a clear expiry on the pricing you're offering, so neither side is held to a Quote that has gone stale.
Rental Start Daterequired
The day the rental would begin charging if accepted. Drives price calculation because price-list lines are date-effective.
Rental End Date
The expected last day of charging. Combined with Start Date, drives the rental period and total line amounts. Can be left open if the customer hasn't committed to an end date yet.
Your Reference
A free-text reference visible on printed documents. Often used for site name, job reference, or any short label that helps the customer identify the proposal.
Status
One of Open, Released, Pending Approval, or Closed (Pending Approval appears when an approval workflow is in play; Closed marks a quote that has been converted or finished). A quote must be Released before it can be converted to an order; see Releasing a quote below. There is no shipping flow on a quote.
No. of Archived Versions
A count of how many archived copies of this Quote exist. Each Archive Document action snapshots the current state of the Quote and increments this counter; useful when a Quote is revised multiple times during negotiation.
Project No., Project Task No.
Optional link to a Business Central Project and Project Task. When set, the eventual Order's lines can post to that project's job planning lines.
A free-text Description field at the bottom of the General FastTab lets you add a long-form description for internal use; it can also be surfaced on printed documents.
Invoice Details
Invoice Details
Currency Code
Defaults from the customer; can be overridden. Affects which price-list lines apply and the currency the Quote is raised in.
Shipment Date
The default expected ship-out date for the proposed rental. On the Quote this lives in Invoice Details (whereas on the Rental Order it sits in Shipping and Billing).
Prices Including VAT
When ticked, the Unit Price values on the lines are VAT-inclusive. When unticked, prices are net of VAT and VAT is added at posting.
VAT Bus. Posting Group
Standard BC VAT setup; together with the item's VAT Prod. Posting Group, drives which VAT rate applies.
Payment Terms Code
When the eventual invoice would be due relative to the invoice date. Defaults from the customer.
Payment Method Code
How the customer would pay (BACS, card, cash, etc.). Defaults from the customer.
Billing Cycle
The default billing cycle code applied to new lines: weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. Lines can override the Quote's default cycle individually.
Price Term Code
The default Price Term applied to new lines: Day, Week, Month, Quarter, or Year. Lines can override the Quote's default Price Term individually.
Location Code
The location the equipment would ship from. On the Quote this lives in Invoice Details (whereas on the Rental Order it sits in Shipping and Billing).
Shipping and Billing
Same shape as on the Rental Order: a Ship-to options picker with the chosen Ship-to address fields below, then the Shipment Method group, then the Bill-to options picker with the chosen Bill-to address fields. See the Rental Order doc for the field-by-field detail; the behaviour on the Quote is identical.
FactBoxes (right-side panel)
The Quote shows: Approval FactBox (shown when the quote has open approval entries), Attachments, Customer's Rental History, Customer Statistics, Customer Details, Rental Line Details (changes as you click around the lines), Links, and Notes.
The Lines section
As on the Rental Order, the Quote has two line subpages with different column sets:
Rental Lines: the proposed recurring rental items.
The Quote's line columns are leaner than the Rental Order's because the Quote doesn't yet track shipping and returning. There are no Quantity to Ship / Shipped / Return / Returned columns, no Lost flag, no Processing Status, no Base Calendar Code; the Quote is about pricing and what's being proposed, not the ship-and-return lifecycle.
Visible columns on a Rental Line
Lines
Type
What the line represents: Item, Rental Item, Rental Item Type, Kit, Resource, or Comment / Text. Same line type set as on the Rental Order.
No.
The identifier of the item, type, kit, or resource selected. Lookup filtered by Type.
Description, Description 2
Defaults from the selected record; editable.
Indent, Component of
Used by kit lines to show the visual indent and the parent kit reference. Filled in automatically when a kit is added.
Non-Billable
Flags lines that won't appear on the eventual invoice (typically kit components, billed via the parent).
Multi-Rate Exists
A flag showing the line's price is driven by a multi-rate price-list entry. Useful for spotting which proposed prices have banded rates.
Tiered Pricing
A drill-down indicator that the price-list line pricing this rental line has duration tiers. Click it to view the tiers from the matched price list.
Line Status
The lifecycle state of the line at the Quote stage.
Location Code
The location the line would ship from if the Quote is converted. Defaults from the Quote's Location Code.
Quantity
How many to propose for rental.
Unit of Measure Code
The unit the quantity is expressed in.
Avail. (Firm)
The smallest quantity of this item or kit available across the rental period when only confirmed orders are counted. Populated by the Check Availability action.
Avail. (incl. Quotes)
The smallest quantity available across the rental period when confirmed orders and released quotes are both counted. Lower than Avail. (Firm) when other live quotes are competing for the same stock.
Minimum Billing Period
The shortest period this line is billed for. If the item is returned before this period elapses, the invoice still charges the full minimum. Inherited from the price list and editable per line. Leave blank for no minimum.
Price Term Code
The pricing period for this line (Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year).
Tax Group Code
The tax group used to find the sales tax rate for this rental line. Inherits from the rental item. Shown where sales tax applies.
Billing Cycle Code
How often this line would generate invoice amounts once converted. Defaults from the Quote's Billing Cycle.
Unit Price Excl. VAT
The price per Price Term unit, exclusive of VAT. Comes from the matching price-list line for this customer; can be overridden.
Shipment Date, Return Date
The expected ship-out and return dates for this line.
Rental Start Date, Rental End Date
The proposed rental period for this line.
Term Amount
The expected total chargeable amount for this line, calculated from Quantity, Unit Price, Price Term, and the rental period.
Deferral Code
Optional standard BC deferral template for revenue recognition.
Project No., Project Task No.
Optional link to a Business Central Project and Project Task.
Below the line columns, the subform also shows totals for the selected line: Invoice Discount Amount, Invoice Discount Percent, and Total Expected Billing Period Amount.
Visible columns on a One-time Invoice Line
A lean set tuned to the quote stage: Type, No., Description, Description 2, Location Code, Quantity, Unit of Measure Code, Unit Price, Deferral Code. Used for proposing one-off charges (shipping, fuel, sundries) alongside the recurring rental. The order-stage tracking columns (Line Status, Processing Status, Project, Project Task) are not shown here.
Line types and walkthroughs
The line types (Item, Rental Item, Rental Item Type, Kit, Resource, Comment) work the same way on a Quote as on a Rental Order. Kit lines do not explode on the Quote by default; they explode on the Order created by Make Order. See the Rental Order doc for the kit explosion walkthrough and the multi-rate pricing walkthrough.
Line-level actions
The Quote line subform carries these line-level actions:
Multi-Rates: open the multi-rate windows for this line, where you set the date-bound rates that apply to parts of the hire. See Multi-Rate Pricing.
Availability Calendar: open the availability board scoped to this line's item, type, or group, to see what is on hire or pencilled in across the dates.
Check Availability: check whether the line's quantity can be met across its rental dates, and flag any shortfall.
Insert Ext. Texts: pull the extended texts for this line's item or type in by hand, as comment lines under the line.
Releasing a quote
A quote must be Released before it can be converted to an order. Releasing marks the quote as a committed enquiry: its units become provisional demand, contributing to the Avail. (incl. Quotes) figure on rental lines and to the pencilled-in view on the availability board, so a serious enquiry shows against the fleet ahead of the order being raised.
How a quote reaches Released depends on whether an approval workflow is configured:
No approval workflow: use the Release action on the quote. Reopen returns it to Open for editing, and drops it from the Avail. (incl. Quotes) figure until it is released again. These two actions appear only when no approval workflow is configured.
Approval workflow configured: the quote reaches Released by being approved. The Release and Reopen actions are hidden, and Make Order requires the quote to have been approved first. See Approvals.
Actions
Make Order: converts this Quote into a Rental Order. The quote must be Released first. The new Order picks up the Quote's customer, lines, and pricing. After conversion, shipping and invoicing happen against the Order; the Quote remains in the system as a record of what was proposed.
Get Recurring Rental Lines: drops a saved set of recurring rental lines onto the quote from a standard rental code, so a frequently quoted bundle can be added in one step instead of line by line. See Standard Rental Codes.
Archive Document: snapshots the current state of the Quote into the archive. Use this before significant edits during negotiation, so you can refer back to (or restore) earlier versions. Each archive increments the No. of Archived Versions counter.
Print: prints the Quote document for the customer (uses the Standard Rental Quote report layout).
Email: emails the Quote to the customer using the configured email template.
Attach as PDF: renders the Quote to PDF and attaches it to the document, so a saved copy is available against the record.
Statistics: opens the standard BC statistics page showing totals and figures for this Quote.
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When an approval workflow is configured, approval actions (Send Approval Request, Cancel Approval Request, Approve, Reject, Delegate, and Comments) appear on the quote alongside the actions above. See Approvals.
Related pages
Rental Order: created by Make Order when the customer commits.
Rental Shipment: posted from the Order when equipment leaves your yard.
Rental Invoice: generated from the Order's Create Invoice action.