The Rental Equipment Master screen can also be accessed in the following ways:

1. Under the Modules menu > Rent > Rental Equipment.
2. By clicking on the Rent Details button on the Inventory Master screen.
3. By clicking on the Rent Details button on the Customer Equipment Card screen.

These buttons become available when Eralis Rent is installed.

The Rental Equipment Master Data is a key master data element in Eralis Rent, containing information relating to the specific items that can be rented out to customers including:

• Pricing options
• Available rental frequencies
• Related properties
• General Ledger posting options

Rental equipment can be based on either a standard inventory Item Code directly from the SAP Business One Item Master, or a Customer Equipment Card that has been configured in the Service module of SAP Business One. These two options accommodate different types of equipment that companies may own and operate. It is important to understand that a company does not have to have one or the other, they can use a combination of the two, depending on requirements.

Customer Equipment Card

Customer Equipment Cards are intended for situations:

• Where the equipment is generally larger
• Where each unique item can be identified
• Or if the tracking and management of service work done on the item is a priority and needs to be tracked

When Rental Equipment Items are based on a Customer Equipment Card, there are several facts that the company needs to be aware of.

1. The relationship between the Customer Equipment Card and the Rental Equipment Item is always a one-to-one relationship. Because the Customer Equipment Card represents one specific piece of equipment, the same applies to the Rental Equipment Item based on the Customer Equipment Card.
2. The company can have multiple Customer Equipment Cards based on the same Item Code, but each Customer Equipment Card will have a unique serial number. In this situation, the principle still applies that there is a one-to-one relationship between each Customer Equipment Card and the Rental Equipment Item.
3. A Customer Equipment Card does not represent an in-stock quantity of an item. For this reason, where the Rental Equipment Item is based on a Customer Equipment Card, no inventory movements are processed in SAP Business One. The dispatch of the item will update the status on the Rental Equipment Item to reflect the fact that it is on hire and no longer available, while the return will set the status back to off hire and available.

Note: The one-to-one relationship between the Customer Equipment Card and the Rental Equipment Item only applies to situations where a Rental Equipment Item has been created based on the Customer Equipment Card. The company can have Customer Equipment Cards that do not have Rental Equipment Items attached to them if they represent items that do not get rented out.

Inventory Item

Basing rental equipment on Item Codes is ideal for situations where there is generally a larger pool of the same item that can be dispatched to customers and each item is not necessarily uniquely identifiable. The system uses the standard SAP Business One inventory tools to manage the equipment quantities and, as such, when processing rental transactions such as dispatches and returns, the standard SAP Business One documents are generated to facilitate the inventory movements. 

Even if the item is serial number tracked, the Rental Equipment Item can still be based on an Item Code, as the serial number will need to be selected when the Item ID is dispatched in a similar manner to standard serial number processing.

If the Item Code has been configured in SAP Business One with a serial number attached, the serial number will need to be selected when the user processes a dispatch or a return.

Note: Items that are set to Batch Tracked are not supported with Eralis Rent transactions.