Physical Rental Quantity in STAEDEAN Rental Management: Analyzing Inventory in Real-Time

Inventory management is undoubtedly one of the most essential operational processes for an equipment rental business. Ensuring your assets are in optimal condition is crucial to reducing equipment downtime.

To enable rental companies efficiently manage their rental fleet and much more, we offer a rental-specific solution embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management – STAEDEAN Rental Management.

This article shares the latest feature update to analyze rental inventory in our STAEDEAN Rental Management solution: Physical Rental Quantity.

What is the ‘Physical Rental Quantity’ feature of STAEDEAN Rental Management?

STAEDEAN Rental Management is a certified rental solution for Microsoft Dynamics that leverages the Microsoft technology stack and respects the Dynamics 365 business logic. To ensure STAEDEAN Rental Management complies with Dynamics 365 F&SCM, we continuously update and enrich it, guaranteeing the solution runs on the latest version. The newest feature update to STAEDEAN Rental Management is the ‘Physical Rental Quantity.’

The Physical Rental Quantity feature in STAEDEAN Rental Management enables users to control their rental inventory based on the standard D365 F&SCM, which uses real-time warehouse operations to update the inventory quantity.

With this feature update, users can check the available physical inventory of rental items based on the system date/time instead of the ‘rental on-hand’ that depends on the rental contract. The new feature will represent the current state of the warehouse operations (such as picking list registration, packing slip, or returns) using the system date/time updates of inventory transactions.

As an equipment rental company, you can get insights on your fleet’s actual physical inventory, triggered by your current actions, rather than the on-rent and off-rent dates for a piece of equipment.

Benefits of managing rental inventory using Physical Rental Quantity

• Increases planning and scheduling accuracy with better control of actual stock available
• Allows you to block operations (scheduling, maintaining, delivering, etc.) of rental orders based on the ‘in stock items’
• Offers real-time insights into the physical fleet on rent versus the fleet available in the system
• Helps users handle and manage bulk rental inventory of large quantities
• Improves decision-making of planners with insights into the ‘physical stock overview’ of the fleet
• Enhances customer experience with a better and more precise allocation of rental items based on the physical quantity
• Eases counting inventory and validating numbers against the stock

How can you set up the Physical Rental Quantity feature in STAEDEAN Rental Management for Dynamics 365?

Physical Rental Quantity works seamlessly within the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution and can be enabled with a simple click. The feature will be set up across all legal entities with the rental posting policy and works for different processes.

You can enable the feature in the ‘Business Object’ parameters in STAEDEAN Rental Management, as seen below.
(Click on the image for a full-screen view)

After enabling the parameter, you must execute a few actions related to setting up the rental posting policies connected to the rental types. Post enablement, you can calculate the Physical Rental Quantity numbers for all rental types.

Rental customers using STAEDEAN Rental Management have the option to either use the ‘rental on-hand’ to have an overview of the on-rent and off-rent dates or enable ‘Physical Rental Quantity’ to have information on the physical inventory of the fleet based on the system date/time.

Uses of the Physical Rental Quantity feature in STAEDEAN Rental Management for Dynamics 365

The following functionalities can work with Physical Rental Quantity, under varying scenarios:

• Rental order
• Rental transfer order
• Rental counting
• Purchase order
• Production order
• Sub-rental order
• Sales order
• Fixed asset conversion journals

The feature can increase or decrease the Physical Rental Quantity in the system based on specific triggers. Let’s take a closer look at some examples where the feature is applied:

For purchase orders: It increases the Physical Rental Quantity on the system date/time with the product receipt for purchase orders.

For sales orders: It reduces the Physical Rental Quantity on the system date/time for sales orders based on the posting of the packing slip.

For production orders: It increases the Physical Rental Quantity of production orders based on the finished transaction date.

For rental and sub-rental orders:

• It deducts the Physical Rental Quantity on the relevant on-rent date/time when a rental order is confirmed.
• It deducts the Physical Rental Quantity on the relevant system date/time when a rental or sub-rental order is picked up or delivered.
• It reflects an increase in the Physical Rental Quantity when the return note is booked for rental orders.
• It increases the Physical Rental Quantity on the system date/time with the product receipt for sub-rental orders.
• It immediately notifies if there is inadequate Physical Rental Quantity through an 'error message’ for all types of rental and sub-rental orders.

How does the Physical Rental Quantity feature in STAEDEAN Rental Management work?

So how does the feature increase or decrease the rental inventory volume based on the users' operational actions? We will explain this with screenshots of the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution so you can see the feature in action.

In our assumption, let's take an example of a pipe (labeled: Pipe_10) as the rental item. With Physical Rental Quantity, you can enable fields such as 'confirmed, picked, and delivered' on the rental posting policy.

The rental process begins on March 3, 2023, and this is the standard view of your on-hand Physical Rental Quantity for the rental item: Pipe_10.

Based on a customer request, you have created a rental order with the on-rent date/time as March 6, 2023, and the expected off-rent date/time as March 9, 2023.

The rental order is picked from the depot with the picking list registration on March 3, 2023. Once the item is picked, the system date/time is used to automatically deduct the on-hand Physical Rental Quantity by ‘1 unit’ (from 9 units to 8 units), as seen below.

At the end of the rental period, the rental order is picked up from the customer on March 9, based on the agreed upon off-rent date, and takes a day for return transport. The rental order is returned to the depot, and the return note is posted on March 10. Once the return note is posted, the Physical Rental Quantity will instantaneously increase, based on the system date/time, as seen below.

Assess rental inventory management today

If you liked what you saw and are looking for a rental solution that automates every step of your equipment rental process with standardized processes, you can explore more about STAEDEAN Rental Management for Dynamics 365. As a cloud-based, rental-specific solution, it manages your end-to-end financial, operational, and administrative processes in one go.

To learn more on how to streamline inventory management, schedule a demo with us.