Blackpurl does not include a dedicated Rental Management System. This article covers the recommended approach for managing rental units — using non-inventory parts to track unit availability and fees to record rental income.
Setup
Non-Inventory Parts
Set up each rental unit as a non-inventory part so you can track availability and report on rental status. To do this:
Create a non-inventory part record for each rental unit and assign a fictitious vendor — for example, your dealership name. This lets you report on unit availability using the Parts Report.
Leave costing fields blank when creating these part records.
To keep rental parts separate from regular parts inventory, create a Parts category called Rental and assign it to these part records.
Rental Fees
Set up fee items to record rental income in your accounting package:
Create a Fee category in Account Integration and assign the General Ledger account where rental income should be posted.
Create individual rental fee items — for example, Fee for Rental Daily, Fee for Rental Weekly, and Fee for Rental Monthly — and assign each to the fee category created above with the relevant rates.
How to Process a Rental
Step 1: Create the Customer Order
Create a Parts and Accessories Customer Order (CO) for the customer who is renting the unit. Your dealership may want to set up a dedicated transaction type called Rental so rental transactions can be reported separately.
Add two line items to the order:
The non-inventory part for the unit being rented — enter no price on this line.
The relevant rental fee item — enter the rental price on this line.
Step 2: Take a Deposit (If Required)
If your dealership collects a security deposit, click the Deposit button on the customer order and process the deposit as normal.
Step 3: Invoice the Rental Fee Only
Issue the customer invoice for the rental fee line item only — this is what the customer pays before taking the unit. Do not invoice the non-inventory part line. Leaving the non-inventory part uninvoiced keeps the CO open, which is how you track that the unit is currently out on rental.
Step 4: Track the Unit While It Is Out
While the unit is rented out, the Customer Order remains open because the non-inventory part line has not been invoiced. On the part record itself, you can see which CO the unit is currently attached to by checking the Related section.
Step 5: Process the Return
When the unit is returned:
Refund the security deposit on the CO if one was collected.
Delete the non-inventory part line item from the CO. The CO will close automatically once this line is removed.
Checking Rental Unit Availability
To see which rental units are available, run a Parts Report filtered by the vendor you assigned to your non-inventory rental parts. The report shows availability status for each unit:
Out of Stock — the unit is currently rented out.
Available — the unit is available to rent.
