Hack My Rental Business: 3 Hacks for Simpler Rentals & Reservations

We’re so glad you can join us again for more awesome hacks for your life and business. As spring is full swing with summer soon to come here in the U.S., we know that rental businesses are going especially with beach-goers, special occasions, recreational entertainment, and more.

What’s a vacation without being able to do something that is fun or exciting whether that’s catching some waves on a surfboard or heading to the batting cage for a challenge? About two years ago, my family and I went to the beach, and it was so hot. We decided in the afternoon after thinking of things that we could do, that we would go to a baseball batting cage. We rented out a cage and many rounds. Needless to say, I barely made hits each time the machine threw a ball, but we had fun.

So for our rental business owners, today we’re thinking of you. And we can imagine some of the issues that you’ve faced whether you rent out sporting goods, heavy equipment, electronics, or more. We’ve put together 3 scenarios that you’ve likely run into with your business and some solutions to help.

1. Call-backs and messages take up too much of our time with rental requests. How can we make the rental process easier for ourselves and our customers?

Phone tag or even “message tag” is a game I’m sure many don’t enjoy. If customers call or email requests for rentals, we can imagine how this can become difficult when trying to manage requests especially if during a busy season.

As a rental business owner, you can simplify this process by allowing your customers to serve themselves with a reservation management system. You might be wondering, how can this be done with our inventory?

Let us show you.

Imagine that you own a surf shop where you rent out surfboards and bodyboards. On your website, you have a “Rentals” page where customers can call and request a board, but you’re getting phone requests & voicemails left and right between mid-mornings and afternoons.

With an online reservation management system, your customers can simply:

1. Go to your website
2. Visit your rentals page
3. Find the type of board they want to rent
4. Click the “Book Now” button
5. And be done.

You can add a "Book Now" button to your website for easy rentals

Boom! See how simple this was? Even if you don’t run a surf shop, this same principle can be applied if customers rent goods from you.

Want to make call-backs a thing of the past & spend more time focusing on growing your business? Yeah, we think you should, and you can give our rental reservation software a try for free.

2. It can be hard keeping up with paper copies of contracts. We want to maintain digital records of these for each client/customer.

We can understand that keeping track of paper copies with digital records could be tricky. One easy solution for this is to be able to upload digital records online for each client or customer, and this can be done with online scheduling.

Let's say for instance that for your rentals business, you require customers or clients to sign an agreement or contract before they rent. To simplify this process, while they are booking a rental with you, they can upload their agreement or contract before completing the booking.

Customers can upload completed agreements or contracts before completing their reservation

This would require them to have previously downloaded or received the document from you or you can send the form yourself through the reservation management system, but this would help with your recording-keeping by having a digital copy on hand directly with their client profile. So if you need to pull this file and want to do so digitally without rummaging through folders and records, with our system, all you would need to do is search for the client by name, email, phone, or a different specification and check under the "Forms" tab where you'll be able to find their agreement or contract.

You can find client agreements or contracts under the "Forms" tab

3. We want to avoid double-booking for our spaces. How can we do this?

No customer or client likes to hear that their space has been "double-booked" and something has to be worked out. Your business can avoid going through these moments with a reservation tool that's created to prevent double-booking.

Let's say that for your business, you rent out venues for special occasions like birthdays, weddings, baby showers, etc., and you've been handling bookings by paper. If two people call and request the same venue, you've got to be careful to make sure you don't book them for overlapping dates or times.

A better way to handle this is to allow these individuals to book online so that they can see available dates & times for these venues, and if you would feel more comfortable with confirming this booking on the business end before all is set, then you can have that assurance with our reservation tool.

You can require staff confirmation before a reservation is official

Although in the image above you see "Appointments Require Staff Confirmation", you would treat your rental reservations as appointments, and with this option checked, each reservation will need staff confirmation before they are official.

So we hope these 3 hacks will be able to help your rentals business by providing solutions for several of the issues that you may have come across. Liked these tips? Know a friend who needs to hear them? Give us a thumbs up and share this post with them.

We're still taking requests - so if you have a business that you're seeking hacks for with scheduling, let us know!