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Equipment rental software needed!


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  • 1 month later...

Emils,

 

I don't think you're going to find freeware to manage a rental business... Or for that matter that you would want to run a business on free software. That said, it sounds like you're feeling the pain of a business run by manual systems, which means the business is at the limit of it's growth potential too. If you can convince the owners they have a problem, my company Cloud Builders crafted many custom rental management solutions for customers using Salesforce's Force.com platform for custom rental applications that include: inventory management, rental tracking, maintenance tracking, group schedules, forecasting, purchasing and most important - marketing automation. If you can get their ear, we'd be happy to talk to them.

 

-Matt

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Or for that matter that you would want to run a business on free software.

 

Seriously? Paid Software != Good Software. Please stop spreading FUD like this. Jeez, what is this? 1996?

 

As for salesforce, aside from being just terrible software, it's a complete ripoff and the company (salesforce) locks you into subscription based services that they make it very hard to get out of. We tried using it for contact management a few years ago and when I realized it wasn't working for our needs, they said we couldn't cancel it until the end of our subscription period (a year). Fine, it was prepaid so I figured I'd wait. Then I forgot, and didn't notice they had charged our card again until the statement arrived. At that point, they told me I only had 15 days or something like that in which to cancel, or I would have to pay for another year. Unfortunately, that 15 day period had elapsed, and they refused to cancel the account. It took a call to the credit card company to issue a chargeback to finally get them to back off.

 

My wife had similar issues with them with her company. Customer service was terrible, the user interface is terrible, I could go on. It's one of the *worst* pieces of software I've ever used, and guess what? Most of what it does can be done - wait for it - for free using open source clones.

 

As for the original poster: I did a quick google search (Google, by the way, is a company built on a lot of open - free - software).

 

I can't speak for this particular project, but you might check this out. obviously it requires a bit of learning if you're not familiar with setting up web sites. But if you are, you might also look at content management systems like Drupal (Free, used to run many a major site), which often have plugins for doing things like what you're looking for. Might require a bit of extra setup, but there are ways to make it work, and frankly, it's rarely necessary for a small business to buy into more expensive systems. There's usually an alternative out there.

 

If you wanted to go the salesforce-style route, you might look at:

http://www.openlogic.com/wazi/bid/327311/OpenCRX-An-open-source-Salesforce-alternative

 

Many things like this built on open source software offer both free and paid versions. Typically the paid version is the same thing, but with technical support. So when you're searching, don't be turned off by a price take, look closer and see if they offer an unsupported version for free - might work for you.

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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Perry, I sense your frustration and I understand how you are looking at this. Let me clarify a couple of things.

 

Salesforce is not for mom & pops. If you're looking for something free/cheap, and you are a programmer or you are willing to put in a lot of effort, there are things out there. For cheap/free I'd recommend - sugar crm first. It has a version you can download, host, maintain and customize with php. Php developers through odesk or elance you can get offshore 10-15/hr. Next look at Zoho for $12/mo/user. But having experience with both, neither can be configured to run much outside of traditional CRM functionality (emails, basic workflow, lead and opportunity management). I wouldn't try to build any rental inventory tracking modules in them...

 

Salesforce's products have 14 years and over 100M in development behind them. Yes Salesforce is a subscription model (this is a business model called SAS - Software as a Service) and yes you will have to sign a contract. For Group Edition it costs 65/mo/user - group you can only use as a CRM and you do not have API access. To make a rental app you'll need Professional at a minimum and that's going to run you 125/mo/user. So if you are looking for a mom and pop solution, this is out of your price range - I wouldn't even bother unless you have at least .5M in revenue. BUT, if you can afford this, it is a world class platform, extremely powerful, flexible and user friendly and you will see a payback within the first year from increased productivity, better customer support and increased sales. However, you will need consultants to set it up, since it is a business system and has a lot of moving parts, but consultants bring with them best practices that you will benefit from.

 

I've been building internet businesses for 10 years on everything from core PHP to Wordpress to Joomla, etc. I switched to products and consulting via my Salesforce consulting firm because I got tired of building things from scripting languages and spending months debugging and I got away from trying to help lifestyle businesses!

 

So the takeaways are - Salesforce is the best available market cloud solution IF it is within your price range, it is not for mom & pops, and if you decide to use it, you need an implementation partner otherwise you run the risk of having a failed or poorly configured implementation, the latter being a slow fail as opposed to a fast fail.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 4 months later...

We were actually building one for a client here in Dallas. I've tweaked the heck out of it. We have built two versions. One using the core element of wordpress and the other using prestashop. Still tweaking wordpress to be a little more mobile friendly but probley done in a day or two. Not sure if anyone is here is still looking for a custom rental solution. Cool thing about this one is that you know it can be fully customized visually since it's wordpress:

http://www.candelabrumgroup.com/projects/rental-service/

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Seems futile to try to and hawk you company and software here.

Show of hands...., how many own or work in a rental house?

I own a rental house. Latitude 33 Motion Picture Services, LLC. It's small but has been successfully in business for 26 years.

 

G

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Greg, how do you track your inventory, check equipment in and out?

We use a barcode scanning system. Can't remember the name of it. I only have one employee. He does it all. My wife does most of the management since I'm on location most of the time. Then the accounting is run through Quickbooks.

 

G

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Hi guys. I posted a year or so ago on here re rental software solutions. I grew up in a computer rental business in the DC area, now I have a Salesforce consulting business and we've built rental solutions using Salesforce as the platform for customers.

 

I don't know what the standard is for camera rental but if you're evaluating solutions (and no I don't get a commission) I'd consider the Force.com platform. It's not right for everyone, but SF is now the world's 4th largest software company and they've put over a billion dollars into developing the platform. There literally is nothing it can't do (I tell customers they are only limited by their creativity and their wallet).

 

If you're looking for rental software, look at Salesforce if:

 

You're >1M in annual revenue

You want one system to do everything

You can afford 5-10k/yr in software license fees and 10-30k in setup costs. (this is for a biz 1-2M)

 

If that's not you, I get it. If that didn't scare you off, if you use the Force.com platform you can create a world class scaleable system with low operating costs. It won't break, you don't have to maintain it and it's 100% secure.

 

Salesforce Licenses Overview

Professional ~ 65/mo/user - No coding, no record types (you can't use this it's too limited)

Enterprise ~ 125/mo/user - Supports customization by Apex code (no limitations)

Force.com ~ 25/mo/user - Supports customization by Apex code, no leads or opportunities objects (no CRM)

 

You can mix and match Force and Enterprise licenses. They make you buy one EE. What this means is that you can manage your entire pipeline (leads and opportunities) with one EE license and then run the rental process using Force.com licenses. This is a good deal. You're getting the world's best platform for 300/yr/user.

 

There are a couple apps out there (applications built in Salesfore) for the rental industry, but I honestly haven't explored them too much. If we ever get around to packaging an app I'll post it here.

 

And to those looking at solutions built in php or Wordpress (wp is php), I'd be careful. I've done a ton of WP development. It's not an enterprise software. It's not secure, it's not scaleable, it breaks a lot, it's easily hacked and you'll be debugging it for the rest of your life.

 

Oh, and if you're looking at SF vs Microsoft Dynamics or Great Planes, we get a lot of business of customers abandoning those products... The Microsoft stuff sucks. Their motto is first in a market, not best in a market.

 

I forgot Quickbooks. You can integrate Salesforce to QB online easily and to the desktop too. Desktop is a greater level of effort. Online integration expect to spend 1k/yr on integration 0 setup. Desktop 1500/yr and 2-3k setup. You will create and distribute your invoices from SF, then as they are received in QB, the status is updated in SF "paid". So all the work is done in SF, your book keeper just records payment in QB and the update is dynamic.

 

If anyone out there is trying to grow their biz - def look at Force.com. If I had a rental biz, I'd be using it. And if and when I/we ever get around to building a rental app I'll post it back here. That will be a plug. This is just sharing. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Matt Brown- our app, CheetahBMS.com (intro posted above) is built on the Force.com platform and tailored to the rental and production business. We are Salesforce ISV partners so you essentially get the Force.com licenses and our managed package installed when you buy Cheetah.

 

All in all, I agree, Force.com is going to be the most robust platform out there if someone is looking for a truly customized solution.

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  • 1 year later...

New here, just saw this post come up on a web search and realised I'm a member so offering some input, albeit a bit late.

 

I work for a couple of companies and both have recently switched to the Hirehop software to manage their equipment rentals. They both seem to constantly rave about it.

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  • 7 months later...
  • 3 years later...

I've used Adelie Logistics (https://adelielogistics.com) for my event rental company for several years now. It's simple, integrates with QuickBooks easily, is cloud based so can access from anywhere, has all the features we need and is super inexpensive. They have a free 30 day trial and then their base package is $50/month for unlimited users. Hope that helps with your or anyone else's search. I've tried many rental softwares and I believe this is the best bang for the buck.

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On 9/9/2021 at 9:32 PM, Joe Mangum said:

I've used Adelie Logistics (https://adelielogistics.com) for my event rental company for several years now. It's simple, integrates with QuickBooks easily, is cloud based so can access from anywhere, has all the features we need and is super inexpensive. They have a free 30 day trial and then their base package is $50/month for unlimited users. Hope that helps with your or anyone else's search. I've tried many rental softwares and I believe this is the best bang for the buck.

Also, just to be completely transparent, I am associated with Adelie Logistics and help with the development of the product. I have, in addition to helping create the software, used it for my rental company (Royalty Rentals in Chandler AZ) for several years. I know some people get put off by sneaky self promoters so just wanted to be completely transparent here. Please comment/reply if you have questions. Happy to help.

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