It’s donut day here at Point of Rental, and that means one thing: The new version of Rental Essentials is out, and our customers got some pretty sweet things of their own last night.

Customers asked and our programming team delivered – Essentials now supports account customers, giving you the ability to support a credit limit by customer. You’ll be able to put account customers on hold when they exceed their account credit limit, block certain people from renting over a limit, or even require payment prior to taking out a rental. Cash customer payments can be set to be collected when a contract is converted to a reservation or sent out, or you can set a percentage to be due at each step.

Essentials is also now fully integrated with Xero accounting software, which gives Essentials users some more flexibility in their online accounting options. This will make Essentials’ rental management services even more useful, especially for customers in Australia, where Xero is the accounting software of choice for so many businesses.

If you have a maintenance schedule set up for your serialized inventory, our new maintenance feature will make that schedule easier to stick to. When you receive an item due for maintenance back from rental, you’ll get a message and the item will automatically be placed into maintenance. Once the maintenance order is complete, you can just receive it back into stock and the schedule will reset!

There are several other changes in this update, including integration into uInnovate, our online customer feedback management system. That will make it easier for Essentials users to make software suggestions and vote on what enhancements are most important to them. Here are some of the other updates:

  • A new payment screen, showing more information, like deposits and account limits.
  • The transaction overview screen now shows which items are taxed.
  • Calendar availability also has a new viewing option, allowing you to view multiple items at the same time.
  • New notes-taking features, allowing you to add reminders to each transaction.
  • New invoicing formats for those who prefer a more traditional look.
  • New help videos have been added to the support site.

For more information, see the release notes email that was sent to Essentials customers about the update.