14 Pieces of Customer Information Companies Should Track in their Rental Software
Faith Kubicki
When you start using a rental ERP, the goal is to make it your Single Source of Truth for everything related to your business. On the customer management side, your software can become a powerful place to track all the critical pieces of information you may need. Of course, the basics, like addresses and phone numbers, are fairly self-explanatory – but what other pieces of customer information should you consider tracking in your rental software?
- Customer Number – Assigning a unique number to each customer is a best practice for tracking all their rentals over a period of time. If you have multiple customers with similar names, this helps prevent mis-billing or mis-deliveries.
- Customer Status – As a small organization, you may not track much beyond “active customer” – but as your customer base grows, it can be helpful to track additional statuses, such as “bad debt”; “credit denied”; “account closed by customer”; and “account deleted by company.” This lets you quickly and easily spot companies where you should not move forward with new rentals without further review. Similarly, you can also differentiate between private accounts and corporate accounts using a Customer Type field.
- Cycle Billing Codes – If the customer has asked to be invoiced on a specific cycle – e.g., once a week or once a month – you can set up a cycle bill schedule on their account. From there – assuming you’re using a complete ERP with an integrated accounting package – you can pull from this code to automatically generate those invoices on the pre-determined schedule.
- Use Long-Term Discounts? – Long-term rentals can be more profitable than short ones; they also tend to attract a different customer base. To be more competitive for these rentals, you may decide to offer discounts on long-term contracts. Using your rental software to track which customers qualify for these discounts lets your accounting team ensure they’re correctly applying the discounted pricing instead of your standard book rates.
- Special Insurance Policies and/or Expiration Dates – Does the customer carry special insurance for cranes, trucks, or other types of regulated equipment? You can use your rental software to automatically stop (or issue a warning) when processing a rental transaction for a type of equipment that falls outside the customer’s coverage, or if their insurance has recently expired.
- Tax Districts – If you’re using specialized tax software, such as Vertex, these codes pull directly from the customer’s operating address to make sure you’re automatically applying the correct rates to your invoices. You can also use Sales Tax and Rental Tax flags to note whether you should charge customers taxes on non-rental sales and rentals, based on their specific business structure.
- Custom Regions – As an independent rental company, an in-depth understanding of your customer base (and their unique needs) is critical if you want to compete with national chains on quality of service. However, to get this right, you need to be able to drill down into each segment of your market, including the various regions you serve. Breaking your customer base down by region allows you drill down into reports – such as profitability reports and utilization reports – for more robust insights into your market.
- SIC Codes – Similarly, analyzing your customer segments by industry lets you tailor your business model to the needs of different niches, such as carpenters or general contractors. You may find certain customer sets to have higher demand for different types of equipment; less price sensitivity during busy seasons; or other characteristics that let you make more informed decisions for growing your business.
- Credit Limits – Your Finance department may set limits for each customer’s open line of credit; a fully integrated rental accounting package lets you automatically track all open rentals and either warn or prevent your team from creating additional rentals that would push a customer over their approved limit.
- User Authorization, Purchase Order, and/or Job Number(s) Required – If your business rules dictate that your sales team collect a verified signature, purchase order number, or job number to move forward with a transaction, your ERP system can automatically apply that rule to each new contract.
- EPA Charges – If you charge EPA fees, you can indicate whether they apply to all customers or only specific ones. Tracking EPA charges at the customer level allows you to simplify the billing process if and when they apply.
- Damage Waivers – You can apply damage waiver charges for all rentals to a specific customer, if desired. If the customer has a Certificate of Insurance rider that exempts them from damage waiver charges, tracking this at the customer level in your ERP lets you maintain a note to skip any additional damage waivers. Tracking the expiration date as well is another best practice, allowing you to warn your counter team when the customer-provided insurance is close to expiration.
- Delivery and Pickup Charges – If you’ve negotiated free or discounted equipment pickups or deliveries for a customer, you can maintain that note on the customer record. (You can apply this business rule across the board, or you can allow your team to change it on a per-job or per-contract basis.)
- Source Codes – Customer acquisition is another important data point for understanding how you’ve grown your rental business to this point – and how you can continue to grow in the future. Establishing a set of codes to track where you find each new customer – i.e., outside sales, online advertising, or in-person event sponsorships – can help you better understand your market and refine your future projections.
Integrating with a CRM for Additional Customer Tracking
While these data points provide a solid foundation for managing your customer base, you may want to track additional information in a full-featured Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Integrating directly with a commercial CRM such as Salesforce can give you extra flexibility for measuring your pipeline, tracking attribution, and managing your territories. However, keeping that data tightly tied to your rental data – such as a real-time open contracts total – gives you the most visibility into your business.
Discover Rental Industry-Specific Solutions for Customer Management
InTempo’s rental software is designed to help you effectively track every aspect of your rental business – from customer data and contract data to accounting information and equipment details. If you’d like a real-time look at all the ways you can use it to more efficiently manage your business, contact us today.