Tracking Missed Equipment Rentals in Your Rental Software

Faith Kubicki

Tracking missed equipment rentals is an excellent way to determine how well your inventory is meeting local demand. If your sales team has to repeatedly turn away customers who call in looking to rent a specific machine, it may indicate a good opportunity to add that equipment (or more of that equipment) to your fleet.

On a very basic level, sales reps can track this on a sheet of paper at the rental counter. For a more scalable approach, however, you may want to consider a more formal missed rental tracking process in your rental software.

InTempo Enterprise offers missed equipment rental tracking functionality in two different scenarios. You can launch the Missed Rental Screen manually, without any trigger (for instance, if a customer calls in to rent an articulated forklift and you only have standard forklifts in your fleet.) The Missed Rental Screen can also trigger automatically if you cancel an existing reservation (for instance, if a contractor calls back to cancel because he found one elsewhere for cheaper.) Other reason codes include:

• Non-stocking item
• Price too high
• Insufficient quantity on hand
• Item was in the shop

When you populate a Missed Rental record from a cancelled reservation, the system automatically imports the original data, including the rate and the total expected revenue; you don’t have to manually calculate or re-enter the details.

InTempo’s Missed Rental records also let you track:

• Which location missed the opportunity, if you have multiple branches
• What equipment was requested and in what quantity
• When it was requested
• The number for the cancelled reservation
• The customer name
• The reason for the cancellation
• The length that the rental would have been for
• The amount of lost revenue
• The internal user who cancelled the reservation

This information can help you better assess how well your inventory is meeting demand and how much revenue you might be able to capture in the future if you invest in commonly requested pieces of equipment.

From here, you can visualize this data on a Missed Rentals Dashboard. You can also schedule this report to automatically deliver to specific members of your team – such as your Fleet Manager, Sales or your Director of Finance – at specific intervals (e.g., at the end of every week at noon or at the end of every month.)

Learn More About Tracking Missed Rentals in InTempo Enterprise

Ready for a better way to track your missed rentals? We’re happy to walk you through a quick, no-obligation demo; contact us today to learn more about our all-in-one rental ERP.