Rental Management

App Overview

Rental Management is an item rental and lifecycle management app for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It gives sales teams and operations staff a structured way to rent out physical inventory items to customers, track the full rental lifecycle — from shipment to invoicing to return — and handle mid-rental events such as item replacements and suspensions, all without leaving Business Central.

At the heart of the app is the core rental flow: rental lines are created directly on standard sales orders by assigning a rental category (resource), a rental unit of measure, and a quantity. When the order is shipped, the item line is automatically swapped to a resource line representing the rental fee, and transfer orders are created to move the item to the customer and back. A Rental Relation Line is created behind the scenes for every rental line, tracking the full logistical and financial history of each individual rental.

Beyond the core flow, the app adds three supporting feature areas. Rental Prices and Price Scales provide a flexible pricing layer: prices can be configured per customer, customer price group, currency, and item variant, and tiered Price Scales allow the effective rate to decrease automatically as the rental extends. Rental Calendar and Invoicing Plan handle complex billing scenarios — the calendar defines non-chargeable or reduced-rate periods within a rental, while the Invoicing Plan combines the calendar and price scale into a pre-calculated billing schedule across the full rental period. Item Return, Replacement, and Suspension covers everything that happens after shipment: full and partial returns, lost/damaged returns, mid-rental item replacements, and quantity suspensions that temporarily reduce the billed amount.

Feature Map

Use this table to find the right article for your task.

Common Infrastructure

Several concepts are shared across all four feature areas. Understanding them once makes the individual feature articles easier to follow.

Rental Relation Line

The Rental Relation Line is the central tracking record for every active rental. It is created automatically when a rental sales order line is shipped, and it links the sales line to the outbound and inbound transfer orders. It carries the rental start date-time, closing date-time, item quantities shipped and received, the invoiced-to date-time, and flags for whether the rental is closed and fully posted. Every subsequent operation — invoicing, return, replacement, suspension — reads from and writes back to this record.

Rental Setup

The Rental Setup table holds the configuration that governs how the app behaves. A global record (with a blank Customer field) provides the company-wide defaults; additional records per customer allow individual overrides. Key settings include default locations (rental, transit, return), the default rental category and unit of measure, transfer order behaviour, posting rules, and dimension handling during the swap.

Rental Categories

A Rental Category is the bridge between an inventory item and a BC resource. Each rental category links to a resource (which represents the rental fee on the invoice) and defines the Duration — the length in milliseconds of the base unit of measure. Duration is what the system uses to calculate the rental return date and to determine how many rental periods fit within a given rental window.

Transfer Orders

The app creates and manages Transfer Orders automatically. For a standard rental, two transfer orders are created: one outbound (home stock → rental location) and one inbound (rental location → home location at return). If the rental location is configured as an in-transit location in BC, a single transfer order handles both directions. Transfer orders are linked to the Rental Relation Line and are updated whenever the sales line changes.

The Swap

The swap is the mechanism that converts a rental item line into a resource line at posting time. Before posting, the sales line carries both item information and rental information. When the shipment is posted, the item is physically transferred out via the transfer order, and the resource line — representing the rental fee — is what appears on the invoice. The swap can also be triggered on manual release of the sales order.

Typical Workflows

Setting up a new rental item

1. Create a Resource for the rental category (e.g. one resource per rental type — daily scaffold, weekly crane).
2. Create a Rental Category linking the resource and setting the Duration for its base unit of measure.
3. On the Item Card, enable the Rental Item flag and optionally set a default return location.
4. Verify the Rental Setup global record covers the correct rental, transit, and return locations.
5. Optionally set up Rental Prices for the item per customer or price group.

Processing a rental order

1. Create a Sales Order and add a line with the rental item.
2. Fill in Rental No. (rental category), Rental Unit of Measure Code, and Rental Quantity. The system calculates the Rental Return Date automatically.
3. Review and adjust the Rental Location Code, Transit Location Code, and Return Location Code if the defaults need to change for this order.
4. Post the shipment. The swap occurs, transfer orders are created, and the rental starts.
5. Post invoices periodically until the rental ends.

Returning a rented item

1. On the active Sales Order, select the rental line and use the Return/Replace Rental Item action.
2. Select the units being returned (by item ledger entry for serialised items, or by quantity for non-tracked items).
3. Set the Return Date-Time and confirm. The inbound transfer is posted and the rental relation line is closed.
4. Post the final invoice to bill the customer for the remaining rental period.

Setting up tiered pricing with an invoicing plan

1. Configure the Scale Base Price Source on the global Rental Setup (Rental Price or Sales Price).
2. Create a Price Scale with step lines defining duration and price factor per tier.
3. On the Sales Order, assign the price scale via the Price Scale Setup action.
4. Set Rental Invoicing Plan Start Date and Rental Return Date on the sales order header.
5. Optionally assign a Rental Calendar to define non-chargeable periods.
6. Open the Rental Invoicing Plan to review the pre-calculated billing schedule before posting the first invoice.

Integration with Other Abakion Apps

Setup

The setup user stories below cover the full end-to-end configuration of Rental Management — from first activation to a fully operational rental flow. Work through the Core Setup group first. The remaining groups can be configured independently depending on which features you intend to use.

The setup is split into four groups: Core Setup (required for all users), Rental Prices and Price Scales (required if you need structured rental pricing or tiered rates), Rental Calendar and Invoicing Plan (required if you need non-chargeable periods or pre-planned billing schedules), and Return, Replacement, and Suspension (relevant when returns and mid-rental changes are handled in a warehouse-managed environment).

Core Setup

Rental Prices and Price Scales Setup

Complete this section if you want rental unit prices to be looked up automatically from a price table, or if tiered pricing is required. Skip it if unit prices will be entered manually on every sales line.

Rental Calendar and Invoicing Plan Setup

Complete this section if rentals include non-chargeable or reduced-rate periods, or if billing needs to be pre-planned across the rental period using an Invoicing Plan. Skip it if all rental time is uniformly chargeable and invoicing is handled with a flat rate.

Return, Replacement, and Suspension Setup

Complete this section to configure how the app handles returns and replacements in environments that use warehouse management. No additional setup is required for standard (non-WMS) return and replacement flows.