Hello all, first post here, do be kind!
So, the company for which I’m hoping to develop ERPNext for does rentals as well as sales. These rentals depreciate with every use. Now, I’m aware that fixed assets can be depreciated over time, but is there any way to have stock depreciate per use?
Thank you very much.
Hi and welcome to the community.
I think the only in-built solution currently available for this is to pass a journal entry after each use/rental.
You’ll probably have to customise ERPNext if you want to keep a track of stock rented and depreciate the same after each use.
Hi Sagar,
Thanks for the response. Could you clarify what you mean when you say pass a journal entry? Also, how can I handle rental stock within ERP? I’m not seeing a mechanism by which I can note how a customer has returned stock back to us. Maybe I’m missing something obvious here.
I would not recommend passing a journal entry manually for depreciating the stock item every time you receive it back from the customer.
As I mentioned above, you’ll have to customise ERPNext for these purposes.
Other users have used warehouses for the purpose of keeping track of rental equipment.
For greater control, however, I recommend creating a custom app using the Frappé Framework. If you know Python and JS you’ll quickly learn this stuff.
Ah right, I understand you. I do know some Python, and zero JS, but I’m sure I can pick it up if necessary. I did consider using the warehouse, as it makes sense to keep rental and sales stock separate (and is physically equivalent to what the company does), but how would ERPNext deal with the stock that has returned? Is it just a sales return? There really isn’t a ‘rentals’ module, or did you mean that was a customisation element too?
In terms of customisation - and in particular hosting our own instance of ERPNext, where would you recommend I start looking? The documentation can be spotty on this and I’m feeling rather overwhelmed by it right now.
When you give it on rent → move stock to rental warehouse
When you get it back → move stock to original warehouse.
There isn’t a ‘rentals’ module, but you can create one for everyone to use!
For hosting your own instance, see:
Oh I see! I hadn’t actually thought of using it that way. I will have a look at that when it comes to it. Rentals are a long-term requirement (the business currently uses two separate systems for sales and rentals and I was tasked with finding something that could unify them), but I wanted to make sure it was possible.
Thank you very much for your help Sagar!
You are at the right place. Once you start understanding how ERPNext works and you’re comfortable with Python and JS, you’ll find that ERPNext opens up a lot of possibilities.
There is an employee loan functionality coming in version 8 soon. You may want to check if that functionality addresses what you are trying to achieve (loaning=renting).
Employee loan can be used only for internal purposes, not for loaning to customers. So I highly doubt that this would be a solution.
I concur. I want to keep the accounting option open for the future, so it’s important that entries are consistent (The client doesn’t really want a full accounting system yet).
Suchiththa,
I would be interested in knowing the approach you are taking to solve this customer product rental and depreciation query raised. Your inputs to this will be useful. Thanks
Hi Aditya,
The project is currently on hold, but it is likely that we will write a module to deal with this. Our team is python savvy, so we are likely to write something to solve the lack of rentals. The depreciation itself could be handled by implementing an ‘out for rentals’ warehouse and writing a rule for it, but it makes sense to handle rentals as a separate product type or module.