I have started trying to understand ERPNext. It feels like a great and very powerful tool, but I need some pointers of where to look. I want to use it for Event planning. The major thing I can not figure out is how to handle rentals.
We are planning events where we have to keep track of:
Booking of technicians/freelancers
Booking of transport and the transport volume and weight.
Track consumables used for the event.
Rent (internally) gear. I want to be able to charge based on a usage period and “block” them based on a preparation/planning period.
It is primarily the equipment rental I can not figure out if it is possible or at least not how to do it.
I assume this is needed for many industries and the problems are more or less the same no matter if you rent out cars, hotel rooms, (internal) conference rooms, machinery or event equipment. You might want different customizations for what you do and optimize the workflow for you product but I assume rentals are rentals. You need to keep track where you gear are, how long they will be there, make sure they are not double booked, price them correctly and service them.
@ksesst we would also be interested in this long term including sponsoring a bounty for features (right now we are using Current Rental Management system and just importing invoices into ERP Next).
There was some discussion here:
And some related progress made in the property management module:
It would be a big undertaking to add the features, I wonder if it is just us interested or if there are more people who could jointly make a requirements document and sponsor the development.
We are going to implement ErpNext for company that does the event planning soon. I hope our experience will help others. We are still exploring ErpNext to fit the business model.
It feels like the first step would be compiling a requirements document and perhaps referencing existing software that has the needed features. Other people have asked in the forums, and there are some existing partially complete packages that can possibly be built on, but a complete list of what is required for minimum functionality is needed before the developers can determine how much work it would be.
Any progress on this. I’m starting to investigate the possibilities.
Some challenges:
Typically rental companies take payment in advance, then adjust the invoice when the equipment is returned. How do we take payment then edit later when dealing with a sales invoice? We can’t take payment on a draft invoice.
Some rental companies may use multiple UOM when calculating the final price. Like a nine day rental may have 1 weekly rate + 2 daily rate.