How do I manage equipment rentals as a school?

How do I manage equipment rentals as a school?

If you rent equipment alongside lessons, the platform's rental module handles the full cycle — catalogue, pricing, payment, barcode check-out, and check-in. It lives in the Equipment Rentals section of your dashboard, organised into tabs: Overview, Equipment, Inventory, Packages, Orders, Maintenance, Pricing Rules, Analytics, Import, Damage, and Settings.

Open Lessons → Rentals. Availability depends on the school's rental settings and your permissions; contact the owner or support if you cannot access the expected tools.

Step 1 — enable and configure the service

Open the Settings tab first. Everything else builds on it:

• Enable Equipment Rentals — the master switch; nothing is bookable until this is on
• Allow Standalone Rentals — let customers rent without booking a lesson
• Allow Booking Add-on Rentals — show the rental step inside your lesson booking flow
• Currency and rental terms — minimum and maximum rental days (defaults: 1 and 14), pickup time (default 08:30), return time (default 17:00), and an optional late-return fee per day
• Deposit — optional; either a flat amount or a percentage of the order total
• Rental agreement — on by default; you can supply your own agreement text, plus custom pickup and return instructions

The agreement is signed digitally at order level — the signature and timestamp are stored on the order, so you have a clear record if there's ever a dispute. (It's one agreement per school, not a per-item waiver flag.)

Step 2 — build your catalogue

Three layers of organisation:

• Categories (Equipment tab) — broad groupings such as Skis, Boots, Helmets, Poles, Snowboards. Each category records whether it needs sizing information and whether DIN settings apply (skis with bindings). A default set is seeded for you when the module is first enabled.
• Individual items — every rentable product. The Add Equipment form takes: name (e.g. "Atomic Redster S9"), category, brand, model, barcode (type one or auto-generate), tier (Basic / Standard / Performance / Premium), activity (skiing, snowboarding, or both), condition, size, stock quantity, daily price, replacement value, purchase year, and notes. For bulk items (helmets in size M, say), set a stock quantity rather than creating one record per unit — the system tracks how many are out at any time.
• Packages (Packages tab) — bundles for specific student profiles. The form takes: package name (e.g. "Beginner Ski Package"), description, tier, activity, daily price, discount percentage, and target level. A package has its own daily price; the discount percentage records the saving against hiring the included categories individually, and is shown to customers as "X% off".

Step 3 — pricing rules and discounts

All rental pricing is per day — an item's price is its daily rate multiplied by the number of rental days. Weekly rates and multi-day discounts are built with pricing rules (Pricing Rules tab → Add Rule):

• Rule name — e.g. "Weekly Discount"
• Min days (required) and max days (optional) — the duration band the rule covers
• Discount type — percentage, or a flat amount per day
• Discount value
• Optionally, a rule can be restricted to a single tier (e.g. a discount on Basic gear only)

Two things worth knowing about how rules are applied:

1. Rules don't stack. For each item, the system evaluates every active rule that matches the duration and tier, then applies the single rule that produces the largest discount. The applied rule's name is recorded on the quote.
2. Rules are duration- and tier-based only. There are no date-based rental rules — peak-week surcharges and lesson-plus-rental combo discounts aren't part of the rental engine. If you want peak-week uplift, price it into the daily rate; bundle value comes from packages and duration rules.

Worked example

Skis at €25/day for 6 days, with two active rules — "3-Day Discount" (10% off, 3–4 days) and "Weekly Discount" (15% off, 5+ days):

• Subtotal: 6 × €25 = €150
• "3-Day Discount" doesn't match (6 days is outside its 3–4 day band); "Weekly Discount" matches
• Discount: 15% of €150 = €22.50 — total €127.50, with "Weekly Discount" shown as the applied rule

If you also require a 20% deposit, the deposit is calculated on the discounted total.

How rentals attach to bookings

When booking add-ons are enabled, the lesson flow reserves equipment for payment at collection. The server validates the rental selection alongside the booking, but the rental is not charged as part of the lesson Stripe checkout. Check the rental order and payment state separately from the lesson.

One honest caveat: cancelling a lesson does not automatically cancel a linked rental order. If a student cancels, cancel the rental separately from the Orders tab.

Standalone rentals use the school's rental page and their own online-payment flow, subject to provider and Stripe readiness. A pending checkout is not a paid reservation; wait for the confirmed payment status.

How students see and manage it

Students enter a sizing profile once — height, weight, boot size (EU, Mondo, UK, or US), age, and experience level — and it's saved to their account for future rentals. From there:

• AI sizing recommendations suggest best-fit items and packages for their profile; orders placed this way are flagged so you can see how often the recommendations are used
• Sizing and binding information may assist the fitting workflow; it is not a substitute for a qualified technician's equipment inspection, manufacturer guidance, and binding setup
• Students can view their rental orders from their account; each order has a reference number (e.g. "RNT-2026-00042") they can quote at pickup

Check-out, check-in, and order statuses

Every order moves through: Pending → Confirmed → Checked Out → Active → Returned, plus Overdue and Cancelled where they apply. The Overview tab surfaces active rentals, overdue returns, and today's pickups and returns at a glance.

At the desk, staff work from the Orders and Inventory tabs:

• Check-out — look items up by barcode, record condition at checkout, and mark the order checked out; stock availability updates automatically
• Check-in — items can be returned individually, each with a condition grade (including "damaged"), return notes, and damage photos
• Damage (Damage tab) — report damage with photos; an AI-assisted assessment can help grade severity and estimate repair cost against the item's replacement value

Maintenance

The Maintenance tab keeps a service log per item: edge sharpening, waxing, binding checks and adjustments, base repairs, full services, inspections, and cleaning — each with condition before and after, cost, and who did the work. Logging a service updates the item's condition and last-service date, so gear flagged "needs service" comes back into the rentable pool cleanly.

Analytics and bulk import

The Analytics tab covers utilisation (what share of your fleet is out), revenue by category, and monthly trends; the Overview tab adds a rolling 30-day revenue figure. There's also an AI pricing-suggestions tool that reviews your catalogue and proposes daily-rate adjustments.

Setting up a large fleet? The Import tab accepts a CSV — download the template, fill in your inventory, and bulk-create items in one pass.

Use the numbers seasonally: popular packages tell you what to buy more of; under-used items suggest a price drop or a sell-off.