Rentals
CifraHQ lets you rent an Inventory item to a customer instead of selling it. The item ships through your normal delivery path, stays company-owned while it is out, and comes back through a customer return. The customer is invoiced a flat rental fee, never the item's price. A rental register tracks which items are at which customer and when each one is due back.
How a rental works
- Flag the line. On a sales order, open the line editor for an Inventory item and turn on the Rental switch. Enter the Due back date the item should return by. Rental lines are priced at zero, because the item itself is never invoiced.
- Add the fee. Add a separate non-Inventory "Rental Fee" product line to the same order with the price you are charging. This line is invoiced normally.
- Ship it. Release the order and post the delivery as usual, including through your warehouse integration. Posting the delivery opens a row in the rental register for each rental line shipped.
- Take it back. When the item Returns, generate a customer return from the delivery and post the return receipt. The register row closes when the full quantity is back.
**The
Accounting stays clean.** While the item is out, its cost is held in a **Rental Assets** account instead of being expensed to cost of goods sold. When it comes back, the value moves back to
Inventory. Renting an item never touches your margins the way a sale does.
The rental register
Go to Sales > Rentals to see every rental. Each row is one shipped rental line and shows:
| Column |
Meaning |
| Customer / Product |
Who has it and what they have. |
| State |
Out: nothing has come back. Partially Returned: some units are back. Returned: everything is back and the row is closed. |
| Due Back |
When the item should return. Anything past its date and not fully returned shows a red Overdue flag. |
| Qty Out / Returned |
What shipped and what has come back so far. Partial Returns accumulate. |
| Value Out |
The cost still parked in the Rental Assets account: unit cost times the quantity not yet returned. |
| Sales Order / Delivery / Warehouse |
Links back to the documents behind the rental. |
Fully returned rentals are hidden by default. Turn on Show Returned to see the complete history.
Changing a due-back date
Once a rental is out, its due-back date lives on the register row, not on the sales order. Use the row's action menu, Change Due Date, to extend or shorten it. Fully returned rentals cannot be changed.
Rules and limits
- Only Inventory items can be rented. Packsize-controlled Products cannot be rented; lot- and serial-controlled Products can.
- Rental lines are excluded from every invoicing path. A sales order with rental lines completes once those lines are fully shipped, not invoiced.
- Take Returns through Generate Return on the delivery. A manually created return that is not linked to the delivery posts as a normal return and does not update the rental register.