Rental businesses are in a rage these days. Because it gives the pleasure to experience things without owing it.
Anything and everything can be rented out today like equipment, cars, wedding suits, cameras, unique tools, photobooths, Gym equipment, furniture for offices, events, and even baby furniture too.
Rental business can be done as mainstream, also as a side hustle. To manage the rental business in and out all the process at a small scale is very easy. All you need is a phone number attached to the Ads and other promotional materials.
But after you scale your rental business to a large business, the software is essential for effective management. While coming to this topic, thanks to the advanced technologies, you have been provided with different software solutions. You need to choose one that ultimately serves the needs of your rental shop.
Basically, what is the software you have in the market for rental shops? Why are they differentiated into many? And which will suit you the best and serve your needs? All of that is explained in this blog.
Online Booking system vs Rental software
Basically, there are two different types of software for rental business which is used by many: they are Online booking system and Rental software.
Each has its unique purpose and suits different types of business. Detailed explanations of each are explained further.
- Online Booking System
It is popular in the industry and designed for services that are time bound and sell appointments like travel and hospitality industries where online booking is essential to book tours. It simplifies or automates the booking process from getting customer details and updating booking information to accepting payments. So more than software that manages the business, Online booking software can be called scheduling software.
An Online booking system might be suitable in a lot of cases but not in a place where back-office functions and management are needed like an equipment rental business, where it needs to have inventory management additionally to check the stocks and read the availability to the application user.
Hence, the online booking software may be suitable for a place with simple hospitality service but not in a business where it needs different functions like inventory management, maintenance, and repair management, equipment tracking, and tracking pending payments to manage the rentals from entry to exit.
- Rental Software
On the other hand, the rental software is suitable for large scale that possesses a large set of features and serves various functions. The price of rental software is higher than the online booking software. Of course, the owners have to pay for the work it does. The cost of rental software is high-, because an online booking system is one of the features of it.
Multiple features cost more effort to integrate into the business. Rental software is suitable for businesses with big inventories that need to be managed and give real-time data, various back-office functions that need to be streamlined, and more customer data that needs to be analyzed to be used for further improvements. Using rental software-, helps businesses during peak hours, streamlines customer service, reduces the money spent on staff’s and reduces their workload
Advantages of online booking system
Despite the reduced abilities, the online booking system is suitable for many businesses with many pros, they are
- Online booking system is easy to integrate into the business due to its nature of serving surface-based purpose
- It is simple software better than a complex rental software
- It is suitable for small-scale businesses with fewer inventory items. However, during peak times, only the booking system will not work as it leads to double bookings and poor customer experience.
Advantages of rental software
Rental software is a whole package that serves the functions of a rental business from top to bottom.
- It is suitable software for large-scale businesses with a high user count visiting and exiting the website
- Even though, it is quite difficult to integrate this software into the businesses. It reduces the extra efforts spent on the back-office management and reduce the hassle of overbooking and poor customer experience
- Even though the rental software costs higher than the online booking system, you need to consider the cost spent on the matters like integrates POS system, manual labour in the absence of inventory management, building a relationship with third-party payment sites and doing analytics by your own. This cost is all zero in rental software because the functions are already in it.
- The cost spent on buying the rental software can be high, but it is a long-term investment. Businesses can reap higher revenue than it spends in several months unlike online booking system
So, in conclusion, which software is better for you?
I cannot conclude the result with one name, because each software has its own pros and cons depending on the business’s needs, budget, and more.
An online reservation system handles one component of a rental business; it doesn’t improve other procedures or customer service, but it is a less complex and expensive option. While this is going on, rental software handles several tasks at a more fundamental level, streamlining the rental process.
By simplifying the back-office procedures, all of the various functions contribute to improving the consistency of the client experience. This makes the rental process more individualized and reduces potential dangers associated with, for example, rush hours, eventually resulting in a smoother customer experience.
So, to sum it up, be sure you’re receiving more than just the software itself if you’re intending to spend in it. It’s never about how sophisticated the technology is, but more about how quickly issues are resolved.
