Odoo for Equipment Rental
Odoo rollouts for plant and tool hire
Plant yards, tool hire shops and access fleets. Unit level records, rate cards, availability and off-hire, in the sequence that stops a machine being promised twice.
Hire businesses run on two questions: is the machine free on those dates, and what did it come back like. Both are about individual units, so the first decision in a hire rollout is that a machine stops being a stock quantity and becomes a record with a serial number, a meter and a history. Every rate, certificate, damage charge and utilisation figure hangs off that one change.
Where it hurts today
Availability lives in the desk diary
The yard promises a machine that is already out or sitting in the workshop. The double booking surfaces as an angry call at seven on the morning of delivery, and somebody drives to a site to apologise.
Every hire is priced by whoever answers the phone
Five days charged at the daily rate when the week rate was cheaper, or a negotiated rate honoured for a customer who never had one. The same machine leaves the yard at three prices in a month.
Nothing is written down at hand-over
No condition record, no meter reading, no photographs. Damage on return becomes a negotiation the yard loses, because the customer only has to say it was already like that.
Certificates expire in a folder
Inspection dates sit on a wall chart nobody updates. A machine goes out of test and either goes out anyway, which is the serious version, or gets pulled the morning it was due on site.
Nobody knows which machines earn
Utilisation is a feeling. The units that have sat in the back corner all year get found by walking the yard, usually while looking for something else.
The modules that carry the load
Each one is here for a reason specific to equipment rental, not because it appears on a standard module list.
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Odoo Rental
Hire orders, hire period, delivery and collection, and late charges, with availability checked across the whole date range before a unit is committed.
- ๐ง Odoo Maintenance
Workshop jobs, service due by meter reading rather than calendar guesswork, and the inspection records a machine has to carry before it can go out.
- ๐ Odoo Field Service
Delivery, collection and on-site breakdown visits scheduled with the machine, the driver and the paperwork on the same job.
- ๐ Odoo Fleet
Road-registered units and the yard's own delivery vehicles, with running cost sitting against the same unit that earns the hire revenue.
- ๐ฆ Odoo Inventory
Parts, consumables and attachments in the workshop and on the vans, so a repair cost lands on the machine that needed it.
- โ๏ธ Odoo Sign
Hand-over and off-hire condition sheets signed on the spot with a timestamp, which is what turns a damage charge into an invoice instead of an argument.
- ๐ผ Odoo Accounting
Deposits held and released, hire invoiced on cycle, and overuse and damage charged against the contract they came from.
How the rollout runs
- 1 Fleet as units
One record per physical machine: serial, make, model, year, meter type and current reading, depot, status and purchase value. The real unit count is nearly always higher than the office believes, and this is the phase where that gets settled honestly.
- 2 Rate cards
Hourly, daily, weekly and longer rates per category, minimum hire periods, and overrides per unit and per customer. Re-price the last quarter of hires against the new cards and explain every difference before anything goes live.
- 3 Contracts, hand-over and off-hire
Reservation with a real availability check, condition and meter at hand-over, off-hire with overuse, deposits and damage assessment. Run in parallel with the existing hire sheet for one full cycle.
- 4 Workshop, certificates and utilisation
Servicing that takes a unit out of availability for its window, certificate expiry that blocks despatch, then utilisation and revenue per unit against what the unit cost.
What to have ready before kickoff
Projects that slip usually slip here, not in the build. Bring these to the first workshop.
- โ A full unit list with serial numbers and current meter readings, including the machines that are out on hire today.
- โ The rate card as it is actually quoted, including the discounts that have quietly become standard.
- โ Current inspection and certificate dates per unit with the next date due, since these are what block a despatch.
- โ A deposit and damage policy: what is taken, what is released, and who authorises a retention.
- โ Delivery and collection charges by distance or zone, separated from the hire rate.
- โ The hire terms and conditions your customers already sign, so the contract on screen matches the one on paper.
Where it connects
Systems we most often connect on equipment rental projects. The full list is on the integrations page.
Equipment Rental
For the feature view of rate cards, off-hire, damage and utilisation, read the solution page.
Open the Equipment Rental solutionQuestions we get asked
Can it actually stop a double booking? +
Yes, and it refuses rather than warns. Availability is checked across the whole requested period against existing hires, reservations and workshop bookings. A warning that can be clicked through is the same as no check at all once the desk gets busy.
Will it apply the cheapest rate automatically? +
Yes. Five days at a daily rate is compared against the week rate and the better one wins, with the minimum hire period respected. That single behaviour usually removes most of the pricing disputes a hire desk deals with.
What happens to machines that are already out when we go live? +
Open contracts are loaded with their start date, agreed rate and the meter reading at cutover, so the first off-hire calculates correctly. It is a small job and skipping it produces a month of wrong invoices.
Does it handle statutory inspections? +
It holds a certificate type, an issue date, an expiry and the inspecting body per unit, and it blocks a machine going out on an expired one. The regimes themselves are named differently by country and by machine type, so certificate types are set up from your own register rather than assumed by us.
Do drivers need a laptop for hand-over? +
A phone or tablet is enough for the condition record, the meter reading, photographs and a signature. Where a site genuinely has no coverage the sheet is completed on paper and keyed at the depot the same day, which still gives you the record that settles a damage claim.