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Case Study: Inventory Management Automation
How this 2 person rental business SHAVED OFF 10 hours a month of their least favorite work by automating their inventory management
The most common challenge for a rental business is keeping surveillance of its equipment and knowing who rented it, when it’s needed, when it’s coming back, and keeping track of its condition to preserve its value.
The reason is multi-fold – your equipment is valuable, renting equipment is surprisingly complex, and if done manually, there are likely going to be areas where the ball gets dropped.
Quipli polled 691 rental business owners what their biggest challenge was and 25.7% percent stated not having an efficient way to manage their inventory and tracking orders.
The Client
Equipped is a small equipment rental business founded in 2021 and located in Anna, Ohio. Owned and operated by Brandon Greve and his wife, Equipped focuses on heavy equipment rentals such as boom lifts and skid steers as well as concrete finishing rentals and landscape and property maintenance.
The Problem
Equipped started out as many equipment rental businesses do – by its bootstraps. To save costs, they managed their inventory manually. Since their team was small and their inventory consisted of only 25 rentals, it was manageable at first.
But – that quickly changed as their business started to grow.
"Before [Quipli] I used a giant, probably six by 10 whiteboard, and we kept track of where everything was at with that and moved stuff around, and it was usually mass chaos because you would put that it was out but not where it was at or who had it."
Tracking inventory manually puts stress on the user. Developing a system to check your errors is often the best way to prevent issues, but if done manually it can be difficult to error-proof yourself. Whether it is using Google Sheets or a whiteboard – there are rarely any automatic checks on if you entered an order accurately, if you input the return date correctly, or if you moved an item to the correct stage of your process.
"[We'd] miss invoicing and do stuff like that. So, Quipli has really been a game changer for us. We're not a big company yet. We have about 25 pieces of equipment or something like that, but they're all larger pieces. Skid steers, telehandler, boom.... [But] you gotta be touchy with that because your customers have a piece of your hundred thousand dollars equipment to destroy. "
How Equipped Took Orders Before Quipli
We broke down with Equipped exactly how their process worked prior to Quipli.
1. Track With A Whiteboard
A) Brandon took each order via phone or email
B) He’d create item on his white board
C) As the equipment moved from available, to rented, to picked up, to return, Brandon would move each item across each column on his whiteboard
2. Submit Payment and Customer Information
A) With each order, Brandon also had to log in to Quickbooks
B) Enter all of the customer’s information
C) And, run credit card and process the payment manually
3) Diagnose Payment Issues
With some customers, Brandon would be busy, take an order, deliver it, and then find out 2-3 days later that the customer had payment issues. These instances added unknown amounts of time, but became an area of concern when customers unable to pay had such value equipment that they could ruin.
The Solution
Brandon turned to Quipli after a cold call from Quiplis customer support manager, Court Kasten.
Court called me when we joined the American Rental Association. I had a nice conversation and it took me three months to wanna spend the money. If you want to grow, you have to spend money to make money. So we took the plunge and jumped in.
Quipli onboarded Equipped onto its platform which allowed Brandon to manage its inventory, scheduling, booking, use their website builder template, and integrate with his instore Point of Sale system. Customers can book equipment online and the order is automatically stored in the cloud. Brandon’s inventory is updated, the equipment’s availability is updated, and the customer receives confirmation of their order.
"It's been a great experience. Everything is streamlined. It saves everything. They send an email to our rental contract, they can sign our rental contract right on their cell phone. That's big. It just makes things so much quicker and easier."
The Result: How Much Time Does this Save Equipped?
We spoke with Brandon to understand how his tracking management process originally worked, so that we could help him understand just how much time he saves.
Total Time Per Order:
20 minutes
Average Monthly Orders:
30
Hours Saved Per Month:
10 Hours
"Also, it's not fun work, right. It's all the tedious stuff that no one wants to do, that you let sit in this pile on the corner of my desk and don't go. And then for giving it to your staff to do like, it's actually still very important."
Is it time to automate your inventory management?
By combining an integrated inventory management system with online payments, an ecommerce website interface and an effortless online rental experience for your rental equipment, Quipli allows you to run an airtight equipment rental platform that is geared for success.
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