Find the best Event Rental Software

Whether you are an agency that rents equipment for business events or a company that provides facilities for celebratory occasions, the task of scheduling and reserving event space and equipment can be difficult without the proper software to keep track of available equipment and locations.

With event rental software, companies can more efficiently provide their clients with reservable event spaces and resources while also managing billing and inventory in the same centralized location.

This guide will provide you with information to help you choose the right event rental software for business events or celebrations.

Here’s what we'll cover:

• What is event rental software?
• Common features of event rental software
• What type of buyer are you?
• Benefits of financial close software
• Market trends

What is event rental software?

Event rental software (ERS) helps party and event rental businesses manage equipment and space rentals for events of all types. These rental software packages are specifically designed to manage event management business functions, such as billing, invoicing, quoting, as well as inventory and order management. Additionally, ERS can often integrate with other business software applications, such as accounting, ecommerce, and customer relationship management (CRM) software, to further facilitate rental operations in one place.

Common features of event rental software

While features vary from product to product, event rental software typically offers some or all of the following functionality:

Billing and invoicing	Create invoices for equipment rentals and reissue invoices for late payments.
Inventory management	Keep track of available rental inventory and manage the quantities of inventory needed to supply customer demand.
Quotes and estimates	Provide templates for rental estimates and store past quotes in a document repository for future review or reuse.
Rental management	Manage the scheduling, checking in and out, and rental of equipment and facilities.
Digital signature	Utilize encryption methods to allow for validated, paperless authorization of rental equipment.
Utilization reporting	Track the frequency of asset usage to determine which rental equipment or facilities are in higher demand.
Client management	Integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) software to prevent data from being spread across multiple systems.

What type of buyer are you?

Companies fitting the following profiles will likely see benefits through the adaptation of event rental software:

• Event rental companies for private occasions: Private events, such as weddings, birthday parties, or anniversaries, require considerable planning on the part of the customer. Considering that these types of clients only hold events occasionally, it’s important to provide them with a streamlined app or client portal that makes equipment selection, scheduling, billing, and payment as painless as possible so they can spend less time hassling with paperwork and more time enjoying the event.
• Business event rental companies: Businesses regularly require the services of event rental companies to provide temporary equipment for conventions or corporate events. Event rental software allows event rental companies to maintain a cohesive relationship with their clients by storing rental histories as client data that can be used to prepare for future events and keep up with demand as these clients grow. Consolidated invoicing and billing also makes it easier to bill customers periodically instead of after each individual event.

Benefits and potential issues of event rental software

By employing event rental software, companies can experience the following benefits:

• Improves asset tracking and anticipates demand: There is a considerable amount of information to be learned from inventory data. By understanding rental rates of key items, an event rental company can predict which items need to be stocked at higher levels in order to keep up with customer demand. Additionally, a proper inventory mechanism allows managers to identify when items go missing and implement asset controls to help prevent future depletions in the rental pool.
• Streamlines the customer experience: Event rental software provides the tools to manage the workflow from initial customer contact to the final bill. By collecting event data through the software, proposals can be generated with the current pricing and be subsequently agreed upon with digital signatures. After the event, the software can generate invoices and statements and distribute them electronically to make payment easier.
• Automates event scheduling: By updating a virtual calendar, the software presents a schedule of upcoming events and reserves the required equipment, personnel, and delivery vehicles. Your company will know exactly what deficiencies they need to fill for the day of the event.

As with any change in business workflow, be mindful of the following potential issues when considering an event planning software:

• Customer need for application support: Providing an automated front end to assist customers in expediting rental requests also means dealing with a public that has varying levels of technological savvy. Before considering a solution, be prepared to provide application support to customers that have difficulty working with an automated system if the application vendor does not already offer such support directly to end users.
• Potential inventory data errors: Event rental companies generally have multiple teams working at various events on any given day. Since one of the main benefits of event rental software comes from proper inventory tracking, make sure that you are employing an asset tagging system that can be easily integrated with your ERM package, and be sure that all event teams are trained in the accurate collection of inventory data.

Market trends to understand

When researching the event rental software market, there are some market trends to consider to help make the right decision for your business.

Incorporating social listening tools: The way we celebrate festive occasions changes from year to year as tastes change. As people share their experiences at events by tagging and posting them on social media, social listening tools can collect this information as a means of predicting consumer behavior. Expect to see social listening tools being increasingly used closely with event rental software’s inventory management to ensure your company will supply event resources that are currently trending.

Using mobile devices for equipment inspections: Assigning responsibility for damage to rented equipment can be uncomfortable for the customer and event rental business. Event rental software incorporates barcode recognition, RFID, and asset image capture at the event site as assets are delivered and retrieved to record the physical state of rental equipment.

Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.