Rentals

VMX doesn't have a standalone "rental module" — but rentals can be tracked cleanly using the tools you already have. The key questions to think about are:

Revenue recognition — when and how does rental income show up?
Revenue timing — is it recorded at checkout, at return, or somewhere in between?
Inventory accuracy — do your on-hand counts reflect what's actually available?
Tracking who has what — can you tell at a glance which customer has which product?
Protection — what happens if the item never comes back, or comes back damaged?

There are two main approaches. We recommend the first one for most businesses.

Recommended: Sell the Product, Return It at a Discount

The simplest and most effective way to handle rentals is to sell the product to the customer at its regular price, just like any other sale. When the customer brings it back in good condition, process a return at a discount that reflects the rental fee.

Example

A garden center charges 25% of retail value per day for plant rentals. A customer rents a $200 tropical for a weekend event (2 days).

Day 1 — Sell it: Ring up the plant at full price ($200) with the customer on the receipt. The customer pays $200. The plant leaves your on-hand inventory.
Day 3 — They return it: Process a return on the original receipt at 50% off ($100 back to the customer). The plant goes back into your on-hand inventory.
Net result: You kept $100 in revenue (the 2-day rental fee). The customer got $100 back.

Why This Works So Well

You get five things for free — no extra setup, no manual tracking:

What you need	How you get it
Revenue recognition	The $100 you kept is attributed to that product as revenue — which is correct, because you earned that revenue by having that product available to rent
Inventory accuracy	On-hand went down when it left, back up when it returned. Your counts are always right.
Who has what	The customer is on the receipt. Look up the receipt or the customer's history to see what's out.
Protection if it never comes back	You already sold it to them at full price. You're whole.
Protection if it comes back damaged	They already own it. You can decline the return or negotiate a smaller refund.

Tip

The net quantity sold is zero (one sale, one return), so it doesn't inflate your units-sold metrics. But the revenue shows up correctly — attributed to the product that earned it.

Processing the Return

Find the original receipt (use Find Receipt or the customer's History tab)
Return the item with a discount equal to the rental period
The item goes back into stock automatically

Info

You can use a price override or a line-item discount when processing the return to apply the rental rate. For example, if the rental rate was 50% of retail for the period, return it at 50% off.

Alternative: Dedicated Rental Fee Items

Some businesses prefer to create designated rental fee items — a flat-rate or per-day charge that lives in its own department (e.g., Plant Rental or a sub-department under Labor, Fees & Delivery).

With this approach, you ring up the rental fee item instead of selling the actual product.

The Tradeoff

This can work, but you lose everything you got for free with the sell-and-return method:

Calculating the rental fee — you have to figure out and key in the correct charge manually
Knowing items are available — the product never leaves your on-hand count, so your inventory doesn't reflect what's actually on the shelf
Knowing who has what — there's no automatic link between the fee transaction and the physical product that went out the door. You have to document that separately (notes, held sales, a spreadsheet, etc.)
Protection — if the item doesn't come back, you only collected a rental fee, not the full value of the product

Info

The fee-based approach makes more sense when the rental item has no meaningful retail value on its own (e.g., renting tent poles or staging equipment that you'd never sell outright), or when the rental fee is very small relative to the product value and you don't want the full sale hitting your books.

Choosing an Approach

Consideration	Sell & Return at Discount	Rental Fee Item
Revenue tracking	Automatic	Manual
Inventory accuracy	Automatic	Must track separately
Customer/product link	Automatic (on receipt)	Must document manually
Loss protection	Full retail collected	Only fee collected
Damage protection	Customer owns it	Must pursue separately
Setup required	None — use existing items	Create fee items & department
Best for	Plants, products, equipment	Staging, low-value items

For most garden centers, nurseries, and retail businesses, the sell and return at a discount method is the clear winner. It gives you accurate inventory, clean revenue attribution, and built-in loss protection with zero additional setup.