Renting goods without a cash deposit: how to set up a zero deposit and accept an advance for booking

In the rental industry, from wedding dresses to construction tools or sports equipment, flexible payment arrangements are essential for customer retention. The standard process involves collecting a security deposit and payment for the rental itself. In practice, however, business owners often face non-standard situations. 

The following questions may arise: 

Torgsoft includes built-in tools for handling all these situations.

Below, we will explain in detail how to flexibly configure the additional «Goods Rental» option to work without security deposits, with advance payments and reservations.

How to set a zero security deposit

Torgsoft provides flexible settings, and a security deposit is not a mandatory requirement for starting a rental.

If you trust the customer or if a document, such as a passport or driver's licence, serves as a return guarantee, you can arrange the rental by charging only for the rental service itself.

To prevent the software from requiring a security deposit when an item is added to a rental, open the «Rental Directory» and set the security deposit amount for the relevant item to 0 (zero). In this case, when the document is moved to the «Rental Started» status, the software will request only the payment amount for the rental service itself, and the customer will be able to make an advance payment without any additional security payment.

Item booking: advance payment without immediately paying a security deposit

A situation may arise where a customer books an item in advance, for example, a carnival costume for an event several weeks away. The full value of the costume may be UAH 1,000, while the rental cost is UAH 200. Requiring the customer to pay a UAH 1,000 security deposit at the time of booking would be unreasonable, as it may discourage customers. The business owner only needs to receive an advance payment of UAH 200 to confirm the booking and reserve the item for a specific date.

Torgsoft is well suited to this business process:

1. Go to Document → Trade with Invoice Issuance → Rental tab → Rental Settings.

2. Pay attention to the «Rental Payment» setting. You can choose when the customer pays for the rental: «When Creating the Rental» or «When the Rental Starts».

3. If you select «When Creating the Rental», the customer can make a financial commitment, meaning an advance payment for the service, as soon as the document is created. The item itself will be reserved for the specified dates.

4. The software will request the security deposit only when the customer physically comes to collect the item and you change the document status to «Rental Started».

Flexible management of the security deposit amount

Another common question from rental business owners is how to make the total amount paid by the customer at the checkout equal to the full value of the item while including both the rental cost and the security deposit.

For this purpose, Torgsoft includes a special setting: «Reduce the security deposit amount by the rental cost».

If the reference value of the item is UAH 1,000 and you want to have this full amount as security, while the rental cost depends on the rental period, for example, 2 days at UAH 150 per day = UAH 300, the software will automatically calculate the security deposit as the difference: UAH 1,000 - UAH 300 = UAH 700. This means that while the item is being rented, its full value will be financially covered.

Cancelling a rental and refunding the advance payment

Customers sometimes cancel their bookings. If a customer has made an advance payment, meaning they paid the rental cost when the document was created, but later decided not to use the service, you can correctly record this in the system.

For this purpose, the rental settings include the «Refund the rental payment when the rental is cancelled» parameter. If the customer cancels, change the rental status to «Rental Cancelled». Depending on whether this setting is enabled, the software will automatically offer to process a refund of the advance payment to the customer through a financial document while releasing the item from the reservation so that it becomes available to other customers.

By using the appropriate parameters in the «Rental Directory» and «Rental Settings», you can easily adapt your business processes to your customers' needs: accept bookings with an advance payment only, issue items without a monetary security deposit, or automatically deduct the rental cost from the security payment.