Rental Trade Agreements
Definition and types
This functionality makes rental pricing easy. Trade Agreements are a way to represent contractual arrangements with customers regarding the price of rentals. This document will illustrate some examples.
Rental trade agreements (TAs) differ from sales trade agreements. Rental TAs have to deal with Periods, or the billing cycle of the agreement. And once a rental order is entered, the Duration, of length of the order based on the Period, is necessary.
First, the Periods:
- Daily – for those very short rentals
- Weekly – self-explanatory
- Monthly – self-explanatory
- 28-day – some industries, like heavy duty equipment, rent on a 28 day cycle
- 28-day Single Shift – some industries will use a rented piece of equipment for a single shift
- 30-day – another day oriented rental type
- Yearly – billing is done on a yearly basis
- Event – this type of billing is number-of-days agnostic. The billing is done a single time for a rental order based on an event. Examples of an event could be a trade show, wedding, or company party.
Now, let’s review the duration. Durations are not part of the rental TA, however, they are necessary upon entry of an opportunity, quote or rental order. When combined with the Period (billing type), and other pertinent information, the price is extracted from the rental TA and the return date is calculated for the line item.
The different modes of rental trade agreement pricing are:
- Item Pricing – many customers use this technique. With this, each item has a single rental price for each period that their company uses as rental possibilities. For example, a company might rent items on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. They would then have three TAs, one for each item/period combination.
- Item Group Pricing – in this instance, customers may group items into an item group because the rental pricing for each item in that group is the same. An example of this might be a company renting model A1-1 bicycles of different colors. A1-1 becomes an item group, and A1-1-Blue, A1-1-Green, and A1-1-Purple are all bicycles in that item group, and are priced the same. There would be no need to create item pricing for these, just an item group pricing, since the prices are all the same.
- Customer / Item Pricing – there may be situations where a customer has negotiated a price for renting certain items, so this type of TA would be required to differentiate that customer’s price from all others.
- Account Group / Item Pricing – many companies provide rental pricing to specific industries. For example, they might give all hospitals a certain price for renting a generator. These hospitals can be put into an account group, and rental pricing could be by that item/account group combination, thus, obviating the need to create individual customer / item price TAs for that item.
- Account Group / Item Group Pricing – take the previous TA by account group / item and bring it up a level. You might have an instance where you provide all theme parks with a rental price for model A1-1 bicycles, regardless of color, so you would create an account group for theme parks and have an item group A1-1, with A1-1-Blue, A1-1-Green, and A1-1-Purple are all bicycles in that item group, which would be priced the same.
- Any of the above with currency, if multi-currency is turned on in your ORG
Important Note: unlike Sales Order or Purchase Order Trade Agreements, Rental Order Trade Agreements do NOT allow for discount percentages. No discounts are used. You can only create TAs that use pricing.
Decimal Settings for Trade Agreements (a refresher from rental setup docs)
Ascent allows users to use multiple decimals for price: 0, 2 and 4 (i.e. 12, 12.34, and 12.3456). However, there is one very important default setting for trade agreement: Once you set “the decimal places settings for trade agreement”, trade agreement will only consider the price in that decimal field.
How it works:
First, click Tab “Admin Settings”.
Then, in the Admin Setting page, scroll down a little bit and you will see “Decimal Places Settings for Trade Agreements…” field. As shown in the picture above, you can set it to “2”.
From then on, the Trade Agreement will only consider the price you enter into “price” and IGNORE whatever is in the “price (0 dec)”. Most companies will have their systems administrator remove the fields from the page layout that don’t correspond with their pricing choice.
Rental Trade Agreement Item and Account Group Specific Procedure
This feature would be used when giving a customer (account) group a specific price for an item. Create existing Trade Agreement Name
- Enter new Trade Agreement Name
- Select “Rental Order” under “Applies To” prompt
- Select “line” under “Level” prompt.
- Select an appropriate item under “Applies to Item”
- Select an appropriate account group under “Account Group Selection”
- Select an appropriate QR Period
- Select appropriate affectivity dates under “Date From” and “Date To”. This agreement will be in effect between the dates referenced. If there is no “Date To” affectivity date, then there is no time limit to the Trade Agreement
- Enter the minimum quantity for this trade agreement into “Min Quantity” field (optional)
- Enter a price into the “Price” field
- Click “Save”
Rental Trade Agreement Item-Specific Procedure
This feature would be used when giving a specific price for a chosen item.
Normally, we make use of item specific trade agreements for quantity pricing items, whose price can be varied based on the quantity on the order. You would need to edit the “Min Quantity” field for this Trade Agreement. For example, if you are renting a quantity more than 20, you will get a price of $20.00 per unit. Also, Ascent allows you to set multiple quantity pricing levels. (i.e. if you want to get quantity pricing levels like 0-20, 20-100, 100-500, more than 500, you can simply set a couple of trade agreements with “minimum qty” equal to 20, 100, 500. Ascent will do the comparison and give you back the lowest price for that quantity of item.
- Enter new Trade Agreement Name
- Select “Rental Order” under “Applies To” prompt
- Select “line” under “Level” prompt.
- Select an appropriate item under “Applies to Item”
- Select appropriate QR Period:
- Select appropriate affectivity dates under “Date From” and “Date To”. This agreement will be in effect between the dates referenced. If there is no “Date To” affectivity date, then there is no time limit to the Trade Agreement
- Enter the minimum quantity for this trade agreement into “Min Quantity” field (optional)
- Enter a price into the “Price” field
- Click “Save”
Rental Trade Agreement – Item and Customer Specific Procedure
This feature would be used when giving a customer a specific rental price for an item.
- Enter new Trade Agreement Name
- Select ‘Sales Order’ under “Applies To” prompt
- Select ‘line’ under “Level” prompt
- Select appropriate item under “Applies to Item”
- Select appropriate customer (account) under “Account Selection”
- Select appropriate QR Period:
- Select appropriate affectivity dates under “Date From” and “Date To”. This agreement will be in effect between the dates referenced. If there is no “Date To” affectivity date, then there is no time limit to the Trade Agreement
- Enter the minimum quantity for this trade agreement into “Min Quantity” field (optional)
- Click “Save”
Note that there is a “Min Quantity” field. If there is quantity pricing, meaning that the price can change based on the quantity purchased, you would need to create another record for this Trade Agreement, which would be for the next price break. For example, if by renting a quantity of five (5) you get a price of $31.00, then you would add a new trade agreement, follow the steps above for the new record plus a) Enter a quantity into the “Min Quantity” field and b) Click “Save”.
Rental Trade Agreement Item Group Procedure
This feature would be used when giving a specific price for an item group.
Normally, we make use of item group trade agreements for quantity pricing items, whose price can be varied based on the quantity on the order. You would need to edit the “Min Quantity” field for this Trade Agreement. For example, if you are renting a quantity more than 20, you will get a price of $20.00 per unit. Also, Ascent allows you to set multiple quantity pricing levels. (i.e. if you want to get quantity pricing levels like 0-20, 20-100, 100-500, more than 500, you can simply set a couple of trade agreements with “minimum qty” equal to 20, 100, 500. Ascent will do the comparison and give you back the lowest price for that quantity of item group.
- Enter new Trade Agreement Name
- Select “Rental Order” under “Applies To” prompt
- Select “line” under “Level” prompt.
- Select an appropriate item group under “Applies to Item Group”
- Select appropriate QR Period:
- Select appropriate affectivity dates under “Date From” and “Date To”. This agreement will be in effect between the dates referenced. If there is no “Date To” affectivity date, then there is no time limit to the Trade Agreement
- Enter the minimum quantity for this trade agreement into “Min Quantity” field (optional)
- Enter a price into the “Price” field
- Click “Save”
Rental Trade Agreement Item Group / Account Group Procedure
This feature would be used when giving a specific price for an item group.
Normally, we make use of item group trade agreements for quantity pricing items, whose price can be varied based on the quantity on the order. You would need to edit the “Min Quantity” field for this Trade Agreement. For example, if you are renting a quantity more than 20, you will get a price of $20.00 per unit. Also, Ascent allows you to set multiple quantity pricing levels. (i.e. if you want to get quantity pricing levels like 0-20, 20-100, 100-500, more than 500, you can simply set a couple of trade agreements with “minimum qty” equal to 20, 100, 500. Ascent will do the comparison and give you back the lowest price for that quantity of item group.
- Enter new Trade Agreement Name
- Select “Rental Order” under “Applies To” prompt
- Select “line” under “Level” prompt.
- Select an appropriate item group under “Applies to Item Group”
- Select an appropriate account group under “Account Group Selection”
- Select appropriate QR Period:
- Select appropriate affectivity dates under “Date From” and “Date To”. This agreement will be in effect between the dates referenced. If there is no “Date To” affectivity date, then there is no time limit to the Trade Agreement
- Enter the minimum quantity for this trade agreement into “Min Quantity” field (optional)
- Enter a price into the “Price” field
- Click “Save”
