Tracking and resolving equipment shortages in a project is crucial to everyday operations, ensuring your clients get the equipment they need and ordered. In this article, we highlight and discuss the differences between the three main ways to resolve equipment availability issues in a project. 

External Subrentals

External subrentals in Rentman usually occurs when there is an equipment shortage in a project. You don't own any in your other warehouses or stock locations so you must source this equipment externally from a third-party supplier or vendor. 

Internal Subrentals

Internal subrentals also usually occurs when there is an equipment shortage in your project but instead of renting it from an external source, you subrent the equipment from one of your other warehouses. 

Effectively, you will be borrowing this equipment from your other warehouse to fulfill the requirements of the project. Once fulfilled and the project is over, the indicated amount of equipment will be returned back to original warehouse automatically. 

Here's an example of what will happen when using Internal Subrentals: 

1. There is an equipment shortage in Project A and an internal subrental is selected to resolve the shortage.
2. Create an internal subrental slip and indicate the warehouses to subrent from and to. 
3. Optional: In the subrental slip, indicate the amount of equipment you want to stay in Warehouse B using the column "Number of Transfers". The remaining amount will be transferred back to Warehouse A. 
4. Equipment will transfer from Warehouse B to A to fulfill a project.  
5. Once project is over, equipment will automatically be transferred back to warehouse B unless indicated otherwise. 

Transfer Projects 

While Transfer projects can be used to resolve shortages in a project, it can also simply be used to transfer equipment stock from one warehouse to another.

Unlike an internal subrental where the equipment subrented returns back to its original warehouse, transfer projects will keep the equipment at the receiving warehouse. 

If you transfer an equipment from Warehouse A to B, the equipment will stay at B. Regardless if the transfer project was used to fulfill a shortage or just to move equipment.