Home → Arctic Reservations → Rentals → Creating a New Rental
15.5. Creating a New Rental
To create a new rental in Arctic Reservations to the "Rental" menu and choose "Create" as shown here:
This will bring you to the first step of the "Create a New Rental" page shown here:
This is where you will select the business group you wish to create the new rental for. Selecting the business group will also determine which "Rental Items" are avaialble to choose from. For instance if you choose, your main business group every rental item that you have in the system will be available to choose from, however if you are making a "Lodging" rental and you have created lodging specific rental items, only those rental items in the "Lodging" business group will be available to choose from. If you have lots of rental items this can help save time by making available for selection only those items that apply to what your guest is interested in. Once you have chosen the appropriate business group for the new rental, click "Next Step" and Arctic will take you to the second part of the "Create New Rental" page as shown here:
Notice, the Business Group you chose is listed at the top of the page but is "greyed out". If this is not the business group that you wanted and you need to change the rental to a different business group, you will have to start over, by going back to the "Rental" menu and selecting "Create" again. You cannot change the business group for the new rental once you pass the original business group selection screen. If you have chosen the wrong business group and click "Create" again, Arctic will tell you that you have "Unsaved Changes" and ask you if you want to leave the rental you have started, click "OK" to continue.
To continue the new rental you can either select a start time and duration first, or enter the guest's details first. For this guide we will start with the guest information. To enter the guest for your new rental, click "Select Person". This will bring up the "Browse Person" page shown here:
Notice you can select from a list of existing people, search for a particular existing person or "Create a Person".
If the guest is an existing customer and has been entered in the person database, you can type the guest's name in the search box or scroll through the Person Database until you find the right record.
Once you have found the record you want, click the "Select Person" button. The "Select Person" Button will insert your guest straight into the "Select Person Field" on the "Create New Rental" page and you will be ready to move on to choosing the start date and duration for the rental your guest is interested in.
If you are making the rental for a new customer, you will click the green "Create Person" button on the "Browse Person" page. This will bring up the "Create New Person" page shown here:
On this screen you can enter all of the guest's contact information, how they heard about you, etc. Once you have completed the information on the "New Person" page, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Submit". Arctic will then create a new record in the Person database and enter your new guest into the "Select Person" field on the "Create New Rental" page as shown here:
Now you are ready to select the start date and duration for the rental that your guest would like to reserve. Click the "Start" Field. This will bring up a calendar for you to select the date from as shown here:
Choose the start date for the new rental by clicking on the date on the calendar shown. Then enter the appropriate start time. Next enter the duration for the rental. You can enter days and hours or hours only. Once you have entered the start date, time and duration, you will be ready to enter the "Bill To" information.
The "Bill To" field will allow you to bill a different person if applicable. The default setting is "Automatically Select" which means Arctic will bill the guest making the rental. If you would like to change this to a different person, click "Select Person" next to the "Bill To" field. Again, you can choose a person already in your Person Database or you can choose to "Create a Person" if the person paying for the rental is not currently in your database.
When you entered your guest in the "Bill To" field, Arctic pulls any open invoices in the system associated with that guest. If this is a new guest making their first rental, there will not be any open invoices for Arctic to pull. Only those open invoices associated with whoever is paying will show. This will allow you to add the current rental to any open (meaning unpaid) invoice that your guest or "Bill To" customer may have. Arctic automatically chooses "New Invoice" by default. If you want to add the current rental to an open invoice and either your guest or "Bill To" customer has multiple open invoices, make sure that you know which invoice number you want to add to before you select an invoice to make this addition to. If you are unsure the best bet is to leave the selection on "New Invoice" and let Arctic create the current rental on a new invoice for the guest or "Bill To" customer. Most likely you will only have one or two open invoices to choose from for any particular guest or "Bill To" customer making it easy to group all of a guest's multiple rentals or activities on the appropriate invoice.
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Tip: Arctic always lists these additional invoices from newest to oldest. So most likely the invoice you will want to add to will be the invoice selection directly next to the "New Invoice" selection.
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Now we are ready to select the rental items the guest would like to rent. When you selected the "Business Group" in first step of the "Create Rental" process, Arctic used that information to pull only the rental items applicable to that group for you to choose from.
When you entered the duration for the rental that Arctic also refined the list of choices so that you can only choose those items that can be rented for the duration you entered. This means that if you enter a duration of 4 hours, the any "daily" rental items will be removed from the list. If your guest wishes to rent items for different durations, i.e. a canoe (hourly) and a cabin (daily), you will have to complete the "Create Rental" process for each duration they wish to rent for. Again remember that you can add all of their rentals to the same invoice by choosing their open invoice from the "Invoice Selection" field.
Notice in the image below, that Arctic gives you the following information: how many of each item you have available for rent (based on the start time and duration), whether or not there is a mininum duration for the item and the price (the price reflects the total pre-tax cost for the duration specified).
Enter the number of each item your guest wishes to rent as shown here:
Also be aware that if your guests wants to rent more than one item type (e.g., Single and Double Kayaks), that you can include both from the same "Create Rental" page. As long as all of the items your guest wants to rent are in the same business group and the guests wants to rent them for the same duration, you can group the items into a single rental. If the items your guest wants are in two different business groups or are different durations, then you will have to create additional rentals each item (but remember you can still group all of the rentals onto the same invoice by selecting the open invoice from the "Invoice Selections" when creating the subsequent rentals).
Once you have entered the number of rental items your guest want to rent, you will notice boxes with the following headings, "Notes", "Promo Code" (if enabled on your installation) and "Booking Agent" (if enabled on your installation). If you have notes that need to be entered for the rental you will click the blue "Notes" heading. This will open the "Notes" field as shown here:
Notice there are three different note boxes in the "Notes" field. The first is "Backend Notes". This, as its name implies, is strictly for in-house or office notes, these notes are not seen anywhere outside of the Arctic system. The next is "Roster Notes". These notes appear on the "Rental Summary" report, which you can run for each day so you and your staff know what rentals will be occuring on that day. The notes that you put in the "Roster Notes" field are any notes that you or your staff may need to have during the check-in process. The third is "Notes for the Guest". These are for any notes that you want to send to your guest with their confirmation (they will appear on the invoice, and can be included in the invoice or rental email template).
If this rental is associated with a Booking Agent, you will click the "Booking Agent" field and then select the Booking Agent by clicking "Select Person" and selecting them from your person Database. (For more information on "Booking Agents", see the Booking Agent Guide.)
Once all of the necessary fields are completed, click "Submit" to save the rental. After you click, "Submit", Arctic will take you to the "Rental Details" page.
For further instructions continue to next section to learn about the "Rental Details" page and all of the features that are accessible from there.