Rental Buffers

What they are, how they work, setting defaults and updating individual rentals

Rental buffers determine how many days prior to the rental start date, and after the rental end date, should be considered unavailable for other rentals, for that unit of the Product being rented.

They are required because in many cases, items can't be rented back-to-back, without any days in between. For example, if an item is being delivered to a customer by post (and also returned by post), then you might need to allow 2 days for this, each way.

These dates might not be included as part of the customer's rental period, but they still need to be allowed for when accepting other rentals for the same item.

Another example is if an item needs cleaning or restoration between each rental, and you need to allow 1 day for this to be completed before the item can be dispatched or picked up by the next customer.

Stores will often set buffers to something above what is the typical time required, to be on the safe side. It all depends on your business's processes and how you like to operate.

Default Buffers

Product Rentals Pro allows you set default buffers which apply to newly created rentals, and are also used as the base for anyone looking to make a new rental on your website.

Default buffers can be set for each Delivery Method you have activated within Product Rentals Pro's Rental Settings. This means you can allow more buffer days before and after a rental sent by post, versus a rental that is being picked up and returned to your store by the customer.

Individual Rental Buffers

Whilst newly created rentals will have buffers using the defaults you've set up, these can be manually updated on each individual rental, by going to the rental within Product Rentals Pro.

This can be very useful in cases where you need to allow more time before or after a specific rental.

For example, you might notice that a customer's delivery location is more remote, and may need 2 additional days for delivery to and from the location. You can update the buffers on that rental to reduce the likelihood of a scenario where you either can't fulfill that rental order, or where you can't fulfil the following rental order, because the item hasn't made it back in time to be ready for pickup or dispatch to the customer.

Buffer Types - Calendar Days or Business Days

For default buffers, and on each individual rental captured in your system, you can set the Buffer Type - which is either Calendar Days or Business Days.

Calendar Days is simply a number of days relative to the start or end date of the rental. Each day of the week is considered a day, with no exceptions.

Business Days counts only business days when subtracting or adding a buffer from the rental start or end date, respectively. The days of the week that are considered business days for your store can be set in Product Rentals Pro's Store Settings. Typically we see these being set as the days that your postage providers and related service people (e.g. drycleaners) operate.

Using Business Days also takes into account any public/bank holidays you've set in Store Settings as well - as again, postage providers and related service people may not operate on those days.

New to the rentals industry? Struggling with the concept of buffers? The Product Rentals Pro team is happy to provide advice on this for your specific business, if you can tell us a bit about how you operate. Just get in touch with our support team and we'll do our best to assist!