Rental Analysis Views

A stored forward view of what your rental orders and released quotes will bill, period by period.

How it fits in

A Rental Analysis View takes every rental order and every released quote, works out the billing periods still to come on each line, and stores what each period will bill. The Rental Projection Matrix then shows the stored figures with periods across the top and customers, locations or equipment down the side.

The figures come from the calculation the invoice uses: the line's billing cycle and unit price, its price tiers and rate windows, its minimum billing period, and its end date or return date. A view only reads your orders and quotes. It never changes them, and it creates no invoices.

Because the figures are stored, the matrix opens quickly however many orders you hold. In return, a view is only as current as its last update, so the pages show when that was and how much is waiting.

Orders and quotes are kept apart throughout. What a released quote would bill is stored beside what orders will bill, never inside it, and it is only added to a figure when you ask for it.

Where to find it

• Search for Rental Analysis Views.
• Or open the Rental Orders list or the Rental Quotes list and choose Rental Analysis Views.

Both ways open the list of views. The matrix is opened from a view with Open Matrix. It cannot be found by search.

Setting up a view

A view is one line in the Rental Analysis Views list. There is no card to open: you add a line and fill in its columns. You can keep several views, for example one for everything the orders will bill and one for equipment already on hire.

Keeping a view up to date

Whenever a rental order or quote is added, changed or deleted, or one of its lines is, the document is put on a waiting list for each view. Creating an invoice changes the order's lines, so that counts too. Nothing is recalculated at that moment, so day to day work is not slowed down. The waiting list is the Dirty Documents count.

A document on the waiting list still shows its old figures in the matrix. The view catches up in one of three ways.

The dates a view covers are set when it is built

Each document is calculated from the work date on the day it is recalculated, out to the end of the horizon. Refresh Now and the background refresh only touch documents that have changed, so they do not move those dates for the rest. With a horizon of six months, an order last calculated in October still stops at the end of March when you look in December, while an order that changed and was refreshed in December runs to the end of May. Left like that, the later columns are missing some orders.

Run Rebuild All to put every document on the same dates again, starting from today and reaching a full horizon ahead. The start of each month is a sensible time. Also run it after changing Projection Scope or Horizon Months.

Is the view current?

• Last Date Updated says when the view last caught up.
• Dirty Documents above 0 means changes are waiting. A number that keeps climbing means nobody, and no background refresh, is updating the view.
• On the matrix, Projection Holds shows the span of dates stored.

Reading the matrix

The Rental Projection Matrix has options at the top, filters below them, and then the figures.

Rows

Rows are grouped by currency. Each group starts with a heading in bold, Local currency for orders with no currency code or "Currency: EUR" for a foreign one, and ends with its own total in bold, "Total local currency" or "Total EUR". Between them is one row for each customer, location or whatever Show as Rows is set to. A row only appears if it has something between Starting from and the end of the horizon.

• Customer: the order's sell-to customer, shown by name.
• Location: the location on each rental line, shown by name.
• Responsibility Centre: the responsibility centre on the order, shown by its code.
• Rental Item Type: the rental item type on each line, shown by its description.
• Global Dimension 1 and Global Dimension 2: in this version both give the same rows. There is one row for each combination of dimension values found on the lines, and it is labelled with an internal number, not with a dimension value.

A row named Not set collects whatever has no value for the rows you chose, for example lines with no location, or lines with no rental item type when you show by Rental Item Type.

Columns

A figure of zero is left blank. Each figure is in the currency of its group.

A billing period is counted whole in the column it starts in. It is not split across columns. A monthly period that runs from 15/10/2026 to 14/11/2026 is all in Oct 2026.

Overdue

When a document is rebuilt, any billing period that ended before that day's work date and has not been invoiced is flagged as overdue. It is not dropped. Its value is counted on the day of the rebuild, so it lands in the period column that contains that day, which is normally the first one. The same value is shown in Overdue and is part of Total.

So where Overdue is filled in, that period column carries catch-up billing as well as its own. In the drawing, Brightwater's Oct 2026 figure is 1,950.00 for October and 450.00 for a September period that was never invoiced.

Two things follow. If you move Starting from past the day of the rebuild, the overdue value drops out of every figure on the page. And a period is only judged overdue when its document is rebuilt, so run Rebuild All when you want overdue billing judged as of today.

Open-ended hires

A line with a billing cycle and no Rental End Date is taken to stay on hire. It bills in every period up to the last date the view covers. A line with an end date stops there, and a line that has come back stops at its Return Date if that is earlier.

Moving between periods

Next Set moves the columns forward by as many periods as are on screen, and Previous Set moves them back. You can also type a date in Starting from. The first column then starts on that date. The row totals follow, because they are counted from Starting from.

Moving past the last date the view holds gives an empty page. That is the end of what was built, not a lack of business. Run Rebuild All to build further ahead.

With View by set to Day, Previous Set goes back much further than one set of days. Type a date in Starting from to go back in a Day view.

Drilling down

Choose any period figure on a customer row, or whatever your rows are, to open Projected Billing Detail. It lists the stored lines behind that one figure: one for each order or quote and billing period. An order whose lines differ by item type, location, dimensions or billing timing has a line for each.

• Committed Amount is what an order will bill for the period. Quote Amount is what a released quote would bill. A line has one or the other.
• With Include Quotes off, the Committed Amounts add up to the figure you chose. Quote lines are still listed, with their value in Quote Amount. With the option on, the two columns together add up to the figure.
• Period Start and Period End are the real dates of the billing period, after any cut at the rental end or return date.
• Choose a Document No. to open the rental order or the rental quote.

The Total, Quote Value and Overdue columns do not drill down, and nor does a currency heading row. A figure on a total row does, but its list is built differently: it ignores the page filters and picks lines by the date their billing period starts, so where there is overdue billing or a filter it may not add up to the figure. For an exact breakdown, drill into the rows above the total.

What the figures are, and are not

• Billing, not cash. A figure is what will be invoiced for billing periods that start in that column. It says nothing about when the customer pays.
• Placed by period, not by invoice date. A line billed in arrears is invoiced after its period ends. The matrix still counts it in the column where the period starts.
• Built from unit prices. A figure is worked out from each line's unit price, so it is before tax unless the order has Prices Including VAT switched on.
• Before invoice discount. An Invoice Discount % on the order is taken off each invoice but is not taken off these figures. For such an order the invoices will come to less than the matrix shows.
• Each currency on its own. Every amount is held in the order's own currency and shown in that currency's group. Nothing is converted to your local currency, and there is no total across currencies. Exchange rates moving cannot make the figures wrong, but the matrix cannot tell you what foreign currency billing will be worth in local currency. That depends on the order's Exchange Rate Method: Fixed bills every invoice at the rate agreed on the order, and Floating uses the rate on each invoice's posting date, which is not known in advance.
• As at the last update. A change made to an order after the view last caught up is not in the figures until the next refresh. Check Last Date Updated and Dirty Documents before relying on a number.
• Released quotes only. A quote counts once it is released. A draft quote is left out. A released quote is still not an order, which is why its value is kept in its own column.
• Lines that never bill are left out: comment lines, lines marked Non-Billable and lines marked Line Closed For Billing. Under Billable Backlog, lines not yet shipped are left out as well.
• Bill Once lines are counted once, at quantity times unit price, however many periods the hire runs.
• Kits are counted once, on whichever of the kit line or its components carries the price.
• At most 120 billing periods for a line. This only matters for a short billing cycle with a long horizon: a line billed daily is carried about four months ahead and no further.
• Orders change. A hire that is extended, ended early, returned or repriced will bill differently. The figures follow once the view has been refreshed.

Related pages

• Rental Order: the orders whose lines the view reads.
• Rental Quote: a quote counts once it is released.
• Rental Invoice: how billing periods are worked out when an invoice is created.
• Invoice Suggestion Worksheet: where billing that is due is suggested and turned into invoices.
• Multi-Rate Pricing and Rental Price Lists: the rate windows, tiers and minimum billing period the figures allow for.