Rental Kits
A pre-defined bundle of items, types, resources, and other content that ships and prices as a single unit. Use Kits when the customer always rents these things together.
How it fits in
A Rental Kit is master data describing a bundle: a parent kit plus a list of components (Items, Rental Items, Rental Item Types, Resources, even Comments). When a Rental Order line of Type "Kit" is added, the parent line is what the customer sees and is priced; on Release, the kit explodes into its components on the order so each piece can be allocated, shipped, and tracked individually.
Kits differ from Rental Item Type Components in two ways: a Kit is its own master record with its own price and invoice behaviour, whereas an Item Type's Components belong to that Type and inherit its pricing. Kits are typically used for sellable bundles ("Standard Site Set: 1 generator, 2 cable reels, 1 fuel can"); Item Type Components are typically used for inseparable accessories that always ship with a specific equipment type.
How a Kit gets billed and how it appears on the invoice are governed by two settings on the Kit master: Price Method and Invoice Method, both detailed below.
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flowchart TD
G["Rental Item Group · Generators"] --> T["Rental Item Type · 5kVA Generator"]
T --> I1["Rental Item · GEN001"]
T --> I2["Rental Item · GEN002"]
T --> C["Type Components · 10m cable, earth spike"]
K["Rental Kit · Site Set"] -. references .-> T
K -. references .-> OT["Other types / items"]
How a kit explodes: Fanned vs Pooled
When you add a kit to a rental order and release it, the kit opens up into the individual lines that are actually allocated, picked, shipped and billed. If you only ever rent one at a time there is nothing to decide. But when a customer takes several of the same kit, there are two ways the order can lay those lines out, and you choose which on the kit itself. The setting is called the Explosion Method.
Fanned: every unit in full
Fanned gives every unit its own complete set of lines. Rent three Site Sets and the order shows three separate copies of the kit, each with its own generator, its own two cables and its own fuel can. Choose it when you handle each unit in its own right, for example where every generator is a tracked asset that is shipped, serviced and returned on its own.
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flowchart TB
F0["Site Set ×3"] --> F1["Site Set #1"] & F2["Site Set #2"] & F3["Site Set #3"]
F1 --> F1a["Generator ×1"] & F1b["Cable ×2"] & F1c["Fuel Can ×1"]
F2 --> F2a["Generator ×1"] & F2b["Cable ×2"] & F2c["Fuel Can ×1"]
F3 --> F3a["Generator ×1"] & F3b["Cable ×2"] & F3c["Fuel Can ×1"]
Pooled: one tidy block
Pooled gathers the whole quantity into a single block. Rather than three copies you get one Site Set heading, the three generators still listed individually beneath it (they are serial-numbered, so each is tracked on its own), and the interchangeable parts collected onto one line each: six cables together, three fuel cans together. Choose it when the smaller parts are interchangeable and you would rather see and bill them as one pool than repeat them for every unit.
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flowchart TB
P0["Site Set ×3 · one block"] --> PU1["Generator #1"] & PU2["Generator #2"] & PU3["Generator #3"]
P0 --> PC1["Cables · 6 together"]
P0 --> PC2["Fuel Cans · 3 together"]
Header fields
General
Invoicing
Kit Lines
The Lines subpage holds the Kit's components: what gets bundled in. Each line carries:
FactBoxes
The Rental Kit card carries the standard Business Central FactBoxes on the right of the page:
Walkthrough: choosing Price Method and Invoice Method
The combination of Price Method and Invoice Method determines what the customer sees on the invoice and what gets posted to the Rental Ledger. Four common combinations and what they produce:
Price Method = Kit, Invoice Method = Kit. The customer sees a single parent line on the invoice at the Kit's own price. Components are flagged Non-Billable on the rental order and don't appear on the invoice. Behind the scenes, the Kit's revenue is fanned out to each component's underlying Rental Item via Kit Price Factor for utilisation reporting (see Rental Invoice for the ledger detail).
Price Method = Kit, Invoice Method = Kit w/Components. The customer sees the parent line at the Kit's price, plus each component listed underneath as a non-billable breakdown so they can see what's in the bundle. Use when transparency about the kit's contents matters to the customer (e.g. for compliance or matching to their own asset register). Ledger fan-out via Kit Price Factor still runs.
Price Method = Components, Invoice Method = Components. Each component is priced independently from the Rental Price List, and the invoice shows a heading line naming the kit, then the components individually with their own line amounts. The kit itself carries no amount. Use when the kit is really just a convenient way to add a set of items to an order, but each item should be billed at its own rate. No ledger fan-out is needed because each component generates its own ledger entries via the standard rental-line path.
Explosion Method = Pooled, Price Method = Components, Invoice Method = Components (Summarised). Every unit is priced on its own line, as in the third case, but the invoice gathers units of the same type on the same dates and price onto one line, with the number of units shown in Rental Quantity. Ten radios out for a month print as one line, not ten. Use it when the customer wants a short invoice and does not need each serial number listed. A new kit created while Default Kit Explosion Method is Pooled starts on this combination.
Pooled kits: pricing and invoicing
A Pooled kit can be priced and invoiced in any of the ways a Fanned kit can. What changes is what one line stands for, because a Pooled kit's quantity lives on a single kit line with the units gathered beneath it.
- Priced as a kit (Price Method = Kit): the kit line carries the price and nothing beneath it is priced. Three Site Sets at 100.00 a week bill one line of 300.00 a week. The kit bills in full until the kit line itself is returned. Sending part of it back early, one generator out of three for example, does not reduce the charge and raises no credit, so keep the kit line out until the last of it is back or agree the reduction with the customer separately.
- Priced by its components, a line for each unit (Invoice Method = Components): every unit bills on a line of its own under the kit's heading line, each for its own dates. A unit that comes back early stops billing on the day it came back while the rest carry on.
- Priced by its components, summarised (Invoice Method = Components (Summarised)): the same amounts, with matching units gathered onto one line each. Units that differ in dates or price get a line of their own group, so an early return shows as a separate, shorter line.
When a component is billed
Under Components and Components (Summarised) the lines beneath the kit are what the customer pays for, and each one is billed by the rules an ordinary rental line follows:
- A component is billed once it has shipped. One still waiting to go out is left off the invoice, and off a summarised line's unit count, until it ships.
- A component that has come back and been billed to the end drops off later invoices.
- A component returned early is charged up to the day it came back.
- A one-off (Bill Once) component is charged once.
- A component marked Line Closed For Billing is not invoiced again.
Because a component has to ship before it bills, include every chargeable component on the shipment, including G/L account and resource lines such as a delivery charge.
Walkthrough: populating Kit Price Factors automatically
When Price Method is Kit, each component line needs a Kit Price Factor so the Kit's revenue can be fanned out to component ledger entries. You can set them by hand, or have the system calculate them based on each component's current rental-list price.
For each component on the Kit, ensure there's a matching line on a relevant Rental Price List with a non-zero Unit Price. Components without a price-list entry will be left at their current Kit Price Factor (typically 0) and surfaced in a message after the calculation runs.
On the Rental Kit ribbon, use the Calculate Factors from Component Prices action. The system sums up the priced components, then assigns each component's Kit Price Factor as its share of the total (component price divided by total priced).
If any components had no price-list entry, a message lists them so you can decide whether to add a price-list entry and re-run the calculation, or set the factor manually on those lines. Factors must sum to 1 or less across the Kit; the system enforces this on edit.
Edit Kit Structure
When a Kit's components include other structured records (like Rental Item Types with their own Components), the lines on the Kit subform only show the immediate children. The Edit Kit Structure page (accessible from the Kit, and also from a Kit-Type rental order line) opens a separate view that walks the full nested structure top-down. Use it to inspect or audit what a Kit will actually expand into at ship time, especially when the nesting goes more than one level deep.
Actions
Calculate Factors from Component Prices: auto-populates Kit Price Factor on every line of this Kit by proportioning each component's current rental-list price against the sum of all priced components. Components without a rental-list price are left at their current factor and listed in a message.
Related pages
- Rental Items: individual fleet records that can be Kit components.
- Rental Item Types: type-level records that can be Kit components, and which can themselves carry Components for additional nesting.
- Rental Order: where Kit lines are added, exploded on Release, and shipped.
- Rental Invoice: where the Kit Price Factor fan-out into the Rental Ledger is detailed.
- Rental Shipment: where kit-parent auto-ship behaviour is described.
- Rental Price Lists: where component prices are configured for the Calculate Factors action to use.