User Guide to Getting Started

Let us guide you on your new journey

Completing Required Personal Details

Register your Establishment

Configuring Establishment Settings

Basic Configuration

More Info, Got You Covered

More of the good stuff

Adding a Unit

Maintaining a Unit

Setting up Unit Rates

Capturing a Reservation

Last But Not Least...

Let us know if you need anything more

Sending Quotation / Invoice

Documents

Capture Recieved Payments

Transactions

Completing required personal details

To list and manage a new establishment with 4Rent we require a bit more personal detials, therefore please update your personal details before continuing.

Please note that 4Rent takes utmost care to protect your personal details, keeping them save and private. Please read the 4Rent Privacy Policy for more information.

After signing into 4Rent click on the MyAccount link in the Menu.

Ensure that you fill in all of the required fields marked with a *.
It is not required to fill in the password fields unless you wish to change your password.
When you're done click on the Save User Details button at the bottom.

After saving your details, you will notice a new button at the bottom of the page

Register your Establishment

To registering your establishment with 4Rent please click in the List My Own Rental Unit button at the bottom of the MyAccount page as shown.

On the form that opens please fill in your establishment / company’s information.

All required fields are marked with an *.
When done click on the Complete Registration button at the bottom. This will process the details provided and register your establishment on the 4Rent free subscription.

The only limitation with the free subscription is that you can list only 3 units to rent out. If you wish to list more units, you will have to make use of one of the paid 4rent subscriptions.

Configuring establishment settings

4Rent is a fully featured property management system. You can use our platform to manage all aspect of your establishment with ease; from creating reservations to managing contacts and stock, even auto generation and emailing of invoices.

In addition you can create your own public booking page and decide on which units to publish.

So let us get started setting up the basics required to start managing your establishment's reservations:

The image on the right depicts the settings drop down in the menu. This is where we'll start - by configuring your establishment, setting up units etc.

Basic Configuration

Select Configuration under Settings in the Menu.

The information provided here will be used throughout, such as on invoices, quotations, search engine listings etc.

Please fill in all of the required fields, they are marked with an * (asterisk).

The Region will be used to assist internet search engines to provide your establishment to anyone searching for your services in the region that you have stated.

Set the VAT / TAX percentage to be included in all invoices ->

Deposit percentage will be monitored in the Deposits Outstanding report allowing you to see the amounts receivable, and will also be stated on all quotations.

Whenever you add a reservation you will have the option to apply a discount to all or some of the guests staying in the listed unit, this amount is editable whilst your capturing the reservation but will default to the Default Discount Rate possibly saving you a couple of seconds, seeing how valuable your time is.

Account Due Days is a value displayed on all invoices, and states the amount of days that a client has from his check out date to settle his account.

So, you might not be renting out units / services since yesterday, and decided to complement your long-standing administration system with 4Rent, that’s great news and thanks. Luckily, we realized that your invoice and receipt numbers have to continue from where you last left off, that is what the "Next Invoice Number" and "Next Receipt Number" fields come in, just state what you want the next value to be, and 4Rent will take it from there.

Check in Time and Check out Time values will be used on confirmation letters and other correspondence with clients. These values will also be set as the default values whenever you add a new reservation. 4Rent is very strict when it comes to double bookings, thus please ensure that your check out time is an earlier value than your check in time, should one reservation follow directly on another 4Rent will not suspect a double booking.

Even though not required adding a Company Logo does look great in all of the documents and booking pages. To add a logo require you to firstly add the logo to your media, please see the section on how to add company media. But you can always come back and do this at a later stage

NB! Note that the advised aspect ratio of the logo image should be a landscape 16:9.

Adding a Unit

A Unit is a room, venue, or anything else that you would like to rent out on a hourly, daily, monthly or even yearly basis. And therefore at least one is required in order for you to capture your first reservation.

To add a unit, select Manage Units under Settings in the Menu. This will open the unit management page as shown below, you will notice that you currently have no units. So, let’s add some........

Maintain Unit

To add a new Unit, select Create Unit under Unit Tasks on the right.

Complete the details required on the Add Unit window.

Select a unit Type, Charge Category and Region.
Unit Number and Unit Name will be used throughout the application to identify the Unit.
In the Description field describe relevant information related to the unit. These details will be visible to the public.
The Scheduler Colour is used in the 4Rent Dashboard, to help you easily identify the unit be colour.
After completing all of the unit’s details, save the unit by clicking on the Done button at the bottom of the window.

At this point you can add many units as you require.

Now that you have some Units added, you're almost ready to make reservations. Just setup the daily, hourly, or once off rates that you wish to charge per unit.

Remember this is a Quick Start guide, thus focussing only on basic settings; 4Rent has allot more features, and settings that can be fiddled with to make the management of your establishment a breeze.

Setting up Unit Rates

Whilst your still in the Manage Units page under Settings in the Menu:

Select the unit which rates you would like to configure by clicking on the Unit in the grid, then edit the selected unit's rates by clicking on Manage Unit Rates on the right hand side under Unit Tasks.

You will notice that 4Rent already added a default unit rate for you. A 4rent establishment administrator has the ability to change unit rates whilst capturing a new reservation, but for all other users it is a could idea to have rates pre-configured (read more on user roles in the 4Rent manuals).

To change the default rate, select the default rate in the grid by clicking on it, then click Edit Unit Rate on the right-hand side of the page.

Under Description fill in a name for the rate, to be used in identifying the rate when adding a new reservation.

With the Rate Type dropdown select how the rate must be applied, select from daily, hourly, or unit (once off).

You can set a period during the year that the specific rate should be available. to do this select the Start Month and Start Day (a date in the selected month) that the rate should start being available on, do the same for the last date that the rate should be available on by setting the End Month and End Day fields.

You can setup multiple rates, these rates will be available for selection when adding a new reservation.
*Note only rates that are active based on the period configured above on the prospective reservation dates will be available for selection.

Capturing a Reservation

Congratulations! You're done configuring all required settings, and it is time to accept your first client using 4Rent.

So then when a client contacts you to make a reservation for one of your units, you should follow these steps to capture the reservation and send out a quotation and/or confirmation letter to the guest.

FIRST STEP

In the menu bar at the top of the page click on the Reservations.

SECOND STEP

Click on Quick Add Reservation by: Client & Unit under Reservation Tasks.

THIRD STEP

Fill in all information required for the new reservation:

CLIENT NAME - You cannot just fill in a name, this will not be accepted. If it is a return client and his name is in your 4Rent contacts already, you can just start typing the name, and the autocomplete will then list the name for you to select. If it is a first-time client, you must add the new client by clicking on Add New Client link.

This will open up the Create Contact window. Fill in all of the client's details, if your client wishes to have a company name displayed on the invoices, you can simply type it in the Company Name field, or select one of the previously added companies listed in the autocomplete.

Use the plus (+) next to Phone and Email, to add more.

After filling in all of the client's details, you can save the client by clicking on Done the bottom.

Now select the STARTING and ENDING dates for the period that the guest is going to stay, by clicking on the calendar icon next to each.

The UNIT select dropdown will only display units that are available during the selected period set above.
NO MORE DOUBLE BOOKINGS!!!!!

After selecting a Unit, the rest of the window will be populated with the costs associated with the reservation. These costs can be configured / changed. Set the Unit rate by selecting one of the previously created rates under RATE TYPE.

You can change the tax percentage if required, or the rate amount that is applied per day, hour or once off depending on the rate type selected.

You can have some of the units set at a discounted rate, the number of units that you would like to set as discounted must not be included in the number of units above.

Fill in number of units at discount rate, and the percentage of the total amount that should be in Discount Rate Percentage. After setting these values click anywhere on the form to reset the total amounts at the bottom.

Finally review the total amounts to ensure that they are correct, and then click on Done to save the reservation.

Sending Quotation / Invoice

Now that you've added a reservation, you will see it listed in the reservation list:

The newly created reservation will be selected by default, but if it is not selected (highlighted blue) click on the reservation to select it.

On the right under Reservation Tasks select Documents.

Documents

On the Create or Email Document window under Report Action select the Email option.

Under Document Type select the type of document that you would like to send to the client.

Finally, you will notice that if you added email addresses to the client's profile, all of those email addresses are already added to the recipient’s list, including your own company email.

You can add more email addresses to the recipient’s list by typing additional email addressed into the text box below the listed emails.

After typing the additional email address click on Add this email to recipient list. You can add as many email addresses as you like.

Finally click on Email Document, to send the document to all email addressed in the recipient list.

(You may also download the document as a PDF by selecting Download under Report Action)

Capture Recieved Payments

Whether the client paid a deposit before arriving or made a final payment during checkout, you will need to capture these payments against the client’s reservation.

To capture a payment firstly open up the Reservations in the Menu.

In the reservation list; look for and select the reservation that you want to capture payments against.

Click on View or Change Reservation.

This will open up the Reservation Details window, here you have the power to change any details pertaining to the selected reservation. Such as adding another reservation and having it nested under this reservation which will produce a single combined invoice and other documentation. (See the manual for full details)

To capture a payment, select the Reservation Detail that you wish to capture a payment against. Then click on Add new Transaction;

Transactions

In the transaction window select Transaction Type: Payment.

Set the type of payment received next to Payment Type

Type the amount received into the Total text box. Afterwards click anywhere else to refresh all of the values.

Finally click on Done to save the transaction.