If you work with a Car Rental Service or similar Rental Business then this blog is recommended for you. This blog describes a Business Case for a Car Rental Service with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, WooCommerce and Microsoft Power BI.

Note: this is a living document, which will be updated from time to time. If you have an idea or suggestion, feel free to contact me.

The goal of this Car Rental Service Business Case is to answer the question: How can a Car Rental Service keep track on his Assets, it’s costs and income and manage the Car Rental Planning effective?

The Content of the Business Case is:

• Car Rental Service Business Proces and it’s Challenges
• Solution for Proces Design with Business Central
• Management and Planning insight with Power BI

Car Rental Service Business Proces and it’s Challenges

When you work in Rental Service, you have objects to rent to people or businesses. Private persons and business, both with there special threatments and neads. And different approaches, different way of paying taxes, different way of administrating even.

Then you have the Rental Objects themselfs. Cars, tools, trucks, you name it. Everything what can be rented out. Those Objects:

• Have to be bought
• Have to be maintained
• Will be serviced
• Are rented out and returned
• And eventually sold or disposed

Those things ask for a good way of administration. You want to know in the end if – for example – the Rental Car made enough revenue to pay the bills for it’s service and maintenance. Then there is the periodic depreciation. Maybe even damage. All those things need to be taken into account to be able to make a good gain/loss calculation.

Choose the Right Software Tools

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can do all those things for you. In this Business Case I will show in different articles how to manage a Car Rental Service with standard Business Central, in collaboration with other Business Software tools:

• Business Central for managing the Rental Cars, the order flow and invoicing
• Microsoft Power BI for reporting and Planning Dashboards
• WordPress and WooCommerce as webshop for Order Entry
• Document Capture (add-on) for automated incoming document handling (such as Purchase Invoices)
• Document Output (add-on) for automated sending documents per e-mail (such as Sales Orders, Sales Invoices etc)

Process Design

The Business Process in short is to promote the Rental Cars online in a Webshop. Order entry takes place due the Webshop, Phone or E-mail and is registered in Business Central. From there order processing and invoicing takes place. Managing cars and availability is visualised in a Planning Dashboard.

Website for Order Entry

On the website the potential customer chooses the Rental Car to be rented. On the detail page the desired period is filled in. The Date From and Date To will automatically calculated the total price, based on the price per day.

Check the business case example website for yourself.

When finished, the customer fills in the order details and the order will be created in WooCommerce.

Business Central for managing the Rental Order Flow

The main proces of renting is with the use of Rental Orders (Sales Orders) in Business Central. They are either generated from the WooCommerce webshop or entered by hand. Orders can be received by Phone or E-mail and entered in Business Central.

The Rental Order is the central point of administration. From here the Shipment and Sales Invoice are issued. Each Sales Order is basically a Rental Car Planning line, which can be used for reporting on availability and Rental History.

The Rental Cars are also maintained in Business Central. The registration on service and maintenance and other costs. Aquiring and sales or disposal of the car. Administration of availability (wether the car is returned or not) and settlement of deposits.

In addition, general accounting matters take place of course.

Reporting and Planning with Power BI

With Microsoft Power BI it is possible to visualize the Car Rental Planning. Using this Dashboard as shown below, you have a total overview of all cars, their availability and planning.

Select the desired car directly from the list, filter by Brand or Availability. The Rental Car details and Planning overview is visible in the right.

Tip: press the Full Screen button to have a better view off the Dasboard.

Next Chapters

This blog is a global overview of the Navare Industries Ltd Car Rental Business Case. Of course there are more details which are interesting to share. The following subjects will be covered on other posts:

• Structuring Rental Cars as Fixed Assets and registering Costs and Revenue, based on Financial Dimensions
• From Rental Order to Sales Invoice
• Administration for Deposits and Returning Cars
• Automation of incoming (Maintenance) Purchase Invoices
• Automation of sending documents per e-mail
• Creating Planning Dashboards with Power BI