This article is intended to discuss all of the different ways that Rental Essentials uses barcodes, both 1D and 2D. It will also discuss hardware options, limitations, and specifics. Rental Essentials uses barcodes in many ways. For a traditional rental store, the most common functions are for stock management, retail, and driver’s licenses. Rental Essentials supports putting a custom value on items and individual pieces of stock. It also supports scanning those barcodes from the POS and the mobile app.

Topics in this article include

• Hardware

• Inventory barcoding

• Contract barcode

• Quick Receive

• Receiving stock to a PO

• Mobile app

• Troubleshooting

Hardware

The hardware that we support can be found in Configuration > Barcode Configuration Information. You can also use your mobile phone via the Point of Rental Essentials app.

Counter

At the counter, Point of Rental suggests using a Zebra DS9308 Barcode Scanner for inventory and driver’s license scanning. For inventory scanning, almost any scanner will work as long as it operates in keyboard mode and can be configured to press enter after each scan. The Zebra is the only option that Point of Rental currently tests to ensure compliance, so it is recommended. Link to item and specs: https://www.barcodegiant.com/zebra/part-ds9308-dl4u2100azn.htm

Please note the Motorola/Symbol DS9208-DL00004NNWW is the previous model Rental Essentials used. It has been discontinued and is no longer tested and updated.
 

Mobile

The mobile app has the ability to scan barcodes using the phone’s camera.
 

Kiosk

The kiosk system can automatically start a reservation from a driver’s license using the Motorola scanner from above or using AML’s Monarch series kiosk computers with a Honeywell scanner built-in.

Inventory barcoding

There are several fields which the system will search when you scan a barcode at the counter:

• Item Barcode (Rental Barcode)
• Item Key
• Serialized Stock - Serial #
• Serialized Stock – Barcode / Inventory #

When you scan a barcode for one of these fields, if there is a single exact match, it will find the matching item. If there is not a single match, the system will show you a list of matching items to select from. Some of these fields (like stock serial #) are forced to be unique so they should always match.
 

At the counter, simply put your cursor in the search box and start scanning.

If you scan a general barcode from a serialized item, it will just add that item and not require you to select the serialized piece of stock yet. If you scan the barcode from a piece of stock, it will go ahead and add that specific piece of stock to the contract.
 

The most common workflow though is that you may already have the item on your contract without the piece of stock selected. If you then scan a piece of stock the system will check to see if that piece of stock matches an item on the contract which does not have its stock selected. If that is the case, it will replace the generic item on the contract with the specific piece of stock you just scanned.
 

Additionally, you can scan the barcode into the serialized stock picker.

You can also find all the contracts that contain a certain barcode or piece of stock by scanning the barcode or serial number into the Workbench search.

It will filter the Workbench down to only contracts containing that item.

Contract barcode

We automatically add a barcode to all printed or emailed contracts. You can see it at the bottom of the traditional contract.

 

You can see it at the top of the modern format.

When you scan this barcode, the format looks like this: B-C-0000051. This is so the barcode does not change when the contract changes statuses. You can scan this barcode into the search on the Workbench, and it will bring up the contract immediately. You can also scan this barcode in the mobile app.

Quick Receive

The Quick Receive function is available on the counter user screen and the mobile app. After you select the barcode icon in the upper right, you can take your portable scanner and walk around the room, receiving the stock back into the system. It will automatically mark the item as received, and if the contract is fully received, it will mark the contract as received as well. If it is also fully paid, the contract will be marked as closed. You will get these kinds of messages output to the screen as this process is happening.
 

Find Quick Receive here:

From here, just start scanning the barcodes of items that are out on contracts. 

You can see here that 123123 was scanned, but it was not out on a contract, so it showed an error.
 

If you scan an item out on a contract, you will see more detail about that item and contract, and it will be automatically received:

Receiving stock to a PO

For example, if you expect to receive 60 Nikon D7100 cameras in stock, you would create the PO record in your system beforehand. Then, when the order comes in, you can scan the barcodes into your system. You would just put your cursor in the first text field and scan everything.

Please note that you need to scan the serial number first, then the barcode. In many cases, these are the same number, so you just scan them twice. When you’re done, click Receive to put them into stock.
 

Mobile app

You can launch Quick Receive from the mobile app:

Scanning the barcode of an item out on contract will perform the same action as using Quick Receive on the counter system:

To use the camera to scan your barcode, click the barcode icon in the top right hand of the screen.

This will show you the built-in barcode scanner:

Functions that support barcode scanning in the mobile app:

• Quick Send Out
  • Scan to find a contract
  • Scan to add an item to a contract
        
• Quick Receive
  • Scan to find a contract
  • Scan to receive an item to a contract
       
• Take Payment
  • Scan to find a contract

Troubleshooting

If nothing happens when you scan a barcode, use the following steps to troubleshoot.

First, ensure you have clicked into the Search Or Scan An Item To Add field before scanning the first barcode. If no numbers or letters show in that box when scanning a barcode, then there is a problem with your barcode reader, and you should refer to its instructions.

You can also test the barcode reader by scanning barcodes into a text editor like Notepad or Word. If numbers and letters appear but don’t add the item to your contract, try hitting Enter after scanning. If that works and it adds the item to your contract, your barcode gun is not programmed to enter a carriage return after scanning a barcode.