Prior Hours on Rent — Importing Prior Usage History for Serialized Items

Overview

Prior Hours on Rent lets implementation consultants and administrators record how many hours a serialized item was on rent before it existed in Essentials. Items migrated from another system then report an accurate lifetime Time on Rent from day one, instead of starting at zero.

The value is stored on each serialized unit and added to the hours the item accrues going forward, producing a correct lifetime total.

Note: This is prior time-on-rent history — not a meter reading. It has no effect on meter values or scheduled maintenance.

Where to find it

• Data Import (bulk, during migration): Configuration → Data Import → import type Stock (Serialized)
• Item record (manual, single unit): Inventory → select a serialized item → Stock tab → edit an instance → turn on Advanced Mode 
• Fleet Stock (manual, single unit): Fleet Stock → edit an instance
• Reporting: The Item List report includes a Prior Hours on Rent column

Data Import requires administrator access. From Fleet Stock, the Import/Export button opens the same Data Import tool with the serialized type preselected.

How to import it

1. When preparing the serialized stock import file, add a column for prior hours on rent.
2. Enter the cumulative whole hours on rent from the previous system for each unit that has usage history. Whole numbers only — no decimals or negative values. If your source data is in days, multiply by 24 to get hours (e.g. 30 days = 720 hours). For other units, convert to whole hours before importing.
3. In Data Import, choose the Stock (Serialized) type and upload your file.
4. In the field-mapping step, map your column to Prior Hours on Rent.
5. Complete and run the import as normal.
6. Essentials adds the prior hours to any new rental time the unit accumulates, giving each item an accurate lifetime Time on Rent.

Tracking days on rent? This field stores hours only. Multiply your days figure by 24 before entering it (30 days × 24 = 720 hours).

This combined lifetime value drives the send-out Instance Picker and the automatic instance assignment when they sort by Highest Time on Rent First or Lowest Time on Rent First.

Editing a single item after import

To set or correct the value on one unit, open the item instance (via Item edit → Advanced Mode, or Fleet Stock), update Prior Hours on Rent, and save. Re-importing the same unit overwrites the stored value — it does not add to it.

Common issues and edge cases

• Time on Rent only. The value affects only the Time on Rent (lifetime) calculation used by the serialized Instance Picker and auto-assign. It does not change meters, maintenance schedules, or other metrics.
• Serialized items only. Applies exclusively to SN-tracked inventory. Bulk items, kits, and groups are not affected.
• Not a meter. It never reads or writes the item's meter and does not create service-due events.
• Blank defaults to zero. If left empty, the unit is treated as having no prior history and ranks as a zero-hour item.
• Excluded from period utilization. Because the baseline has no dates, it is left out of date-ranged reports (e.g. "utilization for March") but included in lifetime-to-date views.