Item Utilization Report

The Item Utilization Report shows the return on investment percentage ( ROI %), income, and utilization percentage for each item for the month selected, the same month the previous year and previous twelve months. Utilization is the percentage of time the item was out in each period. If an item was out 336 hours in a 672 hour month then the utilization is 50%. This report can only be run for a month and so uses the four-week billing cycle of 28 for the calculation. If you are on closed accrual accounting the values will be based on closed contracts. If you are open or cash accounting the values will be based on when contracts are opened. If there are no entries for the periods displayed then the item did not rent in those periods. Items on IRO's are not included in the calculations.

This report would be helpful to determine whether to buy more of a certain item. If you had ten trailers and you were thinking about buying more, you could look at the utilization percentage to see how well the current ten are being rented. If they had a low utilization maybe it wouldn't be a good candidate for more. The best rental items will have a high utilization as well as a high ROI percentage. There are four possibilities between Utilization % and ROI %. The following is a general listing of the four and the possible scenarios for them. Note that you must account for seasonal differences and other differences that occur in the real world.

Low Util - Low ROI: This thing isn't renting or making money. Sell some off or decrease the price to make renting more attractive.

Low Util - High ROI: Good money-making item, but maybe you have too many on hand. Decrease the quantity, don't buy any more.

High Util - Low ROI: This is a good renting item, but you aren't making enough money on it. Raise the rates.

High Util - High ROI: Good money-making item and a good renting item. You might consider buying more of this item or increasing the rental rates.

You will see the following menu:

Category – this button allows you to select only a certain item category to be reported.

Date – select the month and year as the base month for the report.

Sort – the report is sorted by item category.  Within each category, you can choose whether it is sorted by item key, name, or number.  If you have Print Summary checked, then the sort options will not make any difference.

Select Printer – this button defines the printer that the report will print to.

Cancel – this button will cancel your previous selections and return you to the Program Menu.

Generate – this button will generate the report and display the report on your screen.

The report will look like this sample report:

The following descriptions define the information that is given in the report:

ROI - The return-on-investment will be printed as the ratio of income to purchase price in each time period. For example, if the income is $150 and the purchase price is $100 the ROI would be 150%. If the purchase price is not specified in the item record, the ROI will be shown as “0”.

Times - For rental items, the number of times rented.  For sales items, the quantity sold.

Note: If ‘Include Extra Cost in Inventory’ is checked under the Accounting Tab in Parameters, then this report will also calculate including the extra costs.