Questions about rental products and shipments

[Cimballi]

Hi,

I try to use OFBiz for a rental business.
The goal is to rent products and provide a delivery-pickup service
with each order.

I am facing two problems :
1. Is it possible to have shipments with rental products ?
2. Is there a way to represent these 2 shipments, delivery and pickup ?

Thanks,

Cimballi

[Anil Patel-3]

Cimbaili,
The requirements you have are achievable in Ofbiz with some customization. The Products will have serialized inventory, this will allow you to track movement of exact item.

First time shipment will not be issue, Problem is when you take it back in stock. The OOTB process to take item back in stock may not fit you needs.

Ofbiz has set of tables modeled to track shipments (delivery and pickup) and UI is very flexible, may be too much. You may like to customize UI flow.
 
Thanks and Regards
Anil Patel
HotWax Media Inc
Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz"

On Dec 5, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Cimballi wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I try to use OFBiz for a rental business.
> The goal is to rent products and provide a delivery-pickup service
> with each order.
>
> I am facing two problems :
> 1. Is it possible to have shipments with rental products ?
> 2. Is there a way to represent these 2 shipments, delivery and pickup ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cimballi

[Cimballi-2]

Hey Anil !

Thanks for your answer.

Here are some comments about my "researches" :
- By default, OFBiz doens't reserve RENTAL_ORDER_ITEM and so cannot
create a shipment with such an item.
- I updated the OrderServices class to allow this reservation, and now
it is working.
- This solution is not perfect because now the inventory item is mark
as delivered but in fact as it is a rental item, delivered is not a
final state, the item will be taken back to the company. Also, maybe
by updating the OrderServices class to allow reservation for
RENTAL_ORDER_ITEM I broke some logic, I don't know.

So, my next questions would be :
- Does anybody use OFBiz to manage rental business, like renting DVDs
? And if so, which solution do they use ?
- About the way OFBiz implements RENTAL_ORDER_ITEM, is there any
reason to not allow inventory reservation for these items ?

Thanks !

Cimballi


On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Anil Patel <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Cimbaili,
> The requirements you have are achievable in Ofbiz with some customization. The Products will have serialized inventory, this will allow you to track movement of exact item.
>
> First time shipment will not be issue, Problem is when you take it back in stock. The OOTB process to take item back in stock may not fit you needs.
>
> Ofbiz has set of tables modeled to track shipments (delivery and pickup) and UI is very flexible, may be too much. You may like to customize UI flow.
>
> Thanks and Regards
> Anil Patel
> HotWax Media Inc
> Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz"
>
> On Dec 5, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Cimballi wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I try to use OFBiz for a rental business.
>> The goal is to rent products and provide a delivery-pickup service
>> with each order.
>>
>> I am facing two problems :
>> 1. Is it possible to have shipments with rental products ?
>> 2. Is there a way to represent these 2 shipments, delivery and pickup ?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Cimballi
>
>

[Anil Patel-3]

I know there was some effort to implement Real Estate Rental long back. More recently there is other thread on list where people mention about what they have implemented as solution for Rental business.

I have to admit, Its not available OOTB in shape you will like it. Also quick work around will not get you the solution that will last.

If you have enough time, Please put your requirements on Apache Ofbiz wiki and send link to it on this list. If you lead the conversation appropriately there will be people who will help you model the system and to some extent help you implement as well.

In my opinion, implementation of such system will require help of experienced ofbiz developer.

Thanks and Regards
Anil Patel
HotWax Media Inc
Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz"

On Dec 6, 2009, at 5:26 PM, Cimballi wrote:

> Hey Anil !
>
> Thanks for your answer.
>
> Here are some comments about my "researches" :
> - By default, OFBiz doens't reserve RENTAL_ORDER_ITEM and so cannot
> create a shipment with such an item.
> - I updated the OrderServices class to allow this reservation, and now
> it is working.
> - This solution is not perfect because now the inventory item is mark
> as delivered but in fact as it is a rental item, delivered is not a
> final state, the item will be taken back to the company. Also, maybe
> by updating the OrderServices class to allow reservation for
> RENTAL_ORDER_ITEM I broke some logic, I don't know.
>
> So, my next questions would be :
> - Does anybody use OFBiz to manage rental business, like renting DVDs
> ? And if so, which solution do they use ?
> - About the way OFBiz implements RENTAL_ORDER_ITEM, is there any
> reason to not allow inventory reservation for these items ?
>
> Thanks !
>
> Cimballi
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Anil Patel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Cimbaili,
>> The requirements you have are achievable in Ofbiz with some customization. The Products will have serialized inventory, this will allow you to track movement of exact item.
>>
>> First time shipment will not be issue, Problem is when you take it back in stock. The OOTB process to take item back in stock may not fit you needs.
>>
>> Ofbiz has set of tables modeled to track shipments (delivery and pickup) and UI is very flexible, may be too much. You may like to customize UI flow.
>>
>> Thanks and Regards
>> Anil Patel
>> HotWax Media Inc
>> Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz"
>>
>> On Dec 5, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Cimballi wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I try to use OFBiz for a rental business.
>>> The goal is to rent products and provide a delivery-pickup service
>>> with each order.
>>>
>>> I am facing two problems :
>>> 1. Is it possible to have shipments with rental products ?
>>> 2. Is there a way to represent these 2 shipments, delivery and pickup ?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Cimballi
>>
>>

[hans_bakker]

Hi Cimballi

The current rental facilities within ofbiz are based on the rental of
non movable objects like hotelrooms. These rooms are represented as
fixed assets and a calendar is maintained if and how many are rented
out. So the system does know if a fixed asset is available or not.

The reason of using fixed assets is the possibility to have maintenance
activities on these fixed assets which make them unavailable for
renting.

You could make an function on top of the fixed asset,  registering if a
fixed asset is picked up or not with a connection to the order.
A screen for fixed assets expected to go out and a list of fixed assets
expected to come in.

sounds not too difficult?

Regards,
Hans


On Sat, 2009-12-05 at 23:34 -0500, Cimballi wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I try to use OFBiz for a rental business.
> The goal is to rent products and provide a delivery-pickup service
> with each order.
>
> I am facing two problems :
> 1. Is it possible to have shipments with rental products ?
> 2. Is there a way to represent these 2 shipments, delivery and pickup ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cimballi

--
Antwebsystems.com: Quality OFBiz services for competitive rates

[Cimballi-2]

Hi Anil and Hans !

Thanks a lot for your contribution and let's continue this thread,
maybe we will finish with detailed specs for new functionalities ! :-)

So, I will first explain what we want to do.
Our goal is to build a rental business, rental of "movable objects"
like you said. These can be DVDs, books, computers, anything you can
rent and which need shipping.
Furthermore, we want to provide a delivery-pickup with the renting. It
means we deliver the rented product to the customer, and when the
rental period is finished, we go to pick up the product.
I think that the functionalities are pretty simple to understand, let
me know if there is something unclear.

Now, here are some comments about what I've seen in OFBiz.
As you said and as I discovered, the rental module of OFBiz has been
designed for non-movable objects, or at least products you don't have
to ship.
There is also a shipment module, which, from my point of view, has
been designed to handle standard one way shipment.

So, here is what we miss :
- The rental system seems to work for any kind of products but I have
not sure it's necessary to create work items in all cases. I still
don't understand well this notion of work item, I suppose it is to
track the use of human resources. I think there should be a
distinction between rental products which requires work items and
rental products which do not.
- About the duration of a rent, it seems to me that the duration
precision level is the day, it should be possible to have a precision
level of the hour, maybe less.
- About the price of the rented product, for now the price is a base
price pe time, then it is multiplied by the duration. It should be
interesting to have a way to specify more complex prices. No concrete
sample to provide here, I still have to think about it.
- Have the shipment module work with rental items and service items.
This one is a big change I think. For rental products, one change
could be to associate an InventoryItem to the product and then use the
exisitng functionalities. Not sure if it can work because in this case
the item is not sold but rented, and maybe this specific state
requires more changes in the current services. For service items, the
goal is to handle the fact that when you sell a service, this service
may require shipments (or at least movements, not sure if the word
shipment is appropriate here).

Thanks for your time !

Cimballi