At Rental Acquisitions LLC, the rental advice we give encompasses all aspects of a rental business.  Operations, sales and marketing, repairs and maintenance, time and dollar utilization, all meaningful metrics for the industry, areas of opportunity, areas of deficiency, etc.

We also say, “if you don’t have good financial reporting systems in place, we can’t really help you.”  It’s a fact of life in our practice.  Providing us the proverbial “shoebox” full of financial data doesn’t cut it.  We need accurate monthly financial statements on a timely basis to maximize our services to our clients.

We also need good asset data.  You’d be surprised how many rental companies don’t have a good handle on their assets—the single largest investment in any rental company.  In order to properly value a rental company, measure operational efficiencies or to sell a business for that matter, we need solid asset data that is up to date.

Generally, the asset list should have the following:

• Make/Model #/Serial # (if applicable)/Description of item.
• Quantity.
• Original Cost of the item.
• Date of Purchase.
• Depreciated value (Net Book Value).

This information should be readily available and in excel format (many software systems can export the asset data into excel format).

You should also have the same information for non rental/ “rolling stock” items such as vehicles and other non-rental assets.

Enter the data regularly as you purchase equipment.  That also means taking off units that are disposed of, no longer in the fleet or are not rentable.

The better asset data you have, the better off you’ll be in many aspects of your rental business.  Both today and when you need professional services such as ours.