DumpsterBossPro Blog — Dumpster Rental Software

Tracking Rental Days: Delivery Date, Pickup Date and Days Included

A roll-off can is a piece of rolling stock earning money only while it is rented. A can that sits at a site for three weeks on a seven-day rental is either earning extra days or costing you a can you could have rented to someone else. Either way, you need to know.

Dumpster Rental Quotes With Online Approval covered putting the rental terms in writing. This guide covers keeping track of the clock those terms create.

The Four Numbers That Matter

Every rental comes down to four numbers: the delivery date, the pickup date, the days included and the daily rate after that. In DumpsterBossPro, each job tracks all four. The delivery date is set when the can is dropped. The pickup date is set when it is pulled. The days included and the daily rate should match the terms you quoted.

With those four numbers on the job, the math is automatic. If the can was out longer than the days included, the extra days at the daily rate are added to the invoice. Nobody has to count calendar days or remember which rentals ran long.

Why Dates Get Lost on Paper

On a whiteboard, the delivery date gets written down when the can goes out, sometimes. The pickup date gets written when the driver remembers to call it in. When the board gets erased, the dates are gone. At the end of the month, someone tries to reconstruct which rentals ran over, and most of them do not get billed.

When the delivery date and the pickup date live on the job instead of on a board, they do not depend on anyone remembering, and they do not get wiped off with a rag at the end of the week.

Watching Rentals That Run Long

Not every long rental is a problem. Construction jobs often run for weeks, and those extra days are revenue. But you still want to know which cans are out long, because a can that has been sitting for a month at a homeowner's house might be forgotten by the customer too.

Look at your open rentals regularly. A friendly text to a customer whose rental is past its included days often gets a pickup request, or at least a reminder that extra days are adding up. Either way, nobody is surprised by the invoice.

The other reason to watch long rentals is capacity. A can sitting forgotten at a finished job is a can you cannot rent to the next customer. If you are short on 20s every Friday, look at how many are out past their days before you buy more.

Setting Days Included and Daily Rates

How many days to include, and what to charge after, is a business decision. Some companies include a week, some include more for larger sizes, and contractors may get different terms. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent and put it on every quote and every job.

Consistency matters because customers talk. If one neighbor got ten days and another got seven for the same size, you will hear about it. Standard terms, with exceptions you choose on purpose, make the business easier to run and easier to explain.

Swaps and Rental Days

Swaps raise a question every roll-off company has to answer: does a swap start a new rental or continue the old one? There is no single right answer. Some companies treat each swap as a new rental with its own days included; others keep one rental running and charge the swap separately.

Decide your policy, write it into your quotes, and apply it the same way every time. The delivery and pickup dates on each job will reflect whatever structure you choose, and the invoice will follow.

Rental Days as a Planning Tool

Rental dates are not just for billing. They tell you when cans should be coming back, which helps you plan how many empties you will have and when. If a lot of rentals are due back this week, you can plan more deliveries. If they are all running long, you may need to hold off on promising new ones.

Over a season, those dates also show you how long rentals actually run by size and by customer type. If homeowners almost always keep a 20 for ten days, maybe your terms should reflect that, either in the days included or the price.

The next guide covers billing those extra days automatically. To see how rental tracking ties into the rest of the system, visit the DumpsterBossPro dumpster rental software page.