Some machines have fixed costs, independent of the number of rental days. For example, a setup or assembly cost. If these occur repeatedly, it can be time-consuming to add them manually to the flat-rate costs each time.
We often solved this by creating a separate transport category for such machines and adding it to the transport price. Of course, this does not always work and sometimes led to automatic incorrect charges, for example during an intervention.
To address this, we now offer the ability to define a fixed flat-rate cost per machine. When creating quotes, this cost is automatically added once per machine.
Updating a single machine
In the detail view of a machine in your fleet, you will now see a toggle at the top of the price components to add this flat-rate cost. You provide a reason and a value. From now on, it is automatically included in your quotes. (You can still remove or modify it.)
Updating multiple machines
To update, for example, all machines in a subcategory at once, you can filter the necessary machines on the fleet page, select them, and then click “Edit fixed flat-rate cost” at the top.
Fixed charging costs
Some rental companies wanted to use this flat-rate cost to charge a fixed charging fee for battery-powered machines. This new feature can certainly be used for that. However, at Bullswap, we do not recommend this practice. A few points to note:
- Charging the actual charging costs afterwards is reasonable, especially with rising energy prices. For this reason, we do not take a commission on these actual costs.
- We may take a commission on fixed, predetermined charging costs.
- Fixed charging costs are unfair to customers who leave the machine already charged, and we expect that this will discourage them from doing so.
- As a rental company, your quotes will naturally be more expensive than those of competitors who only charge the actual charging costs afterwards.
- We will be stricter with machines delivered not fully charged when such a flat-rate charging cost was applied in advance.