Cash flow is crucial to the success of every business, especially to hire businesses and rental management companies.

Delayed customer payments can tighten your company’s access to working capital, thereby restricting your capacity for growth. This is the most common discussion topic amongst our customers – payment deferrals by major accounts and long term hires.

We use Ezidebit to manage our cash flow and payments, it has worked brilliantly for us. (please note we have no financial relationship nor related business ownership with Ezidebit.)

Ezidebit provides you with tailored payment solutions to minimise these cash flow concerns and enable your business to grow and prosper into the future. Ezidebit offers a fully automatic collection solution, suitable for regular recurring fees, variable invoiced payments or payment plans.

We have found that with Ezidebit’s direct debit payment system we have gained not only gain greater control but a real reduction in outstanding payments. More importantly we no longer have the emotional and time drain spent in chasing payments.

Ezidebit can have your business set up and signing up customers within a day.

Their contact information is www.ezidebit.com.au , phone 1300 763 256 or email info@ezidebit.com.au

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

Construction hire and rental companies, particularly temporary fencing have some unique hire and rental requirements specific to their business sector. Previously many such companies have had to rely on multiple systems to manage their businesses.
Not so any more!

HireEzy v2.1 has been released with all the specific needs of Construction hire and Rental companies, particularly temporary fencing. Such companies need specific functional in addition to normal hire and rental functional requirements.

HireEzy 2.1 includes all standard hire and rental functionality PLUS
1. Estimation tools to support quotes
2. Management of services to support rental or hire solutions
3. The need for staff and contractor management
4. Issuing and tracking of safety data to meet safety requirements
5. Flexible payments and recurrent billing options.

HireEzy is a complete business solution for temporary roofing, scaffolding and fencing hire/ rental companies.

Natural Business Flow

HireEzy is a natural business flow software, part of the next generation of software solutions that are easy to use but also fully integrate with the internet. Natural business flow software follows the natural way businesses operate.

The natural flow in general terms construction rental and hire companies, specifically scaffolding, fencing and roofing rental and hire follows these broad business processes.

1. Market to create leads
2. Quotes supported by simple estimation tools and booking availability.
3. Convert quotes to invoices and confirmed bookings.
4. Manage and allocate materials and labor resources – (either internal or contractor).
5. Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect.
6. Account for the money.
7. Manage existing clients to generate new business.

HireEzy assists you to manage each of these processes with not only the tools you need, but some you may not even have thought of. Each of the processes will now be briefly discussed.

Marketing

The primary purpose of marketing is to create sales leads. HireEzy provides a full range of in-built marketing tools to enable you to produce your own high quality brochures, catalogue, e-mailers and newsletters. Most importantly it enables you to control your own marketing from one location.

Marketing – Integrated Web Option

The internet is now increasing the primary source of lead generation for most businesses. However for it to work for you it must have a high search engine ranking. That is if “scaffolding hire Melbourne” is typed by a prospect, your company web site must appear at a minimum on the first page of listings. It is worth noting, research has shown that prospects will click on a search result (organic result) over a paid ad appearing on the same page.

HireEzy’s web integration option can significantly help here. By integrating your hire or rental catalogue to the web site, any changes you make in the catalogue are published to the web site. Such changes ensure more frequent web site changes. This in turn means a higher search engine ranking, increasing the chances you will appear on the first page.

HireEzy is the only known system in the world to offer this fully integrated functionality – a critical business tool.

Quoting

HireEzy has some simple inbuilt tools to support your quotation process, such as:
1. An inbuilt length estimator,
2. Contractor resource availability,
3. Inventory availability for a given date range, and
4. Discount rate for approved clients

Such tools simplify the quotation process, meaning all information is at your finger tips. Once a quote has been produced, a simple high quality quotation with graphic images can be produced, and emailed to the client or printed and handed to them.

Invoicing

Quotes are turned to invoices with one click. Or allow quotes to be adjusted to reflect any changes in the original quote. Industry payment terms and conditions are included, such as recurring billing for long term rental or hire, part de-hiring of long term rental or hire items, even allows for adjustment of payments for stand down days.

Manage and Allocate Resources

There are primarily two resources you need to manage, your inventory and your staff/ contractors. With HireEzy you can effectively manage both of these key assets.

The inbuilt inventory management tools enable you to manage your inventory purchasing, receipt, maintenance and dispatch to a job. Accurately providing you with real time information on your stock on hand. If you have depots, no problems, HireEzy can manage your inventory at each site.

Your staff and contractors are essential to your service delivery. HireEzy provides the tools to improve your management of your most valuable asset – people.

Like an item, the availability of staff and contractors is managed in HireEzy. Both can advise of leave periods, other jobs etc and these can be added to the system to provide accurate forecasts of availability. Got a new job and want to confirm a contractor availability then just click SMS, and an SMS is sent straight to the contractor with the job details and dates.

Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect

HireEzy comes with the inbuilt transport planning tools to enable you to schedule deliveries and collections, including assigning tasks to drivers and co-drivers such as:

• Assembly/ disassembly tasks,
• Payment collection,
• On-site period inspections, and
• Collections.

It even includes full integration with Google Street maps to provide directions. On site conditions, limitations including access times etc are also included.

Accounting

Most accounting packages rely on data being transferred from business operations. HireEzy accounting package is driven by your hire transactions, saving enormously on double handling of data and the associated risk of errors. For example, creating an invoice in HireEzy immediately creates an Account Receivable record. If you still have other accounting packages then we could provide data export to those systems. HireEzy accounting module has a full range of financial reports needed to run your business. HireEzy accounting module is included with your purchase.

Manage Your Clients

The old adage is that it is 15 times harder to win a new client than to retain an existing client. HireEzy’s inbuilt management tools, such as contact management, newsletter productions and customer discounts etc, ensure that you have the tools at hand to support your on-going client retention.

HireEzy is the ideal solution for temporary roofing, scaffolding and fencing hire/ rental companies who want to grow their business whether in the USA, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom or New Zealand.
If you are interested in more information or an online demonstration then please contact us or book a demo on line at www.makinglifeezy.com.au

About Us

Making Life Ezy developers of HireEzy and AgencyEzy.

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration.

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform

Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics

Marketing via Twitter

How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter

Marketing via Facebook

Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s

Marketing via YouTube

How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media

Marketing via WordPress

Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog

So what is the business value of the hire and rental industry?

Well here are five good reasons why companies should hire from you.

Cash flow saving
Companies who elect to hire or rent equipment from you are able protect cash reserves. Rather than spending valuable cash on buying items up front, your clients can effectively defer cash outlays through period payments for the hire or rental items. If timed correctly by your client, their receipts from their customer payments from the project can help fund the on-going rental or hire payment (obviously for medium to long term hires). For those of you who have Corporate clients, hiring or renting is often perfect. Many corporate clients have capital budget constraints during a downturn. Therefore hiring or renting can be an ideal way for some corporate clients to get what they need, as hiring or renting is considered to be an operating budget expenditure. Operating budget expenditures are often delegated substantially down the corporate ladder.

True costing
For many clients hiring or renting actually aids their project costing, in turn aiding them in improving their profitability. Hiring or renting is a known cost. Whereas often supplying the equipment from their own internal assets does not enable them to determine the actual cost of the item. Many don’t know the actual depreciation (replacement) value to be assigned, the actual cost of servicing and storing the item. It may sound trite, but for many companies true costing is a major issue.

Risk reduction
Buying items also increases risk. How long is the item they buy going to be used for? Will it be needed again? Should we buy something that may last for the project duration or something that we can be used again? What happens if the item breaksdown? How long before the manufacturer can get a replacement, this can impact the project and hence cash flow. Hiring and renting eliminates these concerns.

Servicing costs and compliance
Related to the risk element above is the need to ensure that the item is correctly serviced and maintained. Many hire and rental companies, especially in the construction hire and rental, eliminate this concern by providing on-site servicing and service histories. If your hire system doesn’t do this then you really need our HireEzy product.

Minimizing Assets
Assets require maintenance as described above both when in use and when stored. This costs money, in fact in Logistics the average assigned value to store, maintain, insure and account for an item is usually 35% of its cost, depending on the equipment. Furthermore, many listed companies and larger companies use Return on Assets as a performance measure. The more they hold in asset value the greater the revenue they need to generate in order to meet this performance figure. Hence hiring or renting can actually aid them in achieving there performance targets as the hired or rented item is not considered an asset.

For many people these statements above will be blinding statements of the obvious. But are they so blindingly obvious to your customers? Renewing and reminding them of your value proposition is often a good activity in these times. Especially when many of your clients are going to look at the costs they spend with you on hiring and renting. Many of your clients will just see the dollar figure and not reflect on the benefits you provide.

If you are a party rental or party hire company the following article provides more specific how to information on this subject.

Making Life Ezy are the makers of HireEzy the world’s most innovative hire software and rental management software. We are committed to helping our clients grow through the provision of business value, such as the information provided in this blog.

Some days the task list of things to do is overwhelming,

where to start,  what to next, who should do it etc etc.  For most small to medium business owners of hire or rental companies this is the daily reality.  Stressful enough to think about as you drive to work, without the background radio comments of from dire predictions of economists and commentators.

Everyone will suggest to keep things simple, easy to say harder to do.  But one very helpful way is to have a simple mental image of your hire or rental business.   Here is one simple mind map.

How to use the map.

In simple terms, the reasons you undertake marketing is to create leads. Once you have a lead, you focus is on converting that lead to a sale or booking, as quickly and efficiently as practical. Managing your stock effectively is a broad term, but encompasses all things to do with your inventory, servicing, delivery and collection costs.  Having the right stock, ready to hire at the right time in the right condition. Financials is an interesting one, what you do and how well you do it drives your cashflow and accounting transaction.  You are in business to make money, what you do is how you make money, the two are intrinsically linked.

The final stage, manage your existing customers is often forgotten.  Estimates on winning new customers range from 5 to 15 times the cost of maintaining an existing customer.

So as you drive to work, you break the broad problems you have down in to the simple stages.

Marketing to Create Leads: If your sales are declining, consider what you are doing to market to generate new leads?  Thinking about it this way, enables you to quickly think about your current marketing approach.  Are we web marketing effectively,  or newspaper advertising etc.  Where is the problem?  With HireEzy you can quickly analyse your lead sources to identify problem areas.  You can also read other posts on this site that suggest or discuss different marketing ideas.

Manage leads to bookings or sales: If you are getting the leads, are you getting the sales or bookings conversion, or are the dollar size of the hires relatively too low or are the taking too long.  Again analysing sales using HireEzy can assist in determining where the problem lies.

Effectively manage your product assets: Such a broad area, with so many potential problems.  So lets take an example problem – sales being lost because of insufficent stock.  What is the cause, is there a sufficient inventory relative to current and forecast bookings, has there been a change in product demand, is too much of the current inventory not available for hire, due to servicing, cleaning or repair requirements,  Where is the problem?  Again use the analysis reports in HireEzy to identify the cause.

Financials driven by your bookings: What you do should drive your accounts.  Not sure what your cashflow forecast is, then it is probably because your booking forecasts are not visible in your accounts.  This is the most common problem facing companies who have an accounting package either separate from or being used to manage their business.  Ideal for the accountants terrible for operating the business.  This problem is solved with HireEzy as the accounting package is integrated into the solution.  A confirmed booking creates an immediate accounting transaction entry.

Manage your existing clients:  Back to feeding your market leads, are you getting word or mouth referrals or repeat business from existing customers?  No, then look at some of the tools in HireEzy and the business improvement suggestions made in this blog, such as renewing old leads.  Remember your customers can be your best marketers.

This mind map tool is just a way of helping to simplify you business, to make sense out of the myriad of issues and problems you face daily.  Try using it and see if it helps you.

Making Life Ezy is the name of our company and the objective of our products like HireEzy, for more information go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au Available through out USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Singapore.

Many projects announced in the Stimulus packages had lead times for tendering, design and planning stages, especially the larger projects.

The Hire and Rental industry is critical to the efficient delivery of these projects, as explained in previous post.

In essence the industry is critical because it can efficiently deliver equipment, resources and solutions to the companies delivering the projects with out the need for such delivery companies to use critical cash reserves to purchase equipment.

Stimulus Packages Size and Investment

During the earlier part of 2009, Governments in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada  announced significant local stimulus packages.   A major portion of this investment has been directed towards Infra-Structure projects designed to kick start the construction sector.

The numbers are staggering!!!

Specific details on the USA package

Whilst some major projects in each country will have lag times as the tendering, design and planning stages are processed.   However many of the government initiatives have been directed towards accelerating numerous small projects.

These projects will be small, numerous and dispersed creating a demand on tools and equipment. Construction, Tool, Scaffolding and Temporary Fencing Rental and Hire companies may well be able to benefit from this demand. In order to meet the requirements of numerous competing projects, many construction companies may not be able to efficiently allocate and re-locate in-house tools and equipment.

Hence increasing demand for more construction hire equipment.

A second related issue is that in some countries, banks are forcing property developers to expedite projects or lose their line of credit.  This has had a flow on effect to Town Planning departments, where many are under heavy workloads to meet expedite approvals.

Small Projects Flow On

Some Western Governments have handed our tax incentives or cash hand outs to stimulate demand.  This could contribute to a growth in the home repair and maintenance market. Three factors may potentially contribute to the growth in this segment:

1. Reduced equity in the home due to the fall in house prices will mitigate against many people borrowing against their house value to undertake major projects.
2. Increased disposable cash from tax cuts and interest rate cuts may assist in home owners undertaking minor projects and repairs.
3. The prospect of a greater focus on activities with friends and families, which includes home repair activities, again discussed in the previous post.

If you are considering improving your marketing to these segments Construction, Tool and Temporary Fencing then using HireEzy’s ( hire software, hire management software) inbuilt marketing tools will aid you substantially. For more information go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au