Rental Transactions at POS - NMRP
- Mary Volkmer (Unlicensed)
Textbooks can be rented at the cash register or via PrismWeb.
PLEASE NOTE: NBC is a tax exempt entity, as we are a wholesale company. As a result, the NMRP Rebate portion of the POS transaction is NOT taxed. The rental portion of the transaction is taxed based on your store’s rental configuration settings.
The customer must agree to the rental agreement terms. At the end of the transaction at POS, the rental agreement will print. The customer should sign a copy that will stay in the store and be given another copy for his/her records.
Both rentals and purchases can be included on the same transaction.
Email Address is Required for this Transaction
If the E-mail field is left blank during a rental transaction, you will receive an error message. You must acknowledge the error message and enter a valid email address in the E-mail field.
Customer Email Not Set
For an account sale which includes a rental, it’s possible to select a customer record at the beginning of the transaction that doesn’t have an email address. If you accept that same customer record for an AR rental tender, you will receive a message ‘Email not set.’ Acknowledge the message and enter the email on the displayed Customer Address dialog.
Scan Books and Assign Rental Barcodes
Renting Dynamically
When renting dynamically, the cashier will scan the Bookland EAN when prompted for the Item ID. The prompt “Rent or Sell” appears if there is an active rental record for the book. If the customer wishes to rent, the cashier will select ‘Rent’ and will then be prompted for the rental barcode.
The prompt will read ‘Enter Required Rental XREF.’
When prompted for the Rental XREF, the cashier should remove a dynamic barcode from the roll of stickers and place it on the book, then scan it. This is especially important if a customer is renting more than one book as it lessens the likelihood of barcodes and books being mixed up. Make sure that there is an adequate supply of stickers at each register and that the cashiers are trained in how to use them.
Rental barcodes are mandatory for NMRP Rentals. If the cashier doesn’t enter or scan a rental barcode and attempts to continue, the message ‘XREF is required. Item will not be added.’ will appear. The cashier must acknowledge the message and then begin again with scanning the Bookland EAN.
Customer Information
At some point in the transaction, the customer must be identified and attached to the rental. This may occur after rentals are scanned as with a regular sale transaction, or before rentals are scanned as with an account sale transaction. There are different methods for finding the customer, depending upon how your system is setup.
The prompt for customer information for a rental reads “Enter Customer ID for rental.”
This is different from the prompt that appears when you need to identify a customer for an Account Sale. That prompt reads ‘Enter customer ID’ and it appears for any Account Sale transaction, regardless of whether or not rentals are included in the transaction.
At either prompt for customer information, you can search for information using the following methods:
- Swipe a student ID card or the customer’s credit card, if the magnetic stripe readers have been configured for the cards
- Scan the ID barcode, if the student ID is in barcode format and the scanners are configured to read it
- Manually enter the student ID
- Press <Enter> to search for the customer
The customer information and email address should be verified at this time.
Add a Customer
A customer record can be added during a transaction, if security rights of the cashier allow it. You may opt to import student records into PrismCore so that cashiers do not have to create customer records during sales and rental transactions.
Before a customer can be added, it’s recommended that you do a thorough search for the customer. You can click ‘Cancel’ at the Customer Search dialog, however, if you don’t search for a customer before adding a record, you may end up with more than one customer record for a single student.
- After searching for a customer and confirming that the customer isn’t listed in the search results, press <Escape.>.
- The prompt to add a customer will appear (if security rights permit).
- Click ‘Yes’ to display the Customer Address dialog.
- Enter the appropriate information the customer fields REQUIRED for all NMRP rentals. These include Government ID, Government Agency, and Birthdate. Also, fill in any additional fields.
- When the information is complete, click OK to continue the transaction.
You can also type ‘ADD’ or ‘NEW’ to at the ‘Enter customer ID for rental’ prompt and go directly to the Customer dialog.
Rental Guarantee Tender
The rental guarantee tender is how the student will be charged if a rental isn’t returned to the store.
Rental guarantee tenders should be determined and the appropriate parameters set in Rental Configuration well before renting begins. For NMRP, a credit card is required as the rental guarantee tender.
The prompts during a rental transaction lead the cashier through the process of collecting the rental guarantee tender and customer information. The prompts may vary slightly.
POS Transaction Inquiry
You can search for rental books in Transaction Inquiry. This will only work with a Rental Number/ID and should not be confused with rental barcode.
On the receipt, and on the screen, for a rental transaction you only see the rental price and the tax amount.
Refunds
Rental textbooks may be returned for a full refund through the Refund Expiration Date, which is set when the rental period is created in Rental Configuration. For example, if the Refund Expiration Date is September 9, a student can return a rental book on the 9th for a full refund of the price that was paid to rent the books. On the 10th however, a refund transaction would show the student is owed $0.00.
Rental refunds are done in the same manner as other refunds, including using Transaction Inquiry (TI) to find the original transaction and selecting the item to refund.