Rental Transactions at POS - Partnership 2
- Mary Volkmer (Unlicensed)
Textbooks can be rented at the cash register or via PrismWeb.
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
How books are scanned for rental will depend upon:
- If you are renting dynamically
- If rental barcodes are mandatory or optional
When renting dynamically, make sure that there is an adequate supply of stickers at each register and that the cashiers are trained in how to use them. It’s very easy to accidentally skip scanning and assigned of the dynamic barcode when barcodes are not mandatory.
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.
If rental barcodes are mandatory, the prompt will read ‘Enter Required Rental XREF.’ If rental barcodes are optional, the prompt will read ‘Enter Optional 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.
If rental barcodes are mandatory and 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.
If rental barcodes are optional, the cashier is able to press <Enter> at the optional rental barcode prompt, thus renting the book without assigning a rental barcode to the record in the system. Although it’s possible to cancel and re-do this step of the rental transaction, do it only when necessary.
Pre-Stickered Rentals
If a rental already has a rental barcode on it, the cashier should scan the rental barcode, not the Bookland EAN, when prompted for the Item ID. The system will recognize the rental barcode as being attached to the correct rental record.
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. Appropriate caution must be used when creating student customer records to make sure that the data entry conforms to guidelines set by the store, especially if you have an interface to a third party software such as Banner. 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. Email addresses are not required when adding a customer record. However, if the customer record will be attached to a rental, the email address will be required at that time. Therefore, it’s recommended that the email address be entered when creating a new customer record.
- 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. It’s sometimes referred to as the rental tender, though it shouldn’t be confused with the transaction tender which is the method by which the customer pays for renting the book.
Rental guarantee tenders should be determined and the appropriate parameters set in Rental Configuration before renting begins. The choices in Rental Configuration are accounts receivable, credit card, both or neither. Cashiers should be trained on how to select the correct tender and entered the necessary information.
Only one rental tender can be entered per rental transaction, even if your store accepts more than one type of rental 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.
Enter Rental Tender
The prompt for the rental guarantee tender is ‘Enter rental tender.’
When this prompt appears, you can press the appropriate key on the register, enter the tender code, or press <Enter> to select the tender from a list.
If both accounts receivable and credit cards are acceptable rental tenders, the cashier should follow store policy in asking the customer which to use for the rental guarantee.
If only accounts receivable is accepted and you attempt to enter credit card information, you will receive the message ‘Tender type not allowed. Please select A/R account.’
If only credit cards are accepted and you attempt to enter accounts receivable information, you will receive the message “Tender type not allowed. Please select credit card.’
If no rental tender is required, the prompt for the rental tender will not appear during a cash register transaction.
Select Tender Type
If necessary, you can press <Enter> at the blank ‘Enter rental tender’ field to display the ‘Select Tender Type’ dialog. Select the appropriate rental guarantee and click OK to continue.
POS Transaction Inquiry
The ability to search for rental books in Transaction Inquiry has been added. This will only work with a Rental Number/ID (for example, PSYCH 101 for Myers / Psychology) and should not be confused with rental barcode.
Rental Price Overrides
Price overrides are allowed on rental sales, rental refunds, and rental returns. At the register, edit the transaction by entering ED in the Item ID field to override an existing rental price. The ability will allow you to handle exceptional situations.
Important: Rental Number Maintenance will always display the rental price, even if the price was overwritten. Manual Sales and POS Transaction Inquiry will show the override price.
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.