Why Enquiries Matter?
Not every customer who contacts you is ready to book. Some are checking prices, others are comparing options. Rentablez gives you a place to track all of these conversations as Enquiries — separate from your confirmed orders — so you always know what’s a confirmed deal and what’s still a maybe.
How It Works
Create an enquiry when a customer reaches out. Add the equipment they’re asking about and their rental dates — Rentablez checks availability instantly (you can still add an item even if it’s currently unavailable, so nothing stops you from quoting). Apply any discount, set a security deposit, and add notes. Generate a quote and share it while they decide. When they confirm, convert it to an order in one step and the equipment reserves automatically.
Not Sure They’ll Book? — Keep It as an Enquiry
A new enquiry sits in the list with a Pending status. It doesn’t reserve equipment or affect your inventory — it’s just a record of the conversation. This keeps your confirmed orders clean and prevents phantom reservations from eating into your real availability.
You can capture where each lead came from and how promising it is, which helps you prioritise follow-ups:
| Field | Options | Where you set it |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry Source | Phone, Email, Walk-in, Website, Webstore | Customer-details step when you save |
| Lead Priority | Hot, Warm, Cold | Customer-details step when you save |
Enquiries that come in from your webstore appear with a Guest badge. You can promote a guest into a full customer with Convert to Customer before quoting or converting.
Customer Said Yes? — Convert to an Order
Once the customer confirms, Rentablez transfers the entire enquiry — equipment list, dates, pricing, discounts, deposit, and notes — into a new confirmed order. During conversion you choose the order type:
- Rental Order — a standard one-time rental.
- Lease — a recurring booking, where you set the billing period (Daily, Weekly, Bi-Weekly, or Monthly) and how invoices are generated.
The enquiry status then changes to Converted To Order, and the new order opens ready for the next step. A converted enquiry stays in your list for reference but can no longer be edited or converted again.
A Simple Status Model
Enquiries are deliberately simple:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | The enquiry is live — still a maybe, nothing reserved. |
| Converted To Order | The customer confirmed and a real order now exists. |
Older enquiries created before statuses were introduced may show as Open — this is just a display fallback for records with no status set. The status filter offers Pending and Converted To Order.
There’s no separate “lost” or “cancelled” status. If a deal doesn’t go ahead, the enquiry simply stays Pending as a record of the conversation, and you can delete it when you no longer need it. For a practical approach to handling enquiries that never convert, see Managing Lost Deals.