Operator guide

Renting out pinball machines

Renting games out without a system is how you end up with a forgotten game and money you never billed for, because nothing told you the end date came and went. The game is fine. It is in somebody's basement, five weeks longer than the booking said, and you found out when the renter mentioned it.

Operators started renting games into homes in the spring of 2020 when their locations closed, and Pinball Map kept a list of who was doing it. Most of that trade went away once locations reopened. The operators who still rent games out have the same two problems they always had: getting the game back, and getting the money into the books.

Getting the game back

A booking ends on a date you agreed weeks or months ago, and nothing about a game sitting quietly in a customer's basement is going to remind you of it. That is the whole problem. A spreadsheet will hold the date perfectly well, but a spreadsheet has never once told anybody that a date arrived.

Pinventory tells you the day a rental is due back, then every week for as long as it stays out. A booking reads as scheduled, out, overdue, returned or canceled, so the games you have in the world are a list you can look at instead of something you carry around in your head.

Getting the money into the books

A rental is a rate for a period with payments arriving against it, which is not shaped like a collection and does not fit where you record collections. So it goes somewhere else, and that is the actual cost of running rentals on a spreadsheet: not the arithmetic, which is easy, but that your revenue for the month is now the route plus a file somebody has to remember to open.

Pinventory keeps what the renter owes and what they have paid on the booking itself, and counts each payment on the day it arrives rather than against the rental window.

• Rental income lands in the same cash flow and profit numbers as your collections, door revenue and expenses, so the month is one figure rather than two.
• It carries through to QuickBooks or Xero as rental revenue if you push your books to either one.
• The renter's delivery address lives on the renter, so you enter it once no matter how many times they rent from you.

On location, or out on rental

A game that is out is not on location, and Pinventory will not let it be both: you cannot rent out a game assigned to a location, and you cannot put a game onto a location while it is out. The game keeps its home location the whole time, so marking it returned puts it back with nothing to re-enter.

This matters most if you push your lineup to Pinball Map, because a game listed at a location it is not actually in is a public edit with your name on it.

Rentals is a Pro feature

Starting a rental is the part Pro pays for. Everything after the booking stays open: if your subscription lapses while a game is out, you can still see where it is, mark it returned, record what the renter pays you, and cancel a booking you no longer want. Your game can always come home, and money you are already owed is always yours to collect.

Rentals also stays switched off until the account owner turns it on, since most operators never rent a game out, and the nav stays shorter for the ones who never will.

Related

The rentals walkthrough covers booking a game out and recording what the renter pays. The collections lifecycle follows the money on the rest of the route, and choosing route software covers which kinds of tools handle the money side at all. Or see how Pinventory works for operators.