Rental Inventory
Track every rental garment you own as a barcoded unit, see live availability, and assign specific pieces to customers at pickup.
Rental Inventory is where you manage the garments your store owns and rents out. It lets you catalog each style, track every physical piece by barcode, and see in real time how many of a given size are available on any date — so you never double-book a tuxedo for two weddings on the same weekend.
Items vs. Units
Rental Inventory has two layers. Understanding the difference is the key to everything else:
Inventory Item
A style in your catalog — e.g. "Charcoal Shawl Tuxedo." It holds the name, brand, color, SKU, price, and the attire types it can fulfill. One item, many sizes.
Unit
A single physical garment with its own barcode and size — e.g. one 34R of that tuxedo. Each unit is tracked individually and can be assigned to one customer at a time.
Your owned count for any size is simply the number of units you've added in that size. Availability is that owned count minus whatever is already committed to customers during the rental window.
Opening Rental Inventory
Go to Settings and open either the Wedding Attire or Rental Attire tab, then click the Inventory button. This opens the Rental Inventory list, where each row is an item with a Total Owned count. The SKU and Brand columns are sortable.
Creating an Inventory Item
- 1 From the Rental Inventory list, click Add Item.
- 2 Fill in the basics: Name, Brand (with type-ahead suggestions from brands you've already used), Color, SKU, Rental Price, and a Description.
- 3 Under Attire Links, choose which Wedding Attire and/or Rental Attire type this item fulfills. For each link, pick the Size Measurement that determines a unit's size (e.g. Jacket Size). See the note below for sizeless items.
- 4 Click Save. You'll return to the list, where you can open the item to add units.
Sizeless items: If an attire link has no Size Measurement (for example a one-size pocket square), its units carry a size of - and availability is counted across the item as a whole rather than per size.
Adding Units (Barcodes)
Open an item and add a unit for each physical garment you own:
- 1 Click Add Unit and choose its size (skipped automatically for sizeless items).
- 2 A barcode is assigned automatically. You can edit it to match an existing tag — for example a number printed on your garment labels. Barcodes are unique within your store.
- 3 Repeat — add one unit per physical garment. Five 34R jackets means five units. The item's Total Owned updates from the unit count.
Tip: Print the barcode onto a hang tag for each garment. At pickup you can scan it instead of looking up the unit by hand.
Unit Statuses
Every unit has a status that reflects where it is in its lifecycle:
- Available — in stock and ready to assign.
- Assigned — earmarked for a specific customer's order or wedding member.
- Checked Out — physically with the customer.
- Cleaning — back from a rental and in turnaround.
- Lost — unaccounted for.
Most status changes happen automatically as you advance an order or wedding member through its statuses. The item's unit list shows the current status and who each unit is assigned to.
Linking Inventory to Attire Selections
Once an item is linked to an attire type, it appears when you choose attire for a wedding party member or a rental order. The picker shows live availability for the selected date and size:
- In stock — units are available for that size and date.
- Over Booked — commitments exceed the units you own for that window. You can still select the item, but you'll need more inventory or a different date.
- Missing Size — the customer has no measurement on file for the linked size, so availability can't be calculated. Record the measurement to resolve it.
On the wedding overview, each member shows a badge — a green check when their rental selections are all in stock, or a red Over Booked / Missing Size warning when attention is needed.
How Availability Is Calculated
For a given size and date, availability is the number of units you own minus the number committed to other customers whose rental windows overlap that date. Commitments come from wedding members and rental orders that have the item selected.
A garment isn't free the instant an event ends — it needs time to come back, be cleaned, and be re-shelved. The Buffer Days setting extends each commitment window by that many days around the event so a piece isn't promised to the next customer too soon.
Assigning a Unit to a Customer
Selecting an item reserves capacity, but assigning ties a specific barcoded garment to one customer — typically at pickup. You can do this from the order item status modal, the order's store-mode QR screen, or the customer's QR screen:
- 1 On the rental item, click Assign Unit and scan the garment's barcode.
- 2 The system checks that the unit is Available and matches the item and size, then assigns it. The assigned barcode is shown on the item.
- 3 When the garment comes back, click Release to free the unit and return it to stock.
Marking an order item or wedding member as completed also releases its assigned units automatically, so they become available for the next rental.
Buffer Days Setting
Set your turnaround buffer in Settings → Rental Settings. The Buffer Days (after event) field controls how long a garment stays committed after an event before it's considered available again. Increase it if cleaning and turnaround take longer in your shop.