Setting Up Rent to Own

Your Rent to Own functionality should require very little time to configure in the Rain system. Within your initial Rent to Own transactions, you can configure how each will work as needed. This article will cover how to set your defaults in the Settings area.

Rent to Own vs. Rentals in the Rain System

You may already be familiar with how Rentals work in the Rain system. Rent to Own differs from Rentals in the following ways:

• Payments are automated over time, for whatever total RTO contract period you set.
• You can use any product already saved in your system in the Products module, and an RTO contract can cover a group of products, as needed.
• There is no special scheduling calendar, all dates are automated based on the starting contract date.
• You can either use the built-in, autofill-capable contracts for the system (see setup options below) or you can upload signed contracts in the initial contract transaction (click here for the article on Creating Rent to Own Contracts).

You can get to this part of the system by clicking on the Gear-Shaped Button on the far right side of the blue Admin Toolbar and then clicking on Settings > POS > Rent to Own.

Settings for Rent to Own

To activate your Rent to Own system, you'll need to speak with someone on our team. You may already be working with an Account Manager, but if you have already launched your system, you can just call us at 877-909-6699 and use option 2, and we can look into getting that activated for you.

Once the system is activated for you, go to the gear-shaped button on the far right side of the blue Admin Toolbar and click on Settings > POS Settings > Rent to Own.

The upper section of your Rent to Own Settings tab is for default values that you are free to change on each Rent to Own contract you create. So the system will populate the various fields with the information you would usually use with an average RTO contract, and each of those fields is editable on the actual setup transaction, if needed. Here are the fields you need to configure:

1. Monthly Maintenance Fee - This fee can be for maintaining the contract, and can represent whatever monthly work you and your team do to maintain the rent to own contract, including periodic service on the item(s). You can click the drop-list for a tax rate you have set up in your system, if taxes apply to fees.
2. Monthly Protection - You can break up the protection service on the item into monthly payments with this field. It is recommended to itemize this expense in this way, to allow the system to track the expense and also to show the customer the breakdown of what they are paying for. As with fees, you can also click the drop-list for a tax rate you have set up in your system, if taxes apply to your protection service.
3. Late Fee - A late fee is a good way to make sure your renters take their payments seriously, just make sure they understand up front how your fees work and when they will be applied.
4. Payment Grace Period (days) - This is the number of days you allow past the due date of each payment before the payment is considered to be late.
5. Manage Contract Templates - Click the Configure button to see the default contract template or to upload and configure your own. This contract system allows for live fields that auto-fill important information for you (see examples below).
   
   
6. Default Contract Type - Using this drop-list, you can set the default type to be either Rent to Own or Rent Only for new contracts you create. Within the new contract, it can always be changed before finalizing the contract.
7. Require Contract Information - This function allows you to set which fields are required in order to save the entry for RTO Contracts, RTR Contracts, Finance Contracts, and the data fields on the first tab of the Edit Customer profile area. If you look at the example below, you just click on whatever fields you want to make required and they turn red. Please note that on the Customer tab, you can also make any custom fields you may have created required.
8. Online Rental Terms and Conditions - (Online RTO Release Date TBA - This feature is currently in final testing) You can enter plain text into this box for anyone starting up a contract with you online, so you can't do special formatting (bolt, italic, bullet points, etc.), but you can post important information about how you handle your contracts.
9. Contract Exchange Profile - This function allows you to set defaults for how you handle exchanges within Departments of different types of items. You're able to add any number of Departments to a profile, as pictured below. There are two modes for the profile to function: You can set a flat percentage of the principal that will transfer in the exchange by setting Entire Contract as the Transfer Type from the drop-list. Or, if you like, you can use Set Number of Payments as the Transfer Type, which would allow you to set a time frame for how long the exchange item has been with the customer for which you would allow principal to be transferred. For example: If you don't want to allow items that have been out for longer than a year to transfer anything but the first twelve months of the rental's principal (because after that the item might be in bad condition), you can set the number of payments to 12. Those 12 months will transfer over to the new item, but subsequent months the renter might have paid will not. With the Entire Contract option, no time frame is given, and the Transfer Amount would be fixed at whatever percentage of the principal you want.
   
   
10. Require Maintenance / Protection - Enabling this setting will require whichever of the Maintenance or Protection fees you have set up as a default whenever a customer signs up for Online RTO.
11. Credit Card Autobill Settings - Turn this ON if you wish the system to auto-bill a card after a payment fails. You can set the duration in days the system will wait after a failed payment to retry the charge with the Days After Due Date to Start Retrying setting. Please note that successive charges that fail will NOT trigger a late fee again; each main payment date that is missed will charge a late fee, so this setting will just retry the charge for you to see if it will go through. Setting this to be a shorter duration than the number of days of grace you offer on late fees can be a very good thing. Next, you will set the period in days that will pass in-between retry attempts with the Reattempt Every This Many Days setting. And lastly, you can set the number of Maximum Retry Attempts the system will make before it stops trying.
    
    
12. Notices - Autopay - If you wish for the system to send email notifications about Autopay to your customers, you can set this toggle to ON. Autopay reminders are sent out 5 days prior to the day the payment is scheduled.
13. Notices - Late Fee - If you wish for the system to send email notifications of Late Fees to your customers, you can set this toggle to ON. Late Fee reminders are emailed as soon as the fee is incurred.
14. Notices - Online Pay Reminder - Enabling this setting will email customers about upcoming payments for RTO contracts created online.
    
    
15. School Districts - (Music Shops Only) If you do rental service to school districts, you can set up your different districts in this area, with all schools listed within each district. To create a new district, click the +New District button and enter the name for the school district. You can then enter individual school names you provide rentals for, and there is no limit to how many you can enter. Once you're finished, click to Save the entry.
    
    
    
    After you've saved the School District info, whenever you create a new RTO contract, you will have the option of adding a Teacher, School District, and School for reference to the contract.
    
    
16. Rental Contract Profiles - Using the +New Profile button, you can create preset profiles for common terms you use in RTO/RTR contracts in different situations. Here are the items you can set for any Profiles you create (please note you have drop-lists for your available tax rates if you need them for Monthly Maintenance and Monthly Protection items):
    
    
17. Depreciation - Please Note: this feature is in open beta. You can turn it on by going to the gear-shaped button on the far right of the blue bar and clicking on Beta Features. You can track your Depreciation cost changes based on the different kinds of RTO contracts you do. For example, if you typically do RTO contracts for student instruments for a school year, you could enter the Depreciation Name of the contract type, the number of Months to Depreciate. You will also set the Minimum Net Value of the item as a percentage of it's new Cost value, and this sets the total Cost of the item below which it cannot depreciate. For example, if you have a $500 new trumpet and it will always be worth at least $50 no matter how old it gets, set the Minimum Net Value at 10%, and the depreciation schedule the system creates will not allow the item to depreciate below that. Another way you can use this is if you have shorter contracts, you can set the Minimum Net Value to what you know the item's value will be, as a percentage of its original new value, once the contract is complete. 

Once you have made your configuration preferences, click the Save button at the bottom to set them in the system.

Setting Up Recurring Processing Tokenization

One critical step in setting up your Rent to Own is having your credit card processing company configure and activate the recurring payment tokenization for your account with them.

Please click here to see how to proceed with that setup.