Rent to Own

You can begin setting up a Rent to Own contract by clicking on the Register Button on the far left side of the blue Admin Toolbar. You can configure your RTO Settings by clicking the Gear Button on the Admin Toolbar and going to Settings > POS Settings > Rent to Own. Click here for more information on how to set up Rent to Own.

Please Note: You will need to set up a Recurring Payment tokenization with either Worldpay or Transnational / NMI in order for Rent to Own to be able to do recurring charges. Click here to learn more about setting this up. 

Creating a Rent to Own Contract

1. Once your settings have been configured, go to your Register (the fastest way to get to your Register is by clicking on the Register Button on the far left side of the blue Admin Toolbar).
2. Load the Customer (or create a new Customer in the system, make sure they are saved to your Customer list before you proceed).
3. On the far right side of the Register, click on any of the Customer Action icons. If the Customer already has a Rent to Own contract saved in the system, you will see the handshake icon highlighted in gold.
   
   
4. Find the section for Rent to Own in your Customer Actions panel and click the + button to start your new contract. Please note that from this area, you can also click the Pay button on an existing RTO listed for the customer.
   
   

You are now ready to configure your initial contract for this Rent to Own. When you click the + button, the Add Rental Contract panel will open. Here are the steps you need to take (please note that you may want to start by adding your item(s) for Rent to Own in #8, below; those items can be any product saved in the system, so make sure the item(s) in your new contract are saved):

1. Rental Information - Key details about the Customer as well as the name of the Store Location where the Rent to Own contract is being created will be listed here. Clicking on the links to the highlighted items here (in this example, Customer Name and Phone) will open the Customer detail panel so you can access their full info. Please note that you will also be able to access this panel whenever you click to open an active Rent to Own, either from the Register or from POS > Rent to Own.
   Please Note: If you are in the Music industry, you will see fields for School information, as pictured below. All other industries will not have those fields enabled. If you need to set up your School District information, click here to learn how.
2. Contract Details - You can set the Contract Type to be Rent to Own or Rent Only (rent to rent). For the Payment Frequency, you can set it to be Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly. In the Term area, you can set the total Number of Months, Years, or Weeks. You can also set your Interest Rate here. NOTE: These fields, once the contract is initially saved, will also become un-editable, so make sure you get the info in the way you will want it from the start. Read the note above on how to delete the contract if you saved the info the wrong way.
3. Total Financed - This section details the total amount the customer is financing, the tax, and gives you fields to enter any Rental Credit that may apply or Down Payment that will reduce the total. Please note that these fields are only visible during this initial creation of the contract. Once you save it, either of these fields that have values entered in them will be visible to show those respective values, and any that had nothing entered will not display, and neither can be edited after that initial save.
4. Item Search & Line Items - You can Search forcan add the item or multiple items for the Rent to Own contract here. You can rent as many items as you like in a single contract. This area will display the Line Item(s) being rented in the same manner as the Register, including a thumbnail image. You can manually set the Price, if needed, the Quantity, and by clicking the Price Tag icon in the Discount column, you can set a Line-Item Discount by percentage off or dollar-amount off, as needed.

5. Payment Details - This section displays the base amount for the Monthly Rental Payment, with the interest rate already combined, if any. It will also populate your Monthly Maintenance and Monthly Insurance fee amounts. All three of those fields can be edited, if you need. NOTE: After you create this initial contract and save it, you will not be able to edit these fields any longer, so make sure they are set correctly. If you save a contract with incorrect numbers, you will need to delete it (go to POS > Rent to Own > click on the RTO ID Number, find the Delete button near the bottom of the panel and click it), and then re-create the contract with the correct information.
6. Payments - This area shows how many payments are scheduled and how much each payment needs to be. If you click on Scheduled Payments you'll see a schedule like this one:
   
   
   In addition to the payment breakdown displayed in the Payment Schedule, you can also click on Next Payment Amount to see a breakdown of the components of just the monthly payment, like this:
   
   
7. Auto Pay - If you want the system to automatically bill the customer each period, set this to ON. You can also click to Add Primary Card and Add Secondary Card (in case the primary fails for whatever reason). A Secondary Card is not required by our system. Please note that the Credit Card Automated Settings to retry failed card charges in the Settings for RTO will not work if this setting isn't ON. Here is the interface for adding a card:
   
   
   If the Primary Card should fail, the Secondary is charged, and no extra fees are charged to the customer. If you plan to allow the customer to mail in checks or make payments in person or by phone, you can set this to OFF.
8. Summary - Once all of the fields in the Add Rental Contract panel have been filled in, the Total Financed and the Due Today fields will be populated with their final amounts.
9. Special Functions  - Upload Signed (Contract) - If you wish to use pre-printed contracts, after you have clicked the Collect Signature button and printed off one of your contract templates, you can scan or photograph them, then click this button to upload them to the Rain system cloud for secure storage.
   
   
   Print - If you wish to print out the dynamic contract you configure in the Rent to Own Settings area for signature, all fields you entered in that form contract will be auto-filled with the terms you have entered in this panel. You can have the customer initial and sign, then you can either scan the document or photograph it and then it can be uploaded to the Rain system cloud for secure storage. You can also click the button to Collect Signature to load one of your pre-saved contract templates. Please note, this will require an integrated processing terminal that allows on-screen signatures, currently only provided by Worldpay. If you do not do integrated processing with Worldpay, you will need to use the Upload Signed function.
   
   

Once you have completed all steps, click the Save button to finalize the contract. PLEASE NOTE: Most of the fields that are editable in this contract creation panel will be set in stone after this save, so make sure all of your information is correct before you save the contract! If you have incorrect information in any of the areas noted above that are not editable after the save, you will need to delete this contract and recreate it with the correct information. To delete it, go to POS > Rent to Own > click on the RTO ID Number, find the Delete button near the bottom of the panel and click it, and then re-create the contract with the correct information using the steps detailed above.

A Note on Tax

PLEASE NOTE: The following does NOT constitute official advice from Rain on how to process your taxes. It is simply information you as a business owner should be aware of regarding best practices typically recommended by tax consultant groups familiar with the RTO/Rental industry.

It may seem logical to include taxes in the total listed in your contracts, but this may not be the best approach.

Consider the following scenario: A shopowner creates RTO contracts with a school for 100 band instruments for a term of 36 months. Included in the contract were the taxes, which at the time of signing were 6.5% for the area. A year into the contract, the state legislature increases the state tax to 8.5%.

The owner is now liable to pay the additional tax amount for all items, and any similar contracts, entirely out-of-pocket throughout the rest of the terms. If the owner attempts to increase the monthly payments, he or she will be in breach of contract.

With this scenario in mind, you may wish to adjust your contracts to list pre-tax totals for payment amounts. In this way, the fluctuations of your tax rates will not affect your contracts in any way.

Initial Checkout

If an initial or down payment is being made, you will be taken back to the Register where the Customer and a line item for the first Rent to Own payment will be loaded.

Please note that since you do all applicable Discounts when creating the Rent to Own contract, you do NOT have the option of discounting the individual payments in the Register. Global Transaction Discounts (with the % button on the right in the Discount line) and Customer Discounts will not override this. You CAN, however, manually change the Amount field, if needed. Please note that the Tax is already figured into the base amount for the Payment, so you will not see tax applied to this transaction. Here is how a completed payment will show up on the customer's receipt:

Click here to learn more about managing and completing RTO contracts.