Making the backline earn twice

The candidates are the things a band would otherwise carry: a drum kit, a bass rig, a guitar amp, a PA, a keyboard, a set of mics. The test is whether somebody would pay to avoid moving it, and for anything heavy the answer is usually yes.

The things not worth renting are the ones permanently installed in a room. A house kit that never leaves the live room is not a rental — it is part of what the room is, and it belongs in the room's rate and its description. Confusing the two produces a rate card where the same kit is charged for twice or not at all.

Consumables are a separate business. Sticks, strings, batteries and cables walk off, and the administration of renting a £4 item costs more than the item. Sell those over the counter and record the takings against the booking.

The wrong way to price a hire is to look up what a rental company charges. They are running a rental business with logistics, insurance and a depot; you are lending something that is already in the building to somebody who is already paying you for a room.

The right way is to start from replacement cost and expected life. Suppose a kit costs £900 and you expect to replace it after 300 hires. That is £3 a hire in pure depreciation, before you have made anything or paid for a head change. Charge £12 and you are making £9 a hire against an asset you already owned. Charge £4 because that felt friendly and you are running a lending library.

Add a second number for consumables and maintenance — heads, strings, valves, a service — and a third for the hires where something comes back broken. Then set the price. The result will usually be well under the rental shop's and well over what most studios instinctively charge.

• Replacement cost ÷ expected hires = the floor.
• Plus consumables per hire: heads, strings, valves.
• Plus a provision for damage — a percentage of hires, not zero.
• Then decide the margin. This is the part that is actually profit.

One kit cannot be in two rooms at once, and the moment you have two of something the counting stops being reliable in somebody's head. Whatever you use has to know how many of each item exist, how many are out, and when they are due back.

Attach the hire to the booking rather than tracking it separately. That way the customer pays once, the return date is implied by the session, and the list of what is out is a list you can read at the end of the night rather than assemble.

The single most useful screen is 'what is out and late'. Everything else is bookkeeping.

Most losses are not theft, they are drift: an item lent informally, a return nobody recorded, a band that took the wrong stand home. Recording the hire against a named customer with a card on file removes most of that, because the loss now has somebody's name on it.

For expensive items, take a larger payment up front through the booking's payment policy rather than inventing a separate deposit process. It is the same money and one fewer thing to reconcile.

Photograph the condition of anything valuable when you list it. A photograph settles an argument about a dented cymbal faster than a memory does.

The moment to offer gear is while somebody is booking the room, not by email afterwards. A band deciding on Saturday afternoon will take the kit; the same band on Friday night has already loaded the van.

Describe what the thing is rather than listing a model number. 'Full backline: kit, bass rig, two guitar amps' converts better than four line items, even when it is the same four line items underneath.

And keep the list short. A rental catalogue with forty entries is a form; a rental catalogue with six is an upsell.