Cylinder hire

Bottle calculates rent from the cylinders a customer holds and how long they hold them. Rent is added to their weekly, monthly or quarterly invoice.

Setting it up

1. In Products, select Add a cylinder charge. You can also reach these rates through Cylinder rent → Manage charge rates.
2. Choose who pays it (Consumers and Trade, Consumers only or Trade only), Rent, the rent for one cylinder, the gas type and how often it is charged: every day, every week or every month. The rate applies to every cylinder size in that gas type. The form shows how the line will read on an invoice before you save.
3. On the customer record, choose weekly, monthly or quarterly invoicing. Rent is not included in per-delivery invoices.
4. Set invoice dates using your business defaults or dates for that customer.

To see the rent on one cylinder size, or to add rent to it or take it off, open the cylinder in Products and use its Cylinder charges card. See Cylinder charges on a product.

The customer’s Cylinders section warns if rented cylinders are not being billed.

Rent appears alongside pay-later deliveries and any deposit credits on the customer’s scheduled invoice. See Invoices.

Set your bank details in Business settings → Invoices → Bank details on invoices, and the days to pay in Business settings → Invoices → How customers pay. The default is fourteen days to pay.

Calculating cylinder rent

Charging a deposit and rent together

You can charge both for the same cylinders, such as a beer gas deposit plus monthly rent. Add a deposit charge and a rent charge separately under Products, using the same gas type or cylinder size. Set their amounts and who pays each charge.

In Business settings → Cylinder charges, choose Deposit and rent as the business default. To apply it to just one customer, select Deposit and rent on that customer’s record instead. Customers need a weekly, monthly or quarterly rent billing period.

The deposit is charged when an additional cylinder is delivered. Rent is charged for the days the customer holds it. Returning that cylinder stops its rent and makes its deposit eligible for a refund under your refund rules. An exchange does not charge another deposit.

Changing the setting applies to new cylinder deliveries. Existing recorded deposit-only or rent-only agreements stay as they were; Bottle does not silently add rental charges to older deposit-only deliveries.

Rent is calculated from recorded deliveries and returns. Three cylinders held for seven days count as 21 cylinder-days. Rental stops on the day a cylinder is returned, or on the day you write off, or invoice for, a cylinder the customer reported lost, stolen, damaged or kept after moving supplier. See Cylinder problems they report.

Bottle combines cylinder-days across sizes of the same gas type and applies that gas type’s rental rate. A customer who receives cylinders part-way through a billing period pays only for the days they held them.

Who pays cylinder rent

Each rent says who pays it: Consumers and Trade, Consumers only or Trade only. To charge consumers a deposit and Trade rent on the same gas type, set the deposit to Consumers only and the rent to Trade only. Each customer is charged their own agreed amount, else their price list’s amount, else the Trade or Consumer amount. A customer left out, or on a price list that does not charge it, is not billed rent. Where a gas type has a deposit too, a price list can choose rent or the deposit for its customers: on a list that charges the deposit, only customers set to rent on their own record are billed rent. See Deposits and cylinder rent on a price list. Rent follows these settings on each invoice, so a change applies from the next one. See Who pays a deposit or rent.

Cylinder rent, under Customers & billing, counts rent the same way, and only on cylinders that went out on rent where a gas type has both. Its monthly amounts are estimates from current holdings, not issued invoice totals. Search the customers in the bar above the list, choose All, Invoiced or Not invoiced, and pick How often to see one invoice frequency. Select Not invoiced to find customers whose rent is not set to be invoiced, then ⋯ on their row and Set up rent billing to review their settings. Select a column heading to put the list in that order. Free rent does not trigger a billing alert.

Rent is added to invoices, not order totals. Deposits are charged on orders instead.

Rent invoice dates

Bottle creates scheduled invoices overnight when they are due. Each invoice covers the completed period and uses the next number in your invoice sequence.

If processing was interrupted, Bottle catches up without billing the same period twice. A period with no charges produces no invoice.

Paying a rent invoice

Customers see a Pay by card button if Stripe is connected, and bank-transfer details if you have provided them. You can offer both.

Card payments update the invoice automatically. Record bank transfers manually when they reach your account.

Cancelling

You can cancel an unpaid invoice. It remains visible as cancelled and keeps its invoice number.

Rent and delivery charges

Rent is an ongoing charge. A deposit is a one-off cylinder charge that may be refunded when the cylinder is returned. See Stock for returns and deposits.

For an overview of cylinder rent and charges in Bottle, see Cylinder rent and charges on the Bottle website.