The System parameters form is displayed when the System parameters option is selected from the SYSTEM MAINTENANCE menu.
The System parameters form consists of the following tabs:
The first screen on the parameters selection contains the following fields.
Half days in shared memory table: This setting is quite important. Although users may want to set this number to quite a high value, it should be stressed that the larger the value, the more system resources and memory will be allocated to maintaining the table.
It controls the width of the display on the Reservations screen. If 250 is used as a setting then the system will be able to hold bookings for vehicles going forward for 125 days, (remember it is holding half days). A figure of about 730 will hold a whole year, but will of course take up nearly three times the memory in order to store it, together with three times the required system resources.
The setting of the following field, which controls the depth of the table, will have an equally dramatic effect whenever it is enlarged. Do not amend the value without advice from Kerridge support staff and remember to rebuild the booking summary if it is changed.
Groups in shared memory table: The half days held in the table, which has just been mentioned, control the number of columns maintained for the Reservations screen. Whereas this value controls the number of rows which can be maintained, the vehicle groups occupy the rows on the table.
If users find that an increase in the number of days held is required, it may be advisable to see if the number of groups can be reduced to compensate for any change made. Obviously this could only be considered if the number of groups shown here is greater than the number of groups actually being used.
Seek advice from Kerridge support staff before amending this value, once it is amended remember to rebuild the booking summary. Whenever it is used, all users of the Daily Rentals system should log out of the system and then log in again to benefit from the changes made.
Minimum hire period(hours): This field is self explanatory in meaning. The system will not allow a hire agreement to be produced below this minimum value. The value expected is in hours.
Maximum hire period(days): This is the largest hire period allowed. The number expected should be entered as a number of days. A maximum value of 9999 days will provide an effective 'no limit' setting.
Leave whole weeks as days: This will come into effect when the system calculates the value of the hire. If a user creates a booking for 9 days then the system can either represent that as one week and two days, or nine days. There are obvious savings to the customer if the weekly rate is considerably cheaper than the daily rate.
Convert days to weekends: In the same way as the previous field, this flag setting allows the system to calculate the most economic rate as a default when the agreement is created. There may be an instance, provided the flags are set correctly, where a twelve-day hire could be seen as 1 week, one weekend and three days.
Morning start time: This is the time when the system will consider the morning to have started.
Afternoon start time: This is the time the system will consider for the afternoon start time.
Overlap hours: This is the time allowed by the system for the late return of a hire vehicle without the penalty of a late charge being applied.
Availability alarm period: This is the time the system will allow to elapse before the Reservations screens will be updated with the latest bookings made on other screens which are logged into the Daily Rentals module. The time should be entered in seconds. The smaller the number, the more accurate the Reservations screen will be, but it will create a drain on the system resources. 120 is a normal setting.
Our insurance charge code: This is the charge code to be used when a booking is made which uses Our Insurance. This charge code will be automatically applied to the prices screen in such cases. Make sure this charge code exists in the charges file, and that it has sensible defaulted values in it.
Method of logging fuel: The methods allowed are quite simple, fuel may be logged as either:
Gallons
Litres
Percent of tank
When the rental is started, you is given the chance to record the level of fuel in the fuel tank, the number input must relate to the choice made above. Once the choice has been made, the text on the screen at the time of fuel logging will correspond to the choice made here.
Discount method: This is the method used to show discount on invoices. There are two methods, Net discount or Charge codes. If Net discount is chosen, any discounts will be incorporated in the hire charge, effectively they are hidden. If the Charge code method is adopted then discount will show as an individual charge code on the invoice so that discounts can be plainly seen.
Discount charge code: If the discount charge code method has been selected in the option above then the discount code to be used is entered here. The code is not validated so users should make sure that the code entered will exist in the Charge codes option in the Miscellaneous menu before any bookings are raised.
Edit Service Contact details: Normally, when you book a vehicle onto a Workshop or Service type agreement you are not asked to complete a large part of the bookings screen. You will not be asked for driver details, contact details, contact phone numbers and so on. If this flag is set to Y then the booking screen will allow you into the reference field, and then across to the contact and telephone section of the screen to record a name and number for reference purposes. In many cases this is not used, indeed most people will make their notes in the comments section of the agreement.
Reserve Tariff Type: This is the tariff code which must be used when making a booking to reserve a vehicle for a service or maintenance swap. The system will recognize this tariff type and go through the routine to link the two agreements together. If this tariff type is not used the link cannot be established and the subsequent swap will be made more complicated.
Workshop tariff type: This is the tariff type the system will use after a reserve vehicle swap has taken place. You will reserve a vehicle using the reserve tariff type, swap the vehicles at the allotted time, and then start the workshop agreement. As it starts the workshop agreement the system will change the tariff type for you from the reserve to the workshop type.
Crosshire account type: This is the Sales Ledger account type the system will expect to see whenever you want to cross hire between rental companies. Make sure that this account type is not on internal accounts you will wish to use for workshop type bookings.
Chargeable days: This is the typical week you will charge. If you will charge seven days for a one week hire you should make sure there is an asterisk against each of the days. If on the other hand you rarely charge for weekend hire you will want to remove the asterisks for the Saturday and Sunday. Beware, if you make a booking which starts on a Tuesday and ends the following Monday and you have removed the weekend days you will have to go into the prices page and add two days hire in order to charge for the weekend. If you are in any doubt at all make sure there are seven asterisks showing. In this way if you make an error it is in your favour.
Available colors
The Reservations screen will display the rows for each group using one of the following colors. you may personalize the display by making selections here. The ellipse [...] button search facility is available to show the possible colour choices.
Once the colour choices have been made, the cursor will return to the initial ring menu.
This will move the cursor into the screen and allow editing of the field values in the second of the general details screens. The fields that can be edited are as follows.
Accounts integration: Does you want the Daily Rentals module
to integrate with the Kerridge accounts system. Answer either a 
for Yes or ' ' for No. Please take advice from a Kerridge
consultant before saying no.
Purchase Control Integration: This is a simple yes or no field. When you hire vehicle from outside you may want to consider using the purchase control module to verify the purchase invoices when they arrive. If you do then this flag will make sure that purchase invoices are automatically forced through the Purchase Control invoice log and verified before they are paid. Remember that you are not limited to using these orders for just external hires, so it may be as well to make sure they are all verified.
Journal Type: This is the journal type to be used for accounts postings in the Nominal Ledger. The journal types will be set up in the Miscellaneous menu within the Nominal Ledger. Seek advice from a KCC Accounts consultant in order to establish the correct code to use for your operation.
Nominal Ledger deposit account: This is the Nominal analysis code used to track the deposits paid by customers. It is normally controlled to the hire Department Till Control account.
Days to keep order: This is the minimum number of days to keep purchase orders before an end of day process will purge the completed ones from the file. Enter 9999 for an indefinite retention, but beware of file sizes, contact KCC support department personnel if you want to be able to keep them for long periods, they will advise you of file sizing limitations and ramifications.
Max Rental days for Credit Check: This is the number of days rental that will be included in the standard credit check that is done by the rentals system. If you hire to an account customer for a year or more on one agreement then you will not want to base the credit check on the whole value o the invoice. This control allows you to decide how many days hire should be included in the check to make it more reasonable.
Minimum Long Term Weekly invoice value: This value will be used to see if it is worthwhile printing a weekly long term invoice. Any long term weekly invoice which would be below this value will not be printed. The value will therefore be included in the next long term invoice run, as long as the value exceeds this amount.
Minimum Long Term Monthly invoice value: This value will be used to see if it is worthwhile printing a monthly long term invoice. Any long term monthly invoice which would be below this value will not be printed. The value will therefore be included in the next long term invoice run, as long as the value exceeds this amount.
Manual Last long term invoice: This flag can force you to produce a manual invoice at the end of a long term rental. It is normally set to yes. In this way the last invoice in a series of long term invoices will not be produced automatically by the system. It is left to be done manually when the vehicle is returned and the mileage and fuel details can be recorded and charged for on the invoice.
Agreement format: This is the three-character format identifier for the default agreement print design.
Invoice format: This is the three-character format identifier for the default invoice print design.
Credit note format: This is the three-character format identifier for the default credit note print design.
Long term invoice format: This is the three-character format identifier for the default long term invoice print design.
Quotation format: This is the three-character format identifier for the default quotation print design.
Order Format: The standard format to be used for production of a purchase order.
Account types: This allows you to set account types for redirected printing. In this way you may elect not to print any internal invoices for example, although the invoices will still be produced and archived they will not be physically printed.
Document types: These are the documents you want to redirect. Invoices and credit notes are normal, you can enter either Q, A, I or C for quotes, agreements, invoices or credit notes.
Printer name: This is the printer to be used when redirecting the printing. Non physical production of the documents would require this to be set to DUMMY.
Archive agreements: Simply check the box for Yes, and leave blank for No.
Days before archiving: Indicate the number of days before archiving.
Day to keep archive: Indicate the number of days to keep the archive.
The sequences option will give you control over the order that vehicles are seen in three different search windows.
Availability sort sequence: This is the sort order found in the window which is seen when the operator uses the mouse to click on one of the squares on the Reservations screen. you may enter up to four fields to sort the vehicles. The field names to use can be identified by using the ellipse [...] button search facility. All of the fields shown are available to use apart from the $LOCK and $NAME fields. Repeat the selection process until satisfied, or until all four field names are input. Press <TAB> to by-pass a field box which is not to be completed.
Allocation sort sequence: This is the sort order found in the window which is seen when the operator searches for a vehicle in order to allocate it to a booking. you may enter up to four fields to sort the vehicles. The field names to use can be identified by using the ellipse [...] button search facility. All of the fields shown are available to use apart from the $LOCK and $NAME fields. Repeat the selection process until satisfied, or until all four field names are input. Press <TAB> to by-pass a field box which is not to be completed.
Vehicle swap sort sequence: This is the sort order found in the window which is seen when the operator searches for a vehicle during a vehicle swap operation. The user may enter up to four fields to sort the vehicles. The field names to use can be identified by using the ellipse [...] button search facility. All of the fields shown are available to use apart from the $LOCK and $NAME fields. Repeat the selection process until satisfied, or until all four field names are input. Press <TAB> to by-pass a field box which is not to be completed.
There are many operations in the Daily Rental module which can be reserved for use by high priority users only. They are identified on this screen and can be set to the required priority.
Users may enter any value from zero to nine, although any entries set to nine will only be available to Kerridge password users and should be avoided.
These fields control operations which affect the marketing system.
Create vehicle history records on invoice: This flag may be
set to a
for yes or ' ' for no. If set to a
then any invoices which are created as a result of a successful
rental agreement will be recorded as separate items on the vehicle
history of the vehicle being used for the hire.
Rental completion contact codes: This is the Marketing contact code which will be used on completion of a rental agreement. This allows the contact history file to be used to record all rentals. The contact will be registered against the customer's contact history. The contact type used here should be set up as a valid contact type within the marketing system.
Marketing Department: This is the single character department code used in the marketing system to identify the Daily Rentals module. It is often the letter R but users may allocate a letter of their choice as long as it does not clash with an existing department code letter. See the Advanced Marketing manual for more information about the use of this code and the creation of a marketing department.
VSB mandatory: This is a simple
answer. The consideration to be made here is that only vehicles which
originated in either the new or used vehicle stock book files will be
accessible to the Daily Rentals system. If users want to operate with
vehicles which are 'hired in' then this flag should be ' '.
Hire stats on a whole or half day basis: When the vehicle statistics are calculated, this flag will be checked to see which basis should be used. If users are surprised to see 60 days in a month when the statistics are viewed, it will be because this flag has been set to half days.
Midday time split if half day stats: Where half day statistics are selected then you should enter the time, based on a 24 hour clock, that the system should use to split the day.
This will allow you to set up the Quick mail option. It will generate a message for the electronic mail system whenever a booking is made or when a rental agreement is finished.
If you wants to generate one or more of the messages then input 1 against the first entry and 2 against the second and so on. Enter 0 (zero) against one or more of the messages if the quick mail function is not required against one or both options.
The entries must be defined within the mail format which would normally be done with the assistance of a Kerridge consultant.
The ID of the person the mail messages should be sent to is also entered on this screen, leave it blank to decide at the time the message is being sent, or ask a Kerridge Consultant to amend the quick mail format for you. you ID entered on the top line of the formats will be used to decide who the mail is sent to. This can also be derived to give a small degree of automatic choice.
BUTTONS
Exit: Returns you to the SYSTEM MAINTENANCE menu.
Help: Displays help on the current application using the default browser.
Save: This will save the new values for the system parameters.
Cancel: This will abort the amendment process and return you to the system maintenance menu
