The party rental business is a competitive one, and this competition is constantly driving prices down. If you aren't on the top of your game, your profits will follow.

How are you going to keep your competitive edge? How are you going to compete on lower prices and still keep your profits up so that you can grow and expand? One great way is to improve your efficiency, and there is no better way than using software.

In the past, rental software didn't work well for party rental companies. The only software available was tailored to the tool rental companies, and it was more for renting days, weeks and months. Party rental companies generally needed higher fidelity. They needed to be able to rent equipment by the hour.

We've also seen some software that has been adapted to work for party rental companies by using the standard Web shopping cart system. But again, it just wasn't quite capable of handling all the complex scenarios of party rental companies. Over the last few years, however, software specific to party rental companies has found its way to the market.

Now party rental companies can take advantage of software to the fullest extent to streamline their operations, giving them a competitive advantage as well as improving their bottom line. Here are some of the things that industry-specific software can now do for party rental companies:

  • Allow and encourage online bookings
  • Integrate with QuickBooks accounting software
  • Automatically market to new customers and keep existing customers informed
  • Dramatically reduce double entry of information by pulling from one centralized database
  • Manage your employee and shift scheduling
  • Easily generate reports for in depth analysis of your company
  • Route your complicated deliveries with ease
  • File and pay your sales tax for you
  • Integrate with other services like Google and Facebook
  • Maintain safety training for your employees and customers

What will you do with all your extra time? I suggest spending a little time in a lounge chair at the beach and the rest of the time taking your party rental business to the next level.

I know it is a big commitment to begin using software or change to a new software at your business, but with the improved efficiency and industry-specific advantages of some of the newer software, it is almost guaranteed to be worth your time investment.