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I am looking at setting up rental business using Joomla1.5. I am new to building website so I need some suggestions.

What I need to achieve is
1. In the item page, users(customer) check availability of the product, using some sort of calendar format, and add to cart.
2. Once product is added to cart, system blocks out the availability for given time period(say 1 hour) giving the customers time to add other items to cart and check out.
3. I may have multiple qty of same item so system must be able to check for all inventory.
4. Depending on rental period, system calculates the total price(day, 2days, week, additional weeks structure).
• If I am booking for FSSMTWT FSS, pricing will be week + 2days + day
• If I am booking for FSS, pricing will be 2 days + day
• If I am booking for MTWTFSS MTWTFSS MTW, pricing will be week + additional week + 2 days + day
5. Shipping is only possible if booking is more than a week. Otherwise pickup
6. If item is shipped, it blocks out 2 days either side of booking as transition.
7. Shipping cost is based on individual item.
8. Paypal payment only at this stage.
9. Ability to check or see if the shipping address is credit card billing address.

What extensions are best suited? I spent a few days now looking through JED but I can’t find definitive solution. My guess is virtuemart and Jomres. Can these two be working alongside?
I am hoping to find low-cost solution.

Thanks in advance.

FSSMTWT FSS,
MTWTFSS MTWTFSS MTW,

What is that?

Leo

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I guess he is saying for FSSMTWT friday saturday sunday monday tuesday wednesday and thursday

Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Any suggestions on how I can find the solution?

I wouldn't recommend virtuemart. That's geared for selling items. it'll keep track of inventory, but since you're renting items over time, that really doesn't do you any good.

Now Jomres is primarily targeted at rental properties, which does keep track of the availability of your inventory over time. So I'd say that'd be the place to start.

Off hand I can't think of any other recommendations. The folks that do hotProperty might have something. Another thing to do is lookup JomRes in the JED (ie extensions.joomla.org), and then click on the category that it falls under. There should be some other similar extensions that are available. If any look good, make sure their support forum is active.

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Jim
website design, development, hosting and search engine optimization
http://www.IndustryWebHost.com

I asked the same question to Jomres but they can only do bookings of one item at a time. What I am after is more like booking system with shopping cart so I can book multiple items at once.

I have seen non-joomla solutions like comersus cart or sales igniter but I would like to stay with Joomla.

I am actually surprised that non of the hotel reservation extension does not offer this functionality as some customers will require to book multiple rooms with different requirement.

ah, renting multiple things at the same time.

This is probably a long shot, but check out nBill. It does quite a bit and might have the ability to do what you want.

OR you could have someone customize JomRes to give you the functionality you'd want. If you go this route, I'm thinking JomRes is the place to start because it's basically the model you want and would be able to handle cancellations and understand your inventory model. Whereas a shopping cart type of extension has a completely different view on inventory and it could present problems later on.

As an aside, customizing an existing component is a lot cheaper than writing one from scratch since you're getting most of the functionality already. I recommend this to my customers as a way to keep the overall cost of their web site down.

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Jim
website design, development, hosting and search engine optimization
http://www.IndustryWebHost.com

Check out Resource Booking Pro in the JED, or here: www.resourcebookingpro.com

They have numerous demos you can play with.

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"Buy land! They've stopped making it" - Mark Twain

http://www.antonydoyle.co.uk

Thanks, I haven't used that one. Will it actually reserve the time slot or does it just make a request for the predefined time slots?

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Jim
website design, development, hosting and search engine optimization
http://www.IndustryWebHost.com

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http://weblinksonline.co.uk/joomla-faq.html

It reserves it for you.
If the use fills the form in properly, once the submit/book button is pressed, that time slot is no longer available for selection by others.

I used it on our company intranet to manage meeting rooms and other facilities that are shared with the company next door. Works pretty well.

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"Buy land! They've stopped making it" - Mark Twain

http://www.antonydoyle.co.uk

I checked out RBPro and they can only process one item at a time. Which leaves me custom developement. What sort of $ am I looking at? Just a rough idea would be good.

I haven't thought it through, but leveraging an existing extension would certainly save you some money. For solutions like this, there is always a lot of back end type things that are necessary (refunds, cancellations, correcting mistakes people made on the original order, etc);. You'll want to be sure those are thought through and covered, otherwise automating the rentals might end up costing more time to keep it running than just doing it manually. And since there are financial transactions along with this, you'll want to be sure it'd done right - wouldn't want an extra couple of zeros tacked on to an order (or removed from an order).

With that said, you're probably talking a few thousand dollars.

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Jim
website design, development, hosting and search engine optimization
http://www.IndustryWebHost.com

Hi gadgeteer
Have you actually found the extension you were looking for? I have the same problem and spent days for searching any solution, but with no success. I'd be really grateful if you can give me some hints on how did you solve this problem...
Lionna