Equipment & tool rental · self-hosted · source included
Every rental shop has had that phone call. It happens because most rental software checks whether a category has stock, not whether a specific machine is free. Loadout only ever answers the second question.
14 days free · no card · your data exports to CSV from day one
Sixteen rental scripts on the market. Most of them count stock instead of checking machines.
What most systems ask
› excavators owned: 4
› excavators out that week: 3
› available: 1 → accept the booking
True on Monday and Friday. Not true on Wednesday, when the fourth machine is in the workshop and the third comes back at four o'clock. The arithmetic is right and the answer is wrong.
What Loadout asks
› EX-0114 — booked Tue–Thu
› EX-0115 — booked Thu–Sat
› EX-0116 — overdue, still out
› EX-0117 — free · this is the machine
Every unit has its own serial number, its own calendar row and its own condition history. The booking is made against a machine, not against a number.
Turnaround buffers
A category can hold back 30 minutes or three hours after every hire, for refuelling, cleaning or inspection. The calendar refuses anything that lands on it.
Workshop windows
Scheduled maintenance takes a machine off the calendar for its whole window, and puts it back when it is signed off.
Locked at save time
Two tills quoting the same Saturday hit a row lock and a re-check. One gets the machine; the other is told why, before the customer leaves.
The single biggest generator of support tickets in this industry, handled properly.
Deposit · BK-7K3F2A
£400.00
Cracked bucket pin, replaced
Damage · EX-0116 · logged at return, 17:42
Shops lose deposit arguments for one reason: they have nothing to show. Loadout photographs each unit at collection and again at return, stamps both with the time and the staff member, and ties them to that exact machine on that exact hire.
When something comes back damaged, the claim is raised from the return screen and the photographs come with it. The customer gets an itemised notice showing what was kept, why, and the two pictures it rests on — and the rest of the deposit is released automatically.
The other complaint in every rental-software review: nobody finds out until the invoice.
Grace period Muted
Nothing happens. Traffic is traffic.
First nudge Info
A short, friendly note. Fees start accruing.
Overdue Warning
Firmer. The running fee total is stated.
Escalation Danger
Formal. Deposit claim and loss reporting flagged.
Fees accrue in whole intervals from the moment the grace period ends, incrementally — so a sweep that runs twice in an hour cannot double-charge anyone, and one that was missed overnight still catches up correctly. After a shop-set number of late returns, the customer's account is flagged, and the next person on the counter sees it before they hand anything over.
Written out in full rather than summarised into six icons.
Inventory
Bookings
Money
Operations
Your customers
Reporting
You get the source. It should be source you recognise.
Laravel 12
The framework, not a bespoke one nobody else knows.
Livewire 3
The shop dashboard. Custom-built, not a generated admin panel.
Filament 4
The platform-operator panel only.
Flutter
The warehouse app for scanning and condition photos.
Try the field app
The Android build, signed for sideloading. Sign in with the demo crew account and scan anything in the yard.
MySQL or PostgreSQL, Redis optional, and Reverb for the live calendar if you want it — the dashboard works without a websocket server, so shared hosting is a supported deployment rather than a compromise.
Starter
$49.00/mo
One yard, one counter, everything tracked.
Growth
$129.00/mo
Several yards, transfers between them, staff scoped per site.
Fleet
$299.00/mo
Unlimited everything, priority support, white-label portal.
Or run it yourself, once, on your own server
Booqable and EZRentOut are $100–300 a month, forever, on someone else's infrastructure. Loadout ships as source: one payment, your server, your database, your customers' photographs.
A new shop arrives with two categories, a starter rate card and a drafted rental agreement — not an empty database and a tutorial video.