FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We are in the process of compiling a list of our most frequently asked questions below. We hope that this will provide you with the information you need to make the most of our services.
If you cannot find the answer to your question here, our dedicated support team is always ready to assist you. Simply contact our support team and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Customers can access answers to the most commonly asked questions below.
This is rather disappointing, we are genuinely sorry that you have had this experience. Please feel free to reach out to support and let them know about your experience. Of course, you will be issued a complete refund on your order.
That depends entirely on the equipment, and how you are using it. If you are an employee, and you are working from an elevated work platform (of any kind) it is important that you are adequately trained by your employer on it’s use. This is often mitigated by your employer seeking that you obtain a “yellow card”. This card is evidence that you have completed a course, run by a registered training authority, and are deemed competent on a piece of equipment.
For private and DIY use, this is not essential. Like anything, it is important that you understand the risks involved in using a piece of access equipment. It’s also important to recognise the specific hazards you might encounter where you are going to use the equipment. We have published a number of articles that you may find beneficial on our News page.
It is definitely not necessary to have an account to place orders, and we have done this intentionally. The only real benefits are:
- You don’t have to enter all of your details each and every time that you book a piece of equipment.
- You maintain access to prior orders and invoices.
Thanks, in part, to some of the high-profile data leaks recently, we’ve decided we don’t want your information any more than you want to give it to us. Of course, we have to maintain our financial records in accordance with Australian taxation law, but beyond that, we actively look to minimise the personal information we hold of our customers.
Vendors can access answers to the most common questions we are asked below.
Customer orders will accumulate as a balance on your account. When your account balance is greater than $50 your payment is automatically withdrawn from your account each Sunday. It is then transferred to your nominated bank account the following Thursday.
Of course! we recommend all our vendors do. We expect that you will have your rental agreement signed by the customer when the equipment is picked up. We have provided the utility to display your own rental agreement in your store page. You can find this in your Vendor Dashboard in Settings / Store, toward the bottom of the page.
There is two ways you can accomplish this.
- One account, with multiple locations
- Separate account for each individual location
Although you will be able to switch between these options whenever you like.
Using a single account per location is easy enough, you just register for a vendor account on scissor hire and set the account up to reflect the single branch/location and it’s equipment.
If you are managing multiple locations from the single account, navigate to your Vendor Dashboard then Settings / Store – If you select the option:
“Store has multiple locations”
You will then have the ability to add additional locations.
When a customer orders equipment in the future, and provided you have setup the Delivery / Pickup options, they will be shown the pickup address when they select the branch location.
Under the Settings tab, in your Vendor Dashboard select “Delivery Time”. From this page, you can select the options you offer (Delivery and Pickup).
You can also allocate time slots for these activities; for instance, if you need to leave the yard to conduct a delivery, you might not want someone scheduling a pickup at the same time.
Finally, you can set the hours you are open (for delivery and pickup of orders). When you customer next orders equipment form you, they will be able to select from the options you make available to them.
We’re sorry about that, this has been one of the more challenging aspects of putting the site together.
Here goes;
Essentially, a “block” is a defined amount of time, that we specify, for a booking.
This allows us a lot of configurability with pricing on our rental products.
For instance, you might want to charge a flat fee, for every booking (perhaps a delivery charge?) that is the BASE PRICE. A base price is charged once per order.
From there, you might want to charge a fee per day (where you have set the BLOCK value to one day) that is the block cost.
You might also want to create a price break at different block counts (days, weeks, months). For example, between 1-7 “blocks” (days) you have a set price, between 8-21 blocks, a lower block price and for 22-365 blocks, a lower price again.
Alternatively, you could create a whole new listing for the product and specify a block time of 7 days, to set up a product as a weekly rental option. Likewise for a monthly option if you wanted to do that.
We mean it. Anything you think we can change to make things easier for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us, or send a message to support.
Welcome! and thanks again for joining us here at ScissorHire.
We are all about getting customers that need an Elevated Work Platform (EWP) connected to you so they can rent your machine.
Ideally, we will create an easy way for the customer to find the machine they need, where and when they need it.
After registering and logging in for the first time, you may have already been presented with a setup wizard, so some of the steps we are about to take here, you may have already completed. Not to worry, you can skip those where applicable and move on to the next.
Below you can access help for setting up your store and creating your first listing for rentable equipment on the site.
The first thing we will do is open your vendor dashboard.
From the menu on the left, select Settings > Store.
Here you can upload a banner (header image) for your store page.
A profile picture (perhaps your business logo?)
Then some business particulars, it should all be fairly self-explanatory.
On the map, enter the geographic location you would like your store located. For business addresses, you can provide the complete address. If you are a residential address, we would recommend entering your Suburb, and omitting the street and street number details.
If you tick the checkbox “terms and conditions” you can enter your own rental agreement so that it can be displayed from your store and products page.
Note: When you have completed making your changes, it’s important to click “Update Settings” at the bottom of the page.
Next, navigate on the menu, to Settings > Payment.
Click on “Add Payment Method” and follow the prompts to enter your business banking details.
These are the details we will deposit payments into, when you withdraw from your account.
Important: Please ensure you enter these details correctly, as it will likely cause significant delay in account payments if the details were entered incorrectly.
Next up, is to define our pickup and delivery settings. This will give your customer a choice between your methods of delivering equipment or allowing customer pickup.
Navigate to Settings > Delivery-Time.
Make your selections of Delivery and/or Pickup.
The next 3 items allow you some flexibility in delivery and pickup requests. The “Delivery blocked buffer” allows you to enter a value (a number in days) that you need “notice” to provide a delivery.
“Timeslot” allows you to define how long a delivery might take, this can be handy if you need to leave your depot to make a delivery, can block out that time so no one else schedules a delivery or pickup in that time frame.
“Order per slot” allows you to define how many orders can occur in a single timeslot. For instance, if you have 2 staff, and one can be making a delivery as another is organising a pickup, you could enter “2”.
Below that, you can set your stores opening hours (for customers to organise pickups/delivery).
Remember: Don’t forget to click “Update Settings” to save all of your changes.
(OPTIONAL)
Finally, head to Settings > Social Profile.
In here, you can list all of your relevant business social network profiles.
Provide the links for your Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. These details will then be shown on your store page.
Again, click “update settings” once you’ve entered all the optional links.
If you’ve got your store setup and configured now (congratulations!) it must be time to add your first piece of rental equipment.
Step one is to open up the Vendor Dashboard again.
Then click on “Equipment” in the Menu to the left.
You are now presented a page that will list all of your bookable products (i.e. rental equipment)
The next step is to either click on the “Add Equipment” Tab, or the button; “Add New Booking Product”.
This is where you add the product title, and cover photo for the listing. You can also add a number of “Gallery Images” below the products “Cover Image”
Under category, you can add some of the attributes for your machine. i.e. “Scissor > Electric” or “Scissor > Includes Trailer”. This can help customers narrow down what they are looking for. The more categories that your machine fits into, the easier it will be for a customer to locate it using that attribute.
Note: We know we don’t have a category for every single piece of equipment just yet. Put your equipment in the highest level category you can, and where it is identified by ScissorHire we will create and assign it into a new category during the product review process.
Tags are also some additional keywords that can be used to help customers find what they want. Type each word (tag) you would like to use, selecting if it appears, and hit enter between each word.
Hopefully many of the following settings will be fairly self-explanatory. But we recommend (and have set to the default) the following:
Booking duration: Customer defined blocks of 1 Day(s)
This says the customer can specify the hire duration as a selection of day(s)
It is possible, here, to make a weekly, or monthly rental option should you desire. Simply set:
“Customer defined blocks of” “7” “Day(s)” – For weekly
“Customer defined blocks of” “1” “Month(s)” For monthly
Minimum Duration: 1 Maximum Duration: 365
This says the minimum hire is 1 day, and the maximum is 365 (you can increase this if desired)
Calendar display mode: Calendar always visible
Enable Calendar Range Picker: ON
This allows the customer to click on days on the calendar to make the booking
Requires Confirmation: ON/OFF
This means you will need to login to the site and accept the booking, the customer won’t be charged until you confirm the booking. We understand that as a vendor, you will likely change/set to ON so that you do not double-book equipment (and we appreciate that). We hope that when ScissorHire is successful in bringing you customers, that you may re-consider this setting in the future, as I’m sure our customers would like to have the confirmation at the time they make the booking.
Can Be Cancelled: OFF
This allows the customer to cancel their order, you can request customers contact you to cancel their orders (then you can do it)
Next up it’s time to set the availability of your equipment.
Max bookings per block: 1
Here you can set how many items can be booked in the same time-frame. Many, will probably set this to one, but if you have more than 1 identical machine you are offering under this listing, you could increase this to how many machines you have.
Minimum Booking Window (into the future): 1 Day(s)
Maximum Booking Window (into the future): 365 Day(s)
This means people can’t book out a machine until 1 day AFTER the current day, meaning you get 1 days notice of the booking. Maximum is the furthest date that will be allowed to book in advance.
Require a buffer period of (Days) between bookings: 1
This means you can set the days between bookings (incase you need to service/clean equipment).
All dates are…: Available by default
Check rules against: All blocks being booked
Restrict Start and End days: ON
As you probably worked out yourself, this allows you to set specific start and end days for the hire period. For instance, you might not be open on Sundays, so won’t want to deliver or offer equipment pickups.
Set Availability Range: Date Range – January – Dec Bookable: Yes
You need to specify a time frame that the equipment is available. Click “Add Range” and specify a range of dates you want the machine available. This might come in handy if you want to block out a large time-frame due to extended maintenance of the equipment.
This is where you set your pricing. It’s gets a little complicated, in order to accommodate the many pricing models we like to use when renting out equipment.
NOTE: The prices you enter here are will be displayed as EXLUDING GST (i.e. the customer will be charged 10% higher). However, the prices you enter here should be what YOU expect to be paid INCLUDING GST.
Base cost: $$
This will be a single dollar amount for each and every booking. Often it won’t be required as we will set the price “per day”. There may be cases where it is beneficial, like for charging a delivery/retrieval fee.
Block cost: $$$
This is the amount you wish to charge PER DAY for the equipment (but you can leave it $0, as we can set it via the price breaks next)
Display Cost: $$$$
This is the amount shown on the product listing i.e. “from $150” We would recommend setting this to the lowest SINGLE DAY daily rate you are going to offer. If you change this to something else, it may be modified by ScissorHire to reflect the lowest single day hire cost.
NOTE: It may be worth taking into consideration our coupons feature. Allowing you to create coupon codes for discounts on your products.
If you are going to offer price breaks (and we recommend you do) you then click on the “ADD RANGE” button.
Example:
Under “range type” select: Block Count
Under Range: 1 to 5 (you choose)
Leave base cost as is and select = and enter the $ value you want per day for days between 1 and 5.
To add a weekly price break click “Add Range” again, under range set to BLOCK COUNT enter: 6 to 29, then set the block price to EQUALs (important: select “=” from dropdown) the lower daily figure for your weekly pricing rate (over 5 days).
Finally, to add a monthly price break click “Add Range” again, under range set to BLOCK COUNT enter: 30 to 365, then set the block price to EQUALs (important: select “=” from dropdown) the lower daily price for bookings greater than 30 days
Remember: this is just one way to add and setup a product. You could also add an additional item, and use weekly or monthly BLOCKS to offer specific weekly or monthly listings.
Finally, you can provide descriptions for the product that will be displayed on the individual product page.
“Short Description“
Enter some details about your machine, this is displayed above the calendar on the product page.
“Description“
Enter some more descriptive details about your machine. This is displayed lower on the product page.
That’s it, you are done for now.
Remember: Hit the “Save Product” button. The admin team here at ScissorHire will review the listing, and be in touch if there is any problems.
Wait for our email to let you know that the item is live in the store (might be a good idea to keep an eye on your spam folder) and then we would then recommend you check the listing works as you intended it to (test by selecting date ranges and ensure that the value is what you expect to be paid).
If you have any problems at all, reach out to support and we can step you through anything you don’t understand.
Alternatively, if you can’t work out how to achieve what you want in a booking, reach out, tell us how you price your product, and we can help you set up the listing. Again, just message support and let us know how we can help.
Thanks again for listing your machine on ScissorHire. We really appreciate you taking a chance with us, and letting us help you get some customers.