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Our new version of online rentals is focused on renting instruments to students, so it's called Online School Rentals. Once it is active in your system, you can find it under Modules > Online School Rentals.

The Categories Tab

Online School Rentals does not use your regular website product Categories; you will need to create the categories you plan to use for rentals here. You can structure these categories by instrument, if you like, or some stores might start with the different music classes, as in the example below. For simplicity, we recommend your top-level categories be set up by instrument type, e.g. Brass, Woodwind, etc., and then broken out further below that. If you work with a lot of schools and different classes use different music books for the same instrument, you might start with something similar to what you see below. For example, if a Marching Band instructor is using a specific book for their class, and the Band instructor is using a different one and needs slightly different accessories, it might be wise to have categories under each of those headings for instruments that are in both bands, like tubas or or trumpets.

The video above explores different cases for setting up different ways, but you should plan your category strategy according to the needs of your schools.

You can use the +Add Top Level Category button at the top to create your initial Categories. The Action menu on the right side of each will allow you to edit the title of the category or the image, or you can add Subcategories. If a category needs to be deleted, any rentals associated with it will just no longer have that category selected.

When you create a top level category or subcategory you'll see this window:

You can and should upload an image for each category you create. The images won't need to be large, they don't display any bigger than about 500 pixels wide on the web page.

Please note that only categories that have Published rentals in them will display on your website, and nothing will display until you set up that side of your Online School Rentals, so you can explore this and practice without having to worry about anyone seeing it until you are ready.

Organizing Your Categories

You can organize your rental item categories however you like. It is recommended to have your top level be the major instrument types (e.g. Brass, Bowed Strings, Guitars, Woodwinds, etc.) and work your way down from there.

Categories will display only if the school the renter goes to has rental 'packages' saved and published for that category, so you can build your categories using class and even teacher names, if you like, but the above method will be less work for you.

Go to Part 3: Rental Products