A simple question with a long answer
A parent emails: her son has hired a flute from you for two years, he has just passed grade four, and they would like to buy it. Your leaflet says hire payments count towards the purchase price. How much do they owe?
The office opens the invoices. The first term was billed with lessons, the next two terms separately, then there was a free half-term when the flute was away being repaired, and last spring the hire rate went up. The leaflet has changed twice since they started. Did the old or new terms apply? Does the repair period count? Did they ever pay the deposit?
An afternoon later there is a number, and nobody is completely sure it is right.
Why the credit is hard to reconstruct
Hire money is usually billed as a line on the lesson invoice or as a separate standing charge, and nothing records which payments count as credit, under which version of the scheme, for which instrument. When a child swaps from a three-quarter to a full-size instrument, the credit may or may not carry across depending on your rules. When a family misses payments, the rule may pause credit or not.
- Scheme terms change over the years; families started under different versions.
- Hire lines are mixed with lesson lines on the same invoice.
- Size swaps create a new hire, and the credit link is lost.
- Paid, unpaid and refunded hire lines are not separated clearly.
The cost of guessing
Getting it wrong in the family's favour loses you money on an instrument you bought. Getting it wrong the other way loses you a family who feels they have been treated unfairly, usually at the moment they are most committed to the instrument. Either way, the time spent working it out is time the office does not have in the busiest weeks.
There is also a missed sale. Families who find the process confusing often buy elsewhere, sometimes with the instrument still in your hire fleet.
Hire billing with the credit built in
- Your rent-to-buy rules are written down as settings: which instruments qualify, what share of each payment counts, any cap, and what happens on a size swap or a missed payment.
- Each family's hire agreement records which version of the rules they joined under, so older agreements keep their terms.
- Hire charges are billed through your accounts package, such as Xero, as their own lines, and payments are matched back to the agreement.
- A running credit is kept per agreement and shown on the family's account.
- When a family asks to buy, the office sees the purchase price, the credit to date and the balance, with the payment history behind it.
- The sale is recorded, the instrument leaves the hire fleet, and hire charges stop.
| Event | Effect on credit (under your rules) | Recorded where |
|---|---|---|
| Termly hire paid | Adds the qualifying share | Agreement and account |
| Hire unpaid | Held until paid, or paused if you choose | Agreement |
| Swap from 3/4 to full size | Carried or reset, as your scheme says | Both agreements linked |
| Instrument away for repair | No charge, no credit, if that is your policy | Agreement |
| Family buys the instrument | Credit used, balance invoiced | Sale record |
We do not decide how your scheme should work. We record the version each family signed up to and apply it consistently.
A purchase figure in a minute
When the email comes in, the office opens the agreement, sees the credit and the payment history, and replies with a number it can show working for. The family pays the balance and keeps the flute. Your hire fleet list updates itself, and you know which instruments to replace.
You can also see across the whole scheme how much credit is outstanding, which is useful when deciding whether to change the terms for new hires.
Signs your scheme needs a ledger
- Purchase questions take hours to answer.
- Hire and lesson charges are mixed on the same invoice lines.
- Families started under different versions of your scheme.
- Size swaps break the link between old and new hire payments.
- You are not sure how much credit is outstanding across all hires.