Overview
RCM allows your company to integrate with
MarginFuel. MarginFuel describe themselves as "a cloud-based solution designed to manage all your revenue management requirements." They are a price optimisation engine that determines the best Daily Rental Rates based on numerous factors including:
- Length of Hire
- Locations and Relocations
- Vehicle Category
- Current Market Trends and Demand
- A Forecast Model built from a historical analysis of demand, utilisation and capacity.
MarginFuel is designed to decrease the workload required to maintain Daily Rates that are appropriate for the current market, as well as increase revenue for your company.
There is no additional cost from RCM to integrate with MarginFuel, however MarginFuel themselves will charge you for their services. For information on how to set up a MarginFuel account and integrate it with your RCM system, please contact support@rentalcarmanager.com. How it Works
Once the setup and integration has been completed, any booking made from the Agent Booking Request, Web Booking Request or from within RCM will fetch and use live MarginFuel Rates. Below is an example of a booking made from within RCM that is using Margin Fuel Rates.
You are able to set up multiple different Rate Types to apply to your different Agents, in addition to a Direct Rate Type for normal bookings. These Agent Rates will be used for any booking made through the Agent API or bookings made within RCM that have an Agent assigned to them.
If Margin Fuels is unable to fetch a rate for a specific booking, due to connectivity problems or an incomplete set up for all Vehicle Categories/Agents, the booking will automatically fall back to RCM rates. This ensures that you will never miss out on a booking while using this integration.
Extended Booking
When a hired booking is extended, the extra days can be charged in two different ways, and it is controlled by the system parameter "Calculate Extended Rate Structure using total rental days" which is found by going to System Setup >> System Parameters >> Rate Parameters.
- When this is set to No, the extra days will be added to the existing rate line and will be charged for whatever daily rate was originally charged on the booking
- When this is set to Yes, the extra days will be added as a new rate line and will be charged for whatever the current rate is in the MarginFuel pricing table for those days. See example of this below. However, if the system parameter "Never change an original rate" is set to Yes, this will override the other parameter, and the original price will still be used on the extra days.