Every rental business has the same bad afternoon: an item comes back with a mark on it and nobody can say whether it was there before. The fix is not a longer contract, it is a habit — a short, identical check at the moment the thing leaves and again when it comes back, recorded where both the desk and the next shift can see it. Base gives that habit somewhere to live.
The car goes out, the car comes back, and the argument about the scratch happens six days later with nothing written down.
The two moments where a rental is won or lost: giving the item out and taking it back. It fits vehicles with fuel and mileage, bikes and boards with condition, tools and cameras with cases and cables, and boats with everything at once. It matters most where the same unit goes out several times a day and where the person handing it over is not the person who took the booking.
It is not an inspection standard, a damage-assessment method or a legal opinion. It does not decide who is at fault, does not calculate a repair cost, does not charge a card and does not replace your rental agreement. It records what your staff saw, when, and who saw it.
Three reasons a handover that felt fine becomes a disagreement a week later.
The scratch on the left panel, the missing cable, the tyre that was already low. Without a record from the moment it left, the business is arguing from memory against a customer who is certain, and the business usually pays.
Half a tank means one thing to the person who filled it and another to the person who returned it. Numbers written at both ends turn a dispute into arithmetic, and arithmetic ends conversations quickly.
Two helmets, a charger, a child seat, the roof rack. Extras are the things that quietly disappear, because they are the things nobody lists. If they are recorded at handover, their absence at return is a fact rather than a suspicion.
Four steps that take three minutes and save the afternoon they would otherwise cost.
The preparation time between hires is part of the booking, and the check that ends it is what makes the handover honest. An item that is not ready is not handed over just because the calendar says two o’clock.
Condition and any existing damage, fuel or charge, mileage or hours, the extras that go with it, and who checked. Photographs where they help. It is the same short list every time, which is what makes it get done.
The return repeats the check and records what changed. The difference between the two is visible immediately, in front of the customer, rather than being discovered after they have gone.
Returned on time, returned late, damage noted, extras missing. The deposit is recorded as a fact — taken, when, by whom, returned or not — and the money itself moves the way your business already moves it.
Three practical things, none of which require anybody to trust anybody else’s memory.
Because the handover and the return capture the same list, the comparison is trivial and cannot be argued into a different shape.
Notes and photographs sit with the rental they belong to, so the next person who opens it — a different shift, a week later — sees exactly what happened without asking.
When an item is overdue, the booking waiting for it shows the conflict while there is still time to call both customers instead of after one of them has arrived.
A mark that was already there, and a missing charger.
A customer returns a scooter and the desk sees a scrape on the panel. The handover record shows the same scrape photographed that morning, by name and time. The conversation takes twenty seconds and both people leave satisfied — which is not what happens when the answer is “I think it was there”.
The handover lists a charger and the return does not. It is a recorded fact rather than an accusation, the customer checks the car, and it is in the boot. Without the list, the charger disappears and is bought again in March.
A handover record is useful precisely because it is modest about what it proves.
Photographs and notes with a name and a time are evidence of an observation. Fault, liability, repair costs and insurance are decided outside Base, by people and processes that are qualified to decide them.
Condition, fuel, mileage, extras and short operational notes. Not a document scan you did not need, not a photograph of a customer, not more identity information than your own rules require you to see.
Write the check as a short list your staff will actually complete on a busy Saturday — five fields that always get filled beat fifteen that never do. Decide which items need photographs and which do not. Set the preparation time per unit so the check has room to happen. Agree what counts as a note worth writing: existing damage and missing extras, not opinions about the customer. Write your deposit rule and your late-return rule in the words you will say out loud. Then run one weekend with the check before you make it the standard, and cut whatever nobody used.
It captures the moment. Everything that follows from the moment is your decision.
Base does not take, hold or refund money. The deposit is recorded as an event so the record is complete; the transaction happens in your own process.
Nothing measures a scratch, prices a repair or decides whether wear is fair. Those are trade judgements, and a booking system pretending otherwise would be worse than useless.
A handover completed in a hurry with empty fields is an empty record. The habit is the feature; the platform only makes the habit cheap.
Base records rental check in check out with the same short list at both ends: condition and existing damage, fuel or charge, mileage, the extras that left with the car, who checked and when, plus photographs where they help. Side by side, the two records are the car rental damage report you point at later. Deciding fault, cost and insurance stays with you.
Condition and existing damage, fuel or charge, mileage or hours, the extras that leave with the item, who checked and when, plus photographs where they help.
Yes, deliberately. The same short list at both ends makes the comparison obvious and stops a disagreement turning into two versions of a memory.
No. It records what was seen and when. Fault, cost and insurance are decided by you, using that record as evidence rather than as a verdict.
They are recorded as facts — taken, when, by whom, and returned if they were. No money moves through Base.
The next booking on that unit shows the conflict while there is still time to contact both customers, instead of the problem arriving with the next one at the counter.
Next step
Registration takes an email address. The operating model, services and resources are configured afterwards, in the console.