Extended Rental Orders
An Extended Rental order — an "extension" — is how you keep items out past the return date of the order they went out on. It's a new order that picks up exactly where the original order left off, holding the line items the customer wants to keep and leaving the rest to come back as planned.
The alternative — opening the original order and pushing its return date out another week — works, but it rewrites history. The original order no longer shows what was actually agreed to, every line on it is extended whether the customer kept it or not, and there's nothing separate to invoice. An extension keeps the original order intact and gives the extra weeks their own order, their own line items and their own line on the invoice.
Extensions also continue your Weekly Discount Schedule rather than restarting it. A one-week extension of a one-week rental is billed at your second-week rate, not at full price again.
Before You Start
An extension can only be created from a rental order — "Sales & Rentals", "Rentals Only", "On Spec Rental" or another extension — and only from line items with a rental purchase type. If you select a sale line item, Propcart lists its SKU and asks you to unselect it.
A line item can only be extended once. To extend a second time, create the next extension from the line items on the first extension order. See Extending More Than Once.
On an order priced in weeks, the original order's return date has to match its full duration. If the order says 2 weeks but its return date is only 10 days after pickup, Propcart stops you with an Invalid Return Date message and tells you the date to change it to. Weekly rentals run 7 days per week plus one grace day, so a 2-week order picked up on the 1st is due back on the 15th.
To turn this check off, turn on Skip Return Date Validation for Extension Orders? in your Order Settings.
Creating an Extension
From selected line items
This is the method in the video, and the one to use most of the time.
- Open the original order and select the line items the customer is keeping. Leave the ones that are coming back unselected.
- Click Bulk Actions → New Order from Selected Line Items.
- Set
New Order Typeto "Extended Rental". - Set
New Line Item Status. "Preserve current status" is usually what you want — line items that are Rented Out stay Rented Out on the extension. - Click Create Order.
- Read the Heads Up! confirmation (see below), then click Continue.
- Choose Go to New Order.
From a late return
When you return line items with Return Selected and the Actual Return Date you enter is after the order's return date, Propcart asks Create Extension?, showing how many days late they were. Click Yes and you land in the same New Order from Selected Line Items form with the type already set to "Extended Rental".
This is the tidy way to bill a customer who kept something an extra week without telling you. Only Return Selected asks; the Return buttons, scanning and status changes don't.
There's no New button route to an extension, and Change Order Type won't convert an existing order into one. An extension has to be built from the line items of the order it extends, because that's what links the two orders and carries the week count forward.
What Happens to the Original Order
Before it creates anything, Propcart shows a Heads Up! confirmation summarizing what happens to the selected line items. Here's the full picture:
Selected line items get an "Extended" badge. The badge replaces the status in the line item's row and shows the date the item is due to come back on the original order.
You don't return them yourself. A Propcart job runs nightly and returns extended line items once their return date has passed, stamping their Private Notes with "Auto returned by Propcart Cron Bot" and recalculating the order's status. The Return quick-action buttons are hidden on extended lines, because that's now handled for you.
Unless the order is already past due. If the original order's return date has already gone by, Propcart returns the selected Rented Out lines immediately as part of creating the extension, rather than waiting for the nightly job.
Extended lines are never marked late. Because the item didn't come back — it moved to the extension — a line with the Extended badge is excluded from the order's late count, so the original order doesn't land in "Returned Late" status on its account.
Its dates lock. Once an order has an extension, its Pickup Date, Return Date, Billable Duration and Flexible? fields are disabled, and the order shows a message saying so. The two orders have to stay continuous, so neither end of the join can move.
So do the extended line items' dates. Their date fields are disabled when you open them, and Edit Selected Line Items won't change dates while any selected line item is extended. Deselect the extended ones, or detach or cancel the extension first.
Unselected line items are untouched. They keep their status and their return date and come back the way they always were going to.
What the New Order Looks Like
Title. "Extension 1 of Order #50006: original title", numbered by how many extensions the order you extended from already has. When you extend an extension, the number and the order # come from the original order, so the second extension in a chain is "Extension 2 of Order #50006". It's just a default — edit it if you'd rather it read something else.
Dates. The extension's Pickup Date is the original order's Return Date — that's what makes the rental continuous — and it's read-only. Because it isn't really a pickup, the field is labelled From Date on the extension. The Return Date defaults to one week later and is the one date you can edit: change it to three weeks and save, and you've extended for three weeks. Billable Duration follows the Return Date and can't be set directly.
Flexible Duration is off, and can't be turned on. If you need the open-ended dates that Flexible Duration gives you, don't use an extension.
Pricing continues the discount schedule. The extension remembers how many weeks the customer has already had, and prices its weeks from there. Extending a 1-week order by 3 weeks bills the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of your schedule, not another three first weeks. If the week you're extending into is free on your schedule, the order tells you so: "This Extended Rental order is for the 4th week, which is free."
Status. The order and its line items take the status you picked in the form — with "Preserve current status", the original's status, typically Rented Out. Unlike a Loss & Damage order, an extension doesn't start in Draft, so it's ready to invoice right away.
Partially returned lines. A line item that was Partially Returned on the original order comes across as Rented Out on the extension, with only the quantity still outstanding.
Links both ways. The extension's Summary shows a Parent row linking back to the original order, and the original shows an Extended Rental row linking forward. Each line item's Private Notes records "Extended from Order #50006". The original order's paperwork also prints "Extended on Order #" and the number of its first extension.
Discounts and dates carry over; the PO doesn't. The original order's rental and sales discount percentages come across, but Purchase Order starts empty — fill it in before you try to add the order to an invoice.
Extending More Than Once
To extend again, open the extension and create a new extension from its line items. The week count keeps accumulating, so a second extension of a 1-week order that was already extended 3 weeks is priced as the 5th week.
Every extension in the chain points back to the original order as its Parent, and the original order lists all of them, so you can see the whole chain from either end.
Invoicing
An extension is invoiced like any other order, and it's normal to put it on the same invoice as the order it extends.
On the same invoice as the original. Open the invoice and add the extension as another order. The original and the extension each appear as their own line, priced for their own weeks.
On its own invoice. Go to the extension's Billing tab and click Create Invoice.
An order can only be added to an invoice when its Purchase Order and tax region match the invoice's. If the extension isn't selectable, check those two fields on both records — Purchase Order in particular is blank on a new extension.
Undoing an Extension
Delete it. Deleting an extension order removes the Extended badge from the original order's line items and puts them back in the normal flow, where you return them yourself. An extension that has its own extensions can't be deleted until those are dealt with first.
Detach it. If you'd rather keep the order but break the link, use Change Order Type on the extension and set it to "Rentals Only" or "Sales & Rentals". Those are the only two types an extension can be changed to. This can't be undone, and the order is repriced from the first week of your discount schedule — it's no longer a continuation of anything. An extension that has its own linked orders can't be detached until those are dealt with first. Detaching an extension of an extension unlinks it from both the original order and the extension it was made from.
Cancel it. Canceling an extension cancels it for good: extension orders can't be un-canceled. Create a fresh extension from the previous order instead.
However you undo it, the original order's line items go back to the status they had when they were extended: Rented Out, or Partially Returned if only part of the quantity was still out, with that quantity outstanding again. After a detach, the items show as out on both orders until you return them on one of them. Deleting or canceling a single line item on an extension does the same for that one line item.
Canceling the original order cancels every order linked to it too, extensions and Loss & Damage orders included. After Cancel Entire Order?, Propcart lists the linked orders and asks Cancel Linked Orders?, then asks Cancel Entire Order? once more for each linked order. Click Cancel at Cancel Linked Orders? and nothing is canceled. If any linked order has a payment, or is on an invoice that isn't Void, Propcart refuses before asking, and names that order. Clear the payment or remove the order from its invoice, then try again.
Things to Watch Out For
Don't duplicate an order to make an extension. A duplicate is an independent order with no parent link and no week count carried over, so it prices from week one and nothing connects it to the original.
The original order can't be deleted while it has extensions. Delete or detach the extensions first. Its Loss & Damage orders are deleted with it, but only if none of them has a payment or an invoice.
Adding a new item to an extension asks for confirmation. Propcart checks that you meant to, since an extension is normally only the items that were already out. It's allowed — just not the usual case. Copy to Order can't copy line items into an extension at all.
Changing the account on the original order changes it on its extensions too, and on its Loss & Damage orders.
An extension holds inventory for its own dates. The items stay booked through the new return date and will conflict with anyone else trying to rent them in that window, exactly as the original order did.
If you need flexibility, don't extend. Locked pickup date, no Flexible Duration, one extension per line item. When the dates genuinely aren't settled yet, an ordinary order is the better tool.