Migrate from Rentman to Filmo
The Filmo team copies your Rentman data into Filmo once: what you agree beforehand, how historical mode closes past work and where everything lands.
The Filmo team runs the import. Afterwards, anyone in your account works with the imported data, with the usual permissions of each module.
There's no add-on, permission or setting for it: there's nothing to switch on in the app.
If you've been running your rental business in Rentman for years, everything you know about your clients, your equipment and your past jobs lives there. Moving to Filmo shouldn't mean typing it all again, or losing the history behind your invoices.
That's what the is for. The Filmo team copies your Rentman data into your Filmo account while you onboard: contacts, catalog and stock, crew, fleet, projects with their orders, invoices, quotes, payments and repairs. Think of it as moving house with a removal company: you tell them what goes and when, they pack and carry, and you check the boxes at the other end.
Take the Landmark Venues wedding you booked in Rentman, with its three large frame tents, 120 Chiavari chairs and 12 round tables. After the move it's a project in Filmo, its part of the job is order RM-1613-9, and its invoice sits on the project with the number Rentman gave it.
How the move works
- You agree the details with the Filmo team: the Filmo account the data goes into, its currency and its tax country. These decide the currency of your contacts and documents and the language of the texts the import writes.
- You agree the cut-off date: from which date your Rentman work counts as history.
- You give the team an API key from your Rentman account. It's used to read your data and isn't stored.
- The team first runs a trial without writing anything, checks the counts and warnings, and then loads your data.
- You and the team review the result in the usual Filmo pages. There's no special Rentman screen.
- You start working in Filmo. New invoices and quotes get Filmo numbers; imported ones keep their Rentman number.
A one-off copy, not a sync
The import copies a snapshot of Rentman at one moment. Anything you change in Rentman afterwards doesn't reach Filmo, and nothing you do in Filmo goes back to Rentman. Your Rentman account stays as it was.
Warning: If the team loads your data again, the imported records take the Rentman values once more and the lines of every imported order are rebuilt, so changes you made to them in Filmo are lost. Agree with the team when the load is final before you edit imported records.
Historical mode: closing past work
Most of what you bring from Rentman is finished work. loads it as closed, so it doesn't show up as waiting to go out, come back or be paid, and doesn't hold any stock. The team decides it with you when they launch the load; it isn't a setting you change later.
| Data | Without historical mode | With historical mode |
|---|---|---|
| Project | Status worked out from its orders, often «Unknown» | «Completed» |
| Order | Status translated from Rentman | «Completed», even if it was cancelled in Rentman |
| Delivery and return | Nothing recorded | One finished delivery and one finished return, on the order dates |
| Invoice | Paid, overdue or pending, as in Rentman | Paid in full |
| Stock held | Depends on the order status | None |
Quotes, payments, contacts and the catalog load the same way in both cases.
Warning: Historical mode closes everything in that load, whatever its dates. If a job is still underway or coming up in Rentman, it ends up completed and doesn't reserve its equipment. That's why the cut-off date matters: agree it with the team before the load.
Historical mode marks invoices as paid but doesn't create payments. In Treasury you only see the payments that existed in Rentman.
Where your Rentman data lands
| In Rentman | In Filmo |
|---|---|
| Contacts and contact persons | «Contacts» |
| Equipment, sets and cases | «Inventory» → «Items» and «Kits» |
| Stock locations | «Spaces» |
| Crew | «Crew» |
| Vehicles | «Transport» → «Fleet» |
| Projects and subprojects | «Projects» and «Orders» |
| Invoices and quotes | «Sales» → «Invoices» and «Quotes», and each project |
| Payments | «Treasury» → «Payments and Collections» |
| Repairs | «Maintenance» → «Lost and damaged» |
What you want to do after the move
| You want to | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| Know what came across and what didn't | Each module | What is imported from Rentman |
| Check your data before you start | Items, projects, incidents, settings | Check your data after the Rentman import |
| Understand an RM- order, its status and totals | «Orders», «Projects» | Orders and projects imported from Rentman |
| Correct or collect an imported invoice | «Sales» → «Invoices» | Invoices, quotes and payments imported from Rentman |
| See what's inside an imported case | The unit's «Summary» | Contents of cases imported from Rentman |
| Free equipment that shows as unavailable | «Orders», «Lost and damaged» | Why imported equipment shows as unavailable |
Good to know
- Imported data follows the permissions of its module: someone without access to invoices doesn't see the imported ones either.
- On detail pages you'll see fields such as «Rentman ID», «Rentman update hash» and «Rentman extracted at», and notes written by «Rentman import». They keep the trail back to Rentman; you can ignore them.
- The file importers in Filmo are a different thing: you run them yourself, from a spreadsheet, and they have no historical mode. See Import your data into Filmo.
Up next
See exactly what comes across and what stays behind: What is imported from Rentman.