IT for equipment rental
and dealerships.
A rental company or dealership runs on three things staying in sync: the counter, the website, and the yard. When the rental management system goes down, nobody can write a contract. When the website says a skid steer is available but it left the yard yesterday, you spend the morning apologising. North Star runs the tech stacks behind e-commerce businesses and builds inventory and ERP integrations for operations in northern BC, so we understand this problem end to end: the software at the counter, the storefront online, and the iron in the yard.
The IT problems rental companies run into.
These come up in almost every conversation we have with rental operators and dealership managers. They're solvable.
The rental system or DMS is the whole business.
Rental management software and dealership management systems (DMS) handle contracts, billing, parts, service, and inventory in one place. That makes them a single point of failure. Three questions matter: what happens when it goes down mid-Saturday, when was the last time a backup restore was actually tested, and can you get your data out if the vendor triples the price. Most operators can't answer all three.
The website rents gear that already left the yard.
Online booking is now table stakes, but a storefront that doesn't talk to your rental system creates double bookings. A customer reserves online, the unit went out on a walk-in contract an hour earlier, and now you're the company that cancelled their long weekend. The fix is an integration, not a bigger apology budget.
Card payments and PCI at the counter.
Rental counters take deposits, damage holds, and final payments on cards, often on aging POS setups sharing a network with everything else in the office. That drags your whole network into PCI scope and makes the annual self-assessment questionnaire either painful or fictional.
GPS data that nobody looks at.
Most modern fleet assets ship with telematics, and many operators bolt GPS trackers onto the rest. Then the data sits in a vendor portal nobody opens. Location, engine hours, and fault codes are billing evidence, theft recovery, and maintenance scheduling if they flow somewhere useful. In a portal nobody checks, they're just a subscription fee.
Branches that can't see each other's inventory.
Two yards, one customer who needs a compactor today, and no way to check the other branch's availability without a phone call. Sometimes that's a networking gap between sites, sometimes it's rental software configured as islands. Either way it costs you rentals.
Seasonal churn and high-value fraud.
Spring hiring means a wave of new accounts, and fall means a wave of departures that often never get offboarded. Meanwhile, equipment deals move six-figure sums on emailed invoices, which is exactly the pattern invoice-fraud crews target. A spoofed "updated banking details" email before a machine purchase is not hypothetical, it is the most common way dealerships lose real money.
Counter, storefront, yard: keeping all three honest.
Here is the version of this problem we see most often. The rental management system is the source of truth for what's on contract. The website, usually Shopify or a booking plugin, has its own idea of availability. The yard has the physical truth. All three drift apart daily, and staff paper over the gap with phone calls and whiteboards.
Our angle is unusual for an IT company: we run e-commerce stacks on Shopify and we build inventory and ERP integrations as custom software, so we can work both ends of this. If your rental software exposes an API, we build a sync that pushes real availability to the storefront and pulls online reservations back into the rental system, so the website physically cannot rent a unit that's already out. If it doesn't expose an API, we'll tell you that plainly and lay out the realistic options: scheduled exports, a buffer-stock rule for online bookings, or in some cases replacing the weakest link. We'd rather say "it depends, here's what it depends on" than sell you an integration that quietly fails at 2 a.m.
The same plumbing pays off twice for dealerships: parts inventory synced to an online parts counter, and used-equipment listings that come down automatically the day a unit sells. See our custom software and integrations page for how we scope this kind of work.
What North Star delivers for rental and dealership operations.
Practical IT built around how a rental counter and a yard actually run.
Rental software and DMS reliability.
We keep the system that writes your contracts alive: managed hosting or cloud environment, patching coordinated with your vendor, image-based backup with restores we actually test, and a documented exit plan so your data is never hostage to a licence renewal. We don't resell rental software, so our advice on it has no commission attached.
Managed IT Pricing →Storefront-to-inventory sync.
Shopify or comparable storefronts wired to your rental or dealership system so online availability matches the yard. Reservations flow back into the rental system automatically. Built and maintained by us, with monitoring, so a silent sync failure doesn't cost you a weekend of double bookings.
Custom Software →Counter POS and PCI scope reduction.
Payment terminals that keep card data off your computers, a segmented network for payment traffic, and honest help with the PCI self-assessment questionnaire. The goal is a counter where a compromised office PC cannot touch a card transaction. Retail POS is a lane we already work in.
Retail IT & POS →GPS and telematics that earn their keep.
We consolidate tracker and OEM telematics feeds so engine hours, location, and fault codes land where your team already works: overage billing backed by hours data, geofence alerts for after-hours movement, and maintenance flags before a rental goes out broken.
Vehicle & Fleet →Networking across yards and branches.
Site-to-site VPN or SD-WAN between branches, UniFi networking that covers the office, the counter, and the yard, and shared inventory visibility so any branch can answer "do we have one" without a phone call. Starlink where a yard sits past decent wired service.
Multi-Location IT →Onboarding, offboarding, and fraud defence.
Templated same-day account setup for seasonal hires and same-day shutdown when they leave, through Entra ID and Intune. Plus the defences that matter on high-value deals: phishing simulation for staff, payment-change verification procedures, and EDR/MDR on every endpoint.
Cybersecurity →Tools and platforms we use in this sector.
The stack we deploy and manage for rental and dealership clients.
Microsoft 365 + Entra ID
Email, documents, and identity. Role templates make seasonal onboarding a checklist instead of a scramble.
Shopify
Online storefronts for bookings, parts, and used-equipment sales, integrated with your rental system's availability.
UniFi Networking
Segmented networks for office, payment terminals, cameras, and yard Wi-Fi, plus site-to-site links between branches.
EDR/MDR + Phishing Simulation
Managed detection on every endpoint and regular phishing drills, because invoice fraud targets people before systems.
Image-Based Backup
Full-system backup of your rental software environment with verified restores, so "the server died" is an hours problem, not a weeks problem.
Common questions from rental operators and dealers.
Can you support our rental management software even though you didn't sell it to us?
Yes. We don't resell rental software, which means we have no incentive to push you toward one product. We manage the servers or cloud environment it runs on, keep it patched and backed up, handle the vendor relationship when something breaks, and make sure you can actually get your data out if you ever want to switch.
Can our website show real-time availability from our rental system?
It depends on your rental software. If it has an API, we can build a sync so your Shopify or other storefront reflects what is actually in the yard. If it doesn't, there are workarounds, like scheduled exports or a buffer-stock rule, but they come with trade-offs we will explain honestly before you spend money. We build and run these integrations ourselves, we don't hand the problem to a third party.
What does PCI compliance actually mean for a rental counter?
If you take credit cards, PCI DSS applies to you. For most rental companies the practical goal is reducing scope: use payment terminals that keep card data off your computers and network, segment the payment traffic, and answer the self-assessment questionnaire truthfully. Done right, PCI for a rental counter is mostly about network design and a few policies, not a huge audit project.
We hire seasonal staff every spring. How fast can you set up and remove accounts?
Same day for standard onboarding once we have your roles templated in Entra ID and Intune. A new counter hire gets email, rental software access, and the right shared drives from a checklist, not from memory. Offboarding is the part most companies miss: we disable accounts the day someone leaves, because a forgotten login from last season is a real security hole.
Our branches can't see each other's inventory. Can you fix that?
Usually, yes. Sometimes it's a networking problem, branches that were never properly connected, which we solve with site-to-site VPN or SD-WAN. Sometimes it's a software problem, separate databases per branch, which needs either a vendor feature you're not using or an integration we build. We diagnose which one you have before quoting anything.
What does managed IT cost for an equipment rental company?
We price per user per month across three tiers. The typical BC market range is $100 to $250 per user per month, and where you land depends on branch count, compliance needs, and how much of your stack we manage. Our pricing is published openly, and clients who sign before September 1, 2026 get founding pricing. Integration projects like storefront sync are quoted separately as project work.
Ready for a counter, website, and yard that agree with each other?
Book a 30-minute scoping call. We'll review your rental software, storefront, payments, and branch network with uptime and busy-season reality in mind. No pressure.
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