Sub-Rental in Slack: Draft Vendor POs from Current RMS History

Sub-rentals are the quiet time sink inside a rental shop. Every time an order comes in for an item that is not on the shelf, somebody has to remember who the shop borrowed it from last time, pull up the old rate, confirm the dates, and type out a purchase order from a Word template. That tax falls on one or two coordinators, and it falls again on the vendor waiting for a clean request. With a Slack agent reading Current RMS, both of those steps collapse into a single thread.

Sub-rentals fall through the cracks

Current RMS knows what the shop has. It does not know where the shop goes when it does not have it. That information lives in a coordinator's email and one or two people's heads. When that coordinator is out, the next sub-rental takes longer, the vendor list shrinks to whoever Slack surfaces first, and the rate reverts to whatever the vendor feels like quoting.

• The last rate lives somewhere in a Gmail thread from six months ago
• The PO template is a Word doc that nobody keeps version-synced
• Vendor ranking (who actually ships on time) is tribal knowledge
• New coordinators spend their first month learning the shop's vendor map by hand

How the Slack agent works

1. A coordinator mentions the agent in Slack with the shortage: item, dates, quantity
2. Runbear checks Current RMS through MCP for past sub-rentals of the same item, ranks vendors by recency, rate, and reliability
3. The agent posts a draft purchase order in the thread, complete with item, dates, rate, and delivery notes, ready to confirm

For the team. The agent owns the lookup, the ranking, and the draft, so the coordinator only does the one thing that actually needs a human: confirm the vendor and send. For the vendor. The request lands as a complete purchase order, not a half-written Slack DM, so their side is a faster yes or no.

Setting it up

1. Sign up at Runbear and open your workspace.
2. Create a new Agent and name it Sub-Rental Coordinator.
3. Connect Slack and invite the bot into your rental ops channel.
4. Add Current RMS as an MCP server with a API token.
5. Add the Gmail tool with drafts-only permission, so it creates drafts without sending.
6. Paste the instruction and the PO template below into the agent.

  You are the Sub-Rental Coordinator for Birch Camera Rentals.

  When a coordinator mentions you in Slack with a shortage, do this:

  1. Parse the message for item, quantity, and date range.
  2. Use the Current RMS MCP to find the most recent past sub-rental of the
     same item. Take that vendor and that day rate.
  3. Use the Gmail tool to create a DRAFT (do NOT send) to the vendor's
     email with this exact body:

  Subject: Sub-rental request: x ,  -

  Hi ,

  We'd like to sub-rent the following from you:

  Item:    x
  Dates:    pickup,  return
  Rate:    $/day  ($ for  days)
  Pickup:  At your location
  Return:  By end of day

  Please confirm availability.

  Thanks,
  Birch Camera Rentals

  4. Reply in Slack with ONE line only:
     "Drafted to <Vendor> at $<day rate>/day. Check Gmail."

  Rules:
  - Never send the email. Drafts only.
  - If Current RMS has no past sub-rental for the item, reply in Slack with:
    "No past vendor for <item>. Want me to search by category?" and stop.
  - If dates or quantity are missing, ask one question and stop.
  - No greetings, filler, emojis, or multi-line explanations in Slack.

Before and after

Before

For the team. The coordinator drops what they were doing, searches Gmail for the vendor, opens Current RMS in a second tab to confirm the dates, copies the Word PO template, and retypes the details. Twenty to thirty minutes per sub-rental, twice as long if the coordinator who owns that vendor is out.

For the vendor. They get a short Slack DM or a two-line email (hey got an Easyrig for the 4th?), have to write back asking for the exact dates and the PO, and wait another loop before they can block the stock.

After

For the team. A coordinator pastes the shortage into Slack, the draft PO lands in the thread in under a minute, and they confirm and send. New coordinators ship their first sub-rental on day one because the vendor history is in the bot, not in a senior's head.

For the vendor. A single message arrives with every field already filled: item, quantity, exact dates, agreed rate, delivery and return address. They can confirm in one reply.

Who it fits

• Film and video equipment rentals running Current RMS, Rentman, or a similar RMS
• Event production companies that sub out lighting or staging between shops
• AV rental teams that borrow from peer vendors during festival season
• B2B equipment resellers doing cross-shop fulfillment