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For Party Rental Operators

Setup Items: Give Your Crew a Checklist for Every Rental

A bounce house is never one thing on the truck. It's the house, a blower, a cord, and stakes or sand bags depending on the ground. Setup items let you say that once, and every order's Packing Slip lists the right gear under the right product.

November 1, 2026  ·  5 min read

The rentals rarely get left behind. A bounce house is hard to forget. What stays in the warehouse is everything that goes with it: the gear nobody books and nobody pays for, so it never appears on the order and only exists in the heads of the people who have loaded that unit before.

Sound familiar?

The bounce house made it to the party. The stakes are still on the shelf.
Sand bags went to a backyard lawn, and the stakes stayed home
Two of the same unit went out with one blower between them
Your lead knows what every unit needs. Your new seasonal hire doesn't.
You typed "bring 4 sand bags" into an order note by hand, again
A blower didn't come back, and nobody noticed until the next booking needed it

The Idea

A Setup Item Is Everything That Rides Along

Every rental has a short list of things that have to travel with it. Your client doesn't choose them and doesn't pay for them, but without them the rental can't be set up, or can't be set up safely. A bounce house needs its blower and cord, plus stakes on grass or sand bags on hard ground. A canopy needs its weights. A tent needs its stakes.

That list usually lives in someone's head. Setup Items move it into Party Rental Studio: each product remembers what it needs, and the order's Packing Slip prints it for the crew.

It helps to be clear about what a setup item is not. Party Rental Studio already has a place for each of these, and keeping them apart is what keeps the Packing Slip easy to read:

Setup item
Gear the crew brings so a product can be set up. The client never chooses it or pays for it.Blower, extension cord, hook stakes, sand bags, canopy weights
Add-on
An extra the client picks and pays for, offered with a product.A popcorn kit with the popcorn machine
Setup instructions
How the product goes up, written once on the product.Blower behind the house, anchor all four corners before inflating
Order note
Something true for this one order only.Gate code 4471, use the side entrance
Rule of thumb. If the crew needs it every time the product goes out, and the client never sees a price for it, it's a setup item.

How It Works

List It Once, Attach It to Products, Stop Remembering It

You keep one Setup Items list for the whole account, under Products. Each item is entered once, with a name and the surfaces it belongs on. Then you open a product, go to its Setup & Storage tab, pick the items it needs and set a quantity: one blower, one cord, four stakes.

From then on the product carries that list. Every order that includes it, booked online or entered by your team, prints the list under it on the Packing Slip. Rename an item once and every product and every printout follows, including reprints of orders you already have.

The bounce house's setup items, on its Setup & Storage tab. Four lines, set up once.

Matched to the Ground

The Right Anchors for the Surface, Without Anyone Remembering the Rule

Stakes and sand bags do the same job on different ground: stakes where the ground is soft, sand bags where it's hard. So each setup item knows which surfaces it belongs on. The blower prints on every job, the stakes only on grass and other soft ground, the sand bags only on asphalt and concrete.

The order's setup surface decides. Your checkout can ask the client for it, and your team can set or change it on the order. When the Packing Slip prints, Party Rental Studio matches every setup item to that surface.

One product, two orders. The surface on each order decides which anchors print.

A product can break the rule when it needs to. If your pop-up canopy takes sand bags indoors too, give that one product its own surfaces for sand bags. Every other product keeps following the default.

Don't track surfaces at all? If Hide surface type on checkout is on in your settings, there's nothing to match, and every setup item prints on every order.

No surface yet? Nothing is guessed. Items that belong on every surface still print. Items limited to certain surfaces are held back, and the Packing Slip shows Surface: Not set with a note naming them. Set the surface on the order and print again.

Quantities

Two Bounce Houses, Two Blowers

A setup item's quantity is per product, so it multiplies with the order. Book two of the same bounce house and the Packing Slip asks for two blowers, two cords and eight stakes, not one set for the crew to split.

Each setup item multiplies by the quantity booked. The sand bags stay off, because this order is on grass.

The Packing Slip

Where It All Comes Together

Setup items exist for one page: the Packing Slip. Open any order and click Packing Slip, and every product prints with its setup items directly underneath, one line and one tick box each. Beside the product sits its storage location, so the crew knows where to find it. Under the setup items come its setup instructions, so they know how it goes up. There are no prices anywhere on the page.

The crew loads with the slip in hand. Tick the product's Out box, tick each setup item under it, and the unit is complete. When it comes back, the same list says what should be coming back with it.

Order #10482 is on grass, so the bounce house lists its blower, its cord and four hook stakes. The sand bags stay in the warehouse.

On a busy day, the Packing Slip button on the Orders page prints every order in view on one sheet, with each product's setup items under it the same way. That sheet has a Setup Items print option if a crew doesn't need them. The Packing Slip you open from an order always lists them.

Behind the scenes, on purpose. Setup items never show on your website, the invoice or client emails. They have no stock count, so they never make a product unavailable or block a booking.

Included in Every Plan

What Setup Items Do for You

Setup Items are part of every Party Rental Studio account, under Products. There is nothing to install or turn on.

One List for the Account

Name each item once. Rename it and every product and printout follows.

Quantities That Multiply

Set one blower and four stakes per product. Two on the order prints two and eight.

Matched to the Surface

Each item prints only on the ground it belongs on, from the order's setup surface.

Exceptions per Product

Give one product its own surfaces for an item without changing any other product.

On Both Packing Slips

The Packing Slip for one order, and the Orders page sheet for the whole day.

A Warning, Not a Guess

An order without a surface says so, and names the items it held back.

Send Every Rental Out Complete

Already on Party Rental Studio? Setup Items are under Products, and the tutorial walks you through your first list in about six minutes. Not a customer yet? Start a free trial and print a Packing Slip from your own orders this week.

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