Glossary
Ancillary revenue
Revenue earned from add-ons sold on top of the base rental rate — GPS, child seats, fuel options, additional drivers, insurance upsells, toll passes, late-return fees.
Ancillary revenue is everything the operator earns on a booking that is not the base rental rate. The catalog is broad: equipment rentals (GPS, child seats, ski racks), service upsells (full-tank prepay, additional driver, premium roadside), insurance upgrades (CDW excess reduction, SLP, PAI), and policy charges (cleaning fee, late return, smoking penalty). For mature rental operators ancillaries can account for 20–35% of revenue and a much higher share of contribution margin.
The economics differ from the base rental in three ways: marginal cost of fulfilment is low (a GPS unit pays for itself in a few rentals, a CDW upgrade has no physical product), the customer is already past the price-sensitive comparison stage, and the perceived value of "protection" or "convenience" supports a higher markup than the base rate. This is why every counter agent is trained to surface the extras menu before printing the agreement.
In renviq ancillaries live in the extras catalog: each extra has its own SKU, pricing rule (flat / per-day / per-rental), inventory cap if physical, and stock-location binding. Booking modifications can add or remove extras at any point, and the revenue reports break out ancillary contribution by SKU and by channel.