AI inspections for HQ Rental

Overview

HQ Rental already collects the two photo sets that settle a damage dispute, and the damage map next to them only holds what a person noticed and drew. The reservation carries the vehicle, the hire dates, the fuel and odometer readings, the images uploaded at pickup and at return, the damage map, and the rental agreement all of that prints onto. What no part of it does is compare the two photo sets. RapidEye does: it reads your vehicle list and reservation dates from HQ Rental along with those images, and returns one finding per new problem, on the right vehicle and the right hire, with the two frames that prove it.

How it works with HQ Rental

A hire in HQ Rental has a shape: a vehicle comes off the availability calendar, goes out at a pickup step, comes back at a return step, and the reservation closes. The checks follow that shape, because the photographs already do.

• The pickup images become the baseline. Whatever the counter uploads at Step 7 is the condition the vehicle left in. RapidEye keeps it as the reference for that hire, and also compares it to the last return of the same vehicle, which is how a mark that appeared in the yard between two rentals gets caught instead of quietly attaching itself to the next renter.
• The return images are read against it. A kerbed alloy, a stone chip in the screen, a bumper corner pushed in, a wing mirror casing cracked, a seat burn, a boot lining torn by something heavy. Each comes back as its own finding with the pickup frame and the return frame side by side and the hire dates between them, which is the form an argument with a renter actually takes.
• The interior and the state it came back in. Sand through the carpets, a spill on the rear bench, smoke residue, a missing parcel shelf or charging cable. These rarely reach the damage map because nobody wants the conversation at the desk on a Saturday, and they are the cheapest recoveries a branch has.
• Fuel and odometer, alongside the photo. HQ Rental makes staff enter both before a pickup or a return can be confirmed. RapidEye reads the dash frame with them, so a fuel level typed from memory and a fuel level in the picture are two things you can put next to each other.
• Vehicles that never went out. A car sitting on the lot picks up hail dimples, a flat spot, a cracked light from a reversing van. Where a branch photographs standing stock on a routine, RapidEye reads that too, and the damage is dated to the yard rather than to a renter.
• Bikes, boats and equipment. HQ Rental runs the same reservation structure across cars and vans, motorbikes and boats, and equipment rental. RapidEye reads whatever the unit is; what changes is the standard we score against, and that is set up with you.

Each finding names the vehicle, where on it, what kind of damage, how bad it looks, the two frames that show it, and a suggested next step. It settles in the RapidEye dashboard, or goes to Slack or the fleet office inbox. What happens in HQ Rental afterwards is yours: a damage on the map, a charge against the deposit, a repair order, or nothing. Photos are where operators usually begin; the product goes further. Operators who film a walk-around instead of shooting stills, or who want findings scored against their own return standard, get that set up with us on the first call.

How to connect HQ Rental to RapidEye

1. Your fleet, in HQ Rental. The vehicles you hire out live under Fleet with their own records and availability, and that is what a finding attaches to. You can scope reading to specific branches or vehicle classes.
2. Images at pickup and return. If your staff already upload them at Step 7 and Step 9, from the desktop or the HQ Rentals mobile app, RapidEye reads those and nothing about the counter routine changes. Where nobody photographs the vehicle today, RapidEye supplies a capture link that opens in any phone browser: a fixed set of angles, shot before the customer drives off and again when they hand the keys back.
3. Invite RapidEye as a user. HQ Rental's user management has an Invite user option that sends an email invitation and lets you assign the role. Invite Rapid Eye with a read-only role; the modal has the details.

That is the whole setup. Staff install nothing new, and the first findings follow the first returns.

How HQ Rental records vehicle condition today

Checked against HQ Rental's knowledge base, September 2026.

According to HQ Rental's own knowledge base documentation (hqrentalsoftware.com), a reservation runs through numbered steps, and condition is captured at exactly two of them: Step 7, the pickup, and Step 9, the return. Both steps carry an Images label with an Add Image button and a Camera button, and both show the vehicle damage map. The mobile app is the same two moments in a smaller frame: open the reservation from the daily manifest, choose Pickup or Return, fill in the fuel and odometer levels to proceed, tap Upload to take a picture or pull one from the gallery, then confirm. Confirming a pickup moves the reservation from Open to Rental; confirming a return moves it from Rental to Completed.

Both steps as documented by HQ Rental. The dashed lines are what RapidEye does with each set; nothing about the steps themselves changes.

What the damage map is, and what it is not

It is a drawing surface, and a good one. HQ Rental's documentation describes three ways to put a damage on the vehicle outline, each opening a modal where the person adds the damage type, the amount and any images. Damages are numbered so they can be identified later, the map can be printed into the rental agreement, and every damage in the system rolls up into an All Damages table reached from the Vehicles page under Fleet.

Every one of those three actions starts with a human seeing the damage. That is the honest limit of a map, any map, and it is not a criticism of the tool: the map is exactly as complete as the walk-around behind it, and a walk-around at a rental counter happens with a queue forming, a phone ringing and a renter who wants the keys. So the map holds the obvious marks, and the photographs quietly hold everything else.

Does anything in HQ Rental look at the photos?

Not by design, and the documentation is straightforward about where they go instead. Images added at the pickup and return steps appear on the rental agreement, and they are linked to the reservation rather than to the vehicle itself; attaching an image to a vehicle record means adding a custom field to the vehicle form. The checklist module, despite the name, tracks document expiry, registration certificates, insurance papers, permits, with alerts at sixty days, thirty days and the day itself. Maintenance rules and repair orders fire off intervals and costs. All of it is real fleet infrastructure, and none of it opens an image. So the photo set is filed correctly, attached to the right agreement, and read by nobody, which is what makes it worth reading: the evidence a branch needs is already sitting in HQ Rental, waiting for something to look at it.

HQ Rental integration FAQ