How Loan Car Bookings Work

Source: loan_cars_controller.rb, loan_car.rb

Loan car bookings require a loan date, vehicle, customer, and shop hours to be configured
Maximum loan duration is 30 days; longer bookings are rejected
Loan numbers are auto-assigned from the company's sequence counter
Soft delete transitions PENDING loans to CANCELLED status; cancellation also unlinks the loan from any associated invoice and event
Starting a loan requires the customer to agree to terms and conditions; the system captures the current local time as the start time
Only loans in active status can be returned (marked as returned)
Multi-day loans are split into time segments: Day 1 runs from the start time to shop close, middle days run from shop open to shop close, and the last day runs from shop open to the end time
Loan car time entries are cleared and fully recreated on every update to keep the time splits accurate
Vehicle availability is calculated as shop hours minus already-booked hours per vehicle per day

"I can't create a loan car booking longer than 30 days" → The system enforces a maximum 30-day loan period. For longer loans, create a second booking starting where the first ends.
"The loan car times look wrong after I edited the booking" → Loan car times are destroyed and recreated on every update. This is normal behavior to keep the multi-day time splits accurate.
"I can't return this loan car" → Only active loans can be returned. Check the loan status — if it is PENDING or CANCELLED, it cannot be returned. The loan must be started first.
"The customer says they didn't agree to terms but the loan was started" → Starting a loan requires agreement to terms. The system records the agreement and the local timestamp when the loan was started.