Creating a Booking Option
There are three main parts of the booking options. The first part are the basic settings where you will set the name, bookable type, and the Online booking option.
The second part of the booking option are the date ranges, availabilities and fees . These denote when the booking structure is active. This also allows you to set the price and availability for a different time of the year. These are associated to a date range, meaning you can set what time a resource is open during the summer and winter. You can also charge different rates for the summer than the winter.
The third part of the booking options are the Additional Settings. These include min and max dates for residents/non residents (if you have the the GIS mapping turned on), takedown time and minimum reservation block size.
Basic Settings:
Name – what you would like the booking option to be called.
Online Booking
Disabled: Resources with this type will not display online at all
Visible Only: Resource with this type will display online, but you will not be able to see the availability calendar or request a reservation
Request Only (aka Require Admin Approval): Resources are visible online and customers can request to reserve a time slot. This will not block off the time until the Admin creates the event.
Book (signed in) & Request (not Signed In): Resources are visible online and customers can purchase that time on the spot. This will block out the resource and create an event. If they are not logged into Dash Online, they can either choose to login to book or send in a request.
Book Only (signed in) (aka Force Purchase): Requires customer to login to Dash Online in order to book their reservation.
Bookable Type
Block – Think of this as an inventory based system. When your booking structure has a bookable type of block then the customer can only rent out the full Availability you set and will be charged for that full amount of time. For example, if you create an availability from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm. Then the customer will have to rent the resource from 8:00 am to 12:00pm.
By Minute – This setting allows the customer to have more flexibility. For the same availability above (8:00 am to 12:00 pm) the customer would be allowed to book any time between the start and end time. For example, 8:00 am to 9:00 am.
Date Ranges: Note: You can create multiple date ranges for a booking option for seasonal pricing for example. Click "Edit Dates" to add date ranges for your booking option. Keep in mind if you want to do seasonal pricing you would need to add multiple date ranges.
Start Date – The first date that the booking option is available
End Date – The end date that the booking option is available
Recurring – This allows the date range to be reused year over year
Availabilities and Fees:
Availabilities are the times and days of the week the resources are allowed to be booked.
Fees are all the fees that will be charged to the customer to rent the resource during the date range specified.
Hourly vs Flat Fees: There are 2 sections where you can add either or both types of fees to the availability.
Tiered Pricing: Under each fee section for hourly and flat you can set your fees to be tiered. This means that you can charge a different price than the base price you have set depending on how long they book for.
Auto Add: The fees you have toggled to Auto Add will appear automatically when creating a new booking. They can be deleted if you decide not to use them.
The example below has a seasonal summer date range so far added to it with weekday availabilities and fees applicable for weekend options. This might be the case where you offer your customers a discounted rental rate during the day if there is any open space. The online booking settings is set to "request only" so that the staff can determine whether they want to rent the space out. For this particular example, it would make sense to add a "prime time" option as well for this date range on the weekend.
Additional Settings: Keep in mind you will only see the resident/non resident options, if you have the GIS Enabled for your DASH account.
Resident Min Days – The minimum days out required for a resident to book a resource
Non Resident Min Days – The minimum days out required for a non resident to book a resource
Resident Max Days – The max days out that a resident can book a resource
Takedown Time – This can be used to specify a number of minutes to have as a cushion in between bookings.
Minimum Increment - This is only applicable if the Bookable Type is set to “By Minute”. If this is set to 120 minutes, then the customer would not be allowed to book the time slot for 8:00 am to 9:00 am, but would be required to reserve 2 hours. For example, from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.