Feature Updates as of Oct 2024:
Minimum Duration: Requires customers to book for at least the specified minimum duration, and beyond the minimum if they choose.
Terms and Conditions: Allows more flexibility by adding different terms to booking options, event types, or resources that customers need to agree to in order to book online.
Request Only (Hide Price): Can choose to hide the rental price from customers when they are reserving a booking online.
Overview
The Booking Manager provides the ability to create customized rentals including contracts, as well as terms and conditions.
Setup
Are you wanting to offer online booking for birthday parties specifically?
Check out this article on how to set everything up on the Admin side.
Want to see how birthday parties sold online look like?
In this article we walk through how customers can view parties online
Key Set-Up Points
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Online Booking Add on: In order to turn the Online Booking feature on to display Rentals online to customers, you must go to the Company Settings page and see the "Add On" section. A User with "System Admin" permissions can toggle the feature on once they have agreed to the terms.
Authorization: Currently you must have the Booking Create/Edit Authorization in order to access the Booking Engine and create and/or edit any existing bookings. The Booking Delete Authorization allows you to delete any events or an entire booking that another user has created. You can choose to add these Authorizations to an existing Role or create brand new Roles (listed under Scheduling).
Products: Create products specifically to be used for the booking manager. These will include rental fees or any additional costs you may want to add on.
Booking Options: Booking options must be created. They can be reused for any resource. This includes set-up for the bookable type, date ranges, availabilities, fees and reservation settings.
Minimum Duration: Customers select start time and duration of rental.
Buffer Size: Customers select from a list of open slots available.
Resource Type/Resource Setting: Booking Options can be assigned to either a Resource Type which are assigned to individual resources or a booking option can be assigned directly to individual resources.
Event Types: Create booking specific event types that fit your business needs. In the Booking Settings area of Event Types, you can add any optional custom forms, additional fees (furniture rentals, etc), assign the booking contract, and customize the "Terms of Conditions" section that appears on the contract.
Booking Options
Creating a New Booking Option (Using Minimum Duration)
The Minimum Booking Duration feature allows you to set a minimum duration for bookings. This ensures that each rental meets a minimum time requirement, helping you manage resources efficiently and maximize revenue. The customer online chooses a start time, then the length of their rental beyond the required minimum duration.
Customer View using Minimum Duration:
At this time, this feature can only be turned on while creating a New Booking Option. Therefore, existing Booking Options will not be able to use "Minimum Duration".
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From the Calendar drop down menu, select "Booking Options" or type in "Booking Options" in the global search box.
Click the "+" option to create a new Booking option.
Name: Type a Name that that can eventually be easily assigned to a resource or resource type.
Online Booking: Choose the appropriate state for this Booking Option
Disabled: Resources/Resource Types with this type will not display online at all.
Visible Only: Resource/Resource Types 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.
Request Only (hide price):
This option will hide the price of the rental to the customer as displayed in the example below in the member app:
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 the Member App, 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 their account online in order to book their reservation.
Terms and Conditions:
Select existing Terms and Conditions for customers to agree to online or create new terms.
Terms and Conditions can be managed by typing in the global search box "Terms and Conditions". From here, you can create, edit, copy, inactivate and delete.
There are a variety of other areas throughout the system that Terms and Conditions can be added which could override what is set at the booking Options level:
Event Types
Resources (most specific setting for Terms and Conditions)
Once a cu stomer has signed online, their initials and the agreed upon "Terms and Conditions" will appear on the Contract within the Booking.
Min Days Out: The minimum days in advance required for a customer to book a resource.
Max Days Out: The max days out in advance that a resident can book a resource.
Minimum Booking Duration: This toggle must be turned on at this point when creating a new booking if you want to provide the customer with the option to rent consecutive blocks of time as long as the minimum time requirement has been met.
Click the "Submit" button once you are done.
Date Ranges
You can create multiple date ranges for a booking option for seasonal pricing for example. If you want to do seasonal pricing, you would need to add multiple date ranges. By default, a year around date range is pre- setup. To adjust or add additional date ranges, click the "Edit Dates" button.
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. Repeat the availability setup process when there are different times and/or fees associated to the availability. For example, you may have a Sat and Sunday availability from 11-3 and charge a weekend rate. That is one availability. Then an additional availability could be a weekday rate where the time frame is 3-5 PM. Click the "Add Availability" option to get started.
Start Time and End Time: This is the time frame the customers are able to book their rental for.
Block Size: The default amount of time for each rental.
Minimum booking duration: This is only displayed if it was turned on when the booking option was created initially. Enter the minimum number of blocks of time the customer must rent the resource for.
Days of the Week: Select the days of the week applicable for this availability.
Fees: Add all the fees that will be charged to the customer to rent the resource during the date range specified. Click "Add Fee" to get started.
Start typing in the Product name until you can select the correct one.
The price will default to the global price. This can be adjusted if needed.
Flat or hourly: You can check the box to charge customers a flat rate despite how long the rental is or leave it unchecked to charge an hourly rate.
Auto Add: When this checkbox is set, it means the product will automatically be added to the cart anytime someone books a space using this availability. You may decide to have some "non auto add "products that will appear on the Admin side that can be used as "optional" fees.
Online: This must be checked if you are planning on charging this fee for an online booking.
Click the "Save" option when you have finished setting up your availability and any fees you want to potentially charge.
If you have additional availabilities to set up for your booking option, you will need to click back into the Date Ranges section and press the "Add Availability" option.
Creating a New Booking Option (Not using Minimum Duration option)
Setting up Booking Options is similar to the previous steps, but with one difference: if you choose not to use the minimum duration feature, you can add buffer time between rentals for tasks like setup or takedown. Customers will see all available spots when booking online.
Customer View with Minimum Duration turned off:
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From the Calendar drop down menu, select "Booking Options" or type in "Booking Options" in the global search box.
Click the "+" option to create a new Booking option.
Name: Type a Name that that can eventually be easily assigned to a resource or resource type.
Online Booking: Choose the appropriate state for this Booking Option
Disabled: Resources/Resource Types with this type will not display online at all.
Visible Only: Resource/Resource Types 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.
Request Only (hide price): This option will hide the price of the rental to the customer.
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 the Member App, 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 their account online in order to book their reservation.
Terms and Conditions: Select existing Terms and Conditions for customers to agree to online or create new terms.
Terms and Conditions can be managed by typing in the global search box "Terms and Conditions". From here, you can create, edit, copy, inactivate and delete.
There are a variety of other areas throughout the system that Terms and Conditions can be added which could override what is set at the booking Options level:
Event Types
Resources (most specific setting for Terms and Conditions)
Once a customer has signed online, their initials and the agreed upon "Terms and Conditions" will appear on the Contract within the Booking.
Min Days Out: The minimum days in advance required for a customer to book a resource.
Max Days Out: The max days out in advance that a resident can book a resource.
Click the "Submit" button once you are done.
Date Ranges
You can create multiple date ranges for a booking option for seasonal pricing for example. If you want to do seasonal pricing, you would need to add multiple date ranges. By default, a year around date range is pre- setup. To adjust or add additional date ranges, click the "Edit Dates" button.
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. Repeat the availability setup process when there are different times and/or fees associated to the availability. For example, you may have a Sat and Sunday availability from 11-3 and charge a weekend rate. That is one availability. Then an additional availability could be a weekday rate where the time frame is 3-5 PM. Click the "Add Availability" option to get started.
Start Time and End Time: This is the time frame the customers are able to book their rental for.
Block Size: The default amount of time for each rental.
Buffer Size: The amount of time in between rental blocks. Default is 0.
Days of the Week: Select the days of the week applicable for this availability.
Fees: Add all the fees that will be charged to the customer to rent the resource during the date range specified. Click "Add Fee" to get started.
Start typing in the Product name until you can select the correct one.
The price will default to the global price. This can be adjusted if needed.
Flat or hourly: You can check the box to charge customers a flat rate despite how long the rental is or leave it unchecked to charge an hourly rate.
Auto Add: When this checkbox is set, it means the product will automatically be added to the cart anytime someone books a space using this availability. You may decide to have some "non auto add "products that will appear on the Admin side that can be used as "optional" fees.
Online: This must be checked if you are planning on charging this fee for an online booking.
Click the "Save" option when you have finished setting up your availability and any fees you want to potentially charge.
If you have additional availabilities to set up for your booking option, you will need to click back into the Date Ranges section and press the "Add Availability" option.
Assigning Booking Option to Resource Type
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To access the Resource Type page, you can type the word "Resources" in the global search box or click on "Calendar" from the drop down menu and select "Resource Type".
You can assign default Booking Options to each resource type rather than every single resource on your calendar.
You can always override the default booking option on the specific calendar resource itself. Learn how to do this below.
Assigning Booking Option to Resources
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To access the Resource Management Page:
There are a variety of ways to access. You can click on the resource name from the calendar, type in "Resources" in the global search, or find it under the "Calendar" drop down.
Select the resource you are working on.
The Resource Type can be assigned from the Resource page. This allows you to assign the same Booking Options to a variety of resources.
Individual Resources can also have Booking Options assigned at the Resource level. This will override what is set at the resource type.
In the DaySmart Recreation Member App Settings section, a User account must be set as responsible. A task will be emailed to this employee when a customer requests a specific time to reserve this resource. This user will also receive an email when a customer has Booked a Reservation online.
Resource Image: Add an image of the resource for the customer to view online to get a better idea of what they are booking.
Event Types
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At this time, all online bookings use the built-in event type: “Rental”.
From the main search box, start typing in "event" to view the Event Types set-up page.
Select the Event Type you will be using for your Bookings or create a brand new one. You may use a variety of Event Types depending on your business (Wedding Event, Camp Site Rental, Indoor Field Rental, Outdoor Field Rental).
A custom form can be assigned to gather more details about the rental. If this is an online booking, the customer can be prompted to fill out required fields ahead of time during the registration process to gather this info.
From the Settings section, be sure you have the Option selected for "has invoicing and is rentable" in order to have this Event Type appear in the Booking Manager.
Click the tab labeled "Booking Settings".
Under "Contract" start typing the word "contract" and you will see the available "Booking Contract" to select.
For the "Terms and Conditions" section you can create a new template specific for this event type that your customers will see on the Contract or select one from a previously created template.
In the box, titled "Additional Event Fee Options", you can start typing alternate products that you may add to the event. A good example for this could be if you do Outdoor rentals or tables and chairs. Again, this product would have to be already set up. Click the "+" to add more items.
