Online booking: taking equipment reservations from your website

Online booking is your rental company's page where a client picks a point, equipment, a tariff and a start time, confirms the email with a code from a letter and gets a reservation. The equipment is held for them, and staff see the reservation in the program right away. Payment and the deposit are taken at the point on pickup, as usual.

What you need

• The Client portal option in the license: online booking is part of it
• Working email delivery: the client confirms with a code from a letter
• Tariffs with prices and equipment assigned to points
• Company administrator rights to change the settings

Step 1. Turn on online booking

Open the staff web app, the Company section, the Online booking block. Tick "Accept online bookings" and save. The same block shows the link to your booking page, which you give to clients.

Step 2. Choose what to offer

Points, Equipment and Tariffs are set to All by default: the page offers every open point, all equipment and every active tariff, including ones added later. Untick All and choose items to offer, for example, only hourly tariffs or a single point. A tariff only appears for the equipment and points it is linked to.

Step 3. Set the hours

• First and last start: the hours a rental can start, in your local time
• Time step: start times every 15, 30 or 60 minutes
• Minimum notice: how long before the start a booking must be made, so staff can prepare
• Days ahead: how far in advance booking is open
• Break between rentals: time for charging and inspection before the next client
• Wait after the start: how long equipment waits for a late client before the booking ends
• Longest booking, in tariff periods: for example, 7 with an hourly tariff allows up to 7 hours

Step 4. Add your rental rules

Write the essentials: deposit, documents, liability for damage, age and riding area. The client sees the rules before confirming and ticks that they accept them and consent to personal data processing.

Step 5. Share the link

• A Book button on your website
• The link in your Instagram, Google Maps and other profiles
• A saved reply in WhatsApp and Telegram
• A QR code at the point and on the equipment

How a client books

• Opens the link and picks a point, equipment, tariff and length
• Picks a date and a free start time; taken times are crossed out
• Sees the total price and the deposit
• Enters name, phone and email and accepts the rules
• Enters the code from the letter: the booking is confirmed and a letter with the address and time follows
• Can cancel in the client portal, signing in with the same email
• Gets a reminder the day before with where and when to pick up, when automatic client messages are on (the Reservation tomorrow kind)

While the client enters the code, the equipment is held for 15 minutes. If no code comes, the hold ends by itself and the time is free again.

What staff see

• A New online reservation notification with the name, phone, equipment, point and time, in the desktop app and under the bell in the web app
• The booking marked Online: in the web app's Reservations section and in the desktop app under Rentals, Reservations
• A free unit at the chosen point is assigned automatically
• A new client gets a card with a confirmed email; a known email links the booking to that client's card

Handing over equipment for a booking

• In the web app open Reservations and click Issue; in the desktop app open Rentals, Reservations and the booking
• Check the client's ID: the booking shows contacts, price, deposit and return time
• The tariff is chosen and the length is the booked one; a client who comes early starts at the booked time
• Create the rental (Convert to rental in the desktop app) and take payment and the deposit as usual

No-shows and cancellations

If the client does not come within the waiting time, the booking expires and the equipment is free. A booking cancelled by the client in the portal frees the equipment at once, and the journal keeps a record.

Protection against abuse

• A booking only counts after the code from the letter, so no one can book with someone else's email
• Only a few code attempts are allowed
• One email or phone can hold at most three bookings at a time
• Blacklisted clients cannot book online and are asked to call the point
• One unit cannot be booked twice for the same time, even when two clients press the button at once

Payment

For now, payment and the deposit are taken at the point. Online payment is in preparation: money will go straight to your company's account through your own payment provider, and ProkatOS will not handle it.