Would you like to allow pre-approved clients the option to make their own bookings?
Then our new feature is perfect for you! You'll retain control in terms of who is able to book, what they can book & also the times available for them to book.
If you would like to find out more about this option, or to go ahead, please call our Customer Service team & they will activate your venue and talk you through the steps required to set it up to your specifications.
Display calendar page on client login
This allows you the option to give all your clients read-only view of your calendar, ideal if you'd like them to view availability instead of contacting your administrators. A sample of this calendar is shown below:
There are no issues regarding confidentiality, as other bookings are simply shown as unavailable, while the clients own bookings are shown in green with full details available to click.
Allow clients to make their own bookings
Once we've activated your venue, we will work through the following steps with you:
Step 1 - Client booking slots (Manage > Venue Management)
These have 2 purposes. Initially to set the general times you wish people to be able to book your facility. For example, if your bookings run from 6-10pm weekdays, you would need a booking slot for this, otherwise clients would be able to book any time over a 24 hour period!
The other purpose for these booking slots is to limit people to book certain time slots only (e.g. 6-7pm, 7-8pm), this may be useful if you only wish people to book only on the hour.
Step 2 - Calendar categories (Manage > Venue Management)
The calendar categories that you have set up to group your rooms can be used to restrict the times available to book particular spaces, by linking them to your 'Client Booking Slots'. If the 'Use Slots?' is set to 'No', then the system will use the the longest time period set for that day (in your client booking slots), by default. In the example above, this would be 18:00 - 22:00 on weekdays, 09:00 - 17:00 on Saturdays, and 09:00 - 13:00 on Sundays. If the 'Use Slots?' is set to 'Yes' then the shorter time periods (18:00 - 19:00, 19:00 - 20:00, 20:00 - 21:00 on weekdays) will be used. If there are no 'Client Booking Slots' defined, then your clients will be able to book any time of the day for all spaces.
An example of this would be when gym user bookings (in the screenshot above) are using hourly slots (e.g. 6-7,7-8 etc), but the remaining spaces are bookable anytime between 6-10pm. The calendar category would be set to 'Use slots? - Yes' for the Gym Users category only to ensure that the specific short time periods are activated, for the relevant bookable spaces.
Step 3 - Bookable spaces
Each bookable space now has the option to 'Allow Client Bookings'. These will default to 'Yes', so please review each space and amend as required. If this is set to 'Yes', the bookable space will show on the clients calendar page for them to be able to view/make bookings against (if they are activated). Also, only the Standard rate on all of the Bookable Spaces will be shown to self service clients, so make sure it is populated correctly.
Step 4 - Client activation
Now you've defined your booking criteria, you can now give access to the clients you wish to be able to make their own bookings. This is done via the Edit Client function.
When activating a client to make their own bookings, you'll be able to select from the list of calendar categories once you've ticked the 'Limit the available spaces to book by category?' option. If you wish them to have access to book all activated spaces, do not select this option.
You can easily see from the Client tab who has been given access to this function.
Once this is done, we will set up a test client to ensure that the functionality is working correctly and the appropriate controls are in place.
The client account is designed to be intuitive, however we do have a step by step guide available in the online help which could be downloaded & sent out to your clients if required. Client self-booking guide
