Availability & reservations
Whether a rental item can be reserved for a given date is decided by your opening days, your blackout dates, and four booking rules. If a date is refused, it is one of these.
Pick-up and return hours
Settings > Rentals > Operating schedule - the section is named after whatever you rent, so it may read Bike Rental, Boat Hire or Holiday Rentals on your site.
- Uncheck a day and you are closed that day - no pick-ups, no returns.
- Leave the times blank on a day you are open and it counts as open all day.
- Use my business hours copies the hours you already set in Settings > Business Info, so you do not maintain them twice.
Closed and blackout dates
Add individual dates that override the weekly pattern - public holidays, a closure, a week away. Add them before people try to book them; a blackout does not cancel reservations that already exist.
The four booking rules
| Rule | What it does |
|---|---|
| Min lead (h) | Minimum notice before pick-up. Also called lead time. Set 24 and nobody books a car for this afternoon. |
| Max advance (d) | How far ahead reservations may be made. |
| Cut-off | A time of day after which same-day pick-ups stop being offered - useful when your desk closes before your gates do. |
| Buffer (h) | Turnaround time between one hire ending and the next beginning. Cleaning, fuelling, checking. |
Buffer is the one people forget. Without it the system will hand a vehicle to the next customer the minute the last one is due back.
Time-aware availability
Time-aware availability lets an item returned in the morning go out again the same afternoon. Leave it off and a rental occupies whole days, so a return on Tuesday morning blocks Tuesday completely.
Turn it on if you do short hires or several turnarounds a day. Leave it off if you rent by the day and would rather not cut it fine.
Seasonal prices and minimum stay
Peak periods can carry their own daily price, and can require a longer booking than usual - a three-night minimum over summer, for instance. Both are set per season and are enforced on the booking path, so a customer is refused at the point of choosing rather than after paying. See Seasonal prices & minimum stay.
Cancellations
Free cancellation up to (h before pick-up) sets the window. Inside it, a customer who cancels a card booking is refunded automatically. Outside it they are told to contact you.
Add Policy text as well - it is shown before booking and in the confirmation email, and it is what you will point at when someone disputes a charge.
Why a date is refused
If a date is unavailable, greyed out, or the calendar will not accept it, work down this list.
| Symptom | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| Whole day unavailable | The day is unchecked in the operating schedule, or it is a blackout date. |
| Cannot book for today | Min lead (h), or the Cut-off time has passed. |
| Cannot book far ahead | Max advance (d). |
| Item free but not offered | Buffer (h) has not elapsed since the previous return. |
| Return day not re-bookable | Time-aware availability is off, so the return day is consumed. |
| One item unavailable, others fine | That item is on an existing reservation, or is not active. |
| Short booking refused | A minimum stay applies - either the item's own, or the one set on the season the booking starts in. |
Good to know
- Availability is per item, not per category. Ten cars in a category means ten separate calendars.
- Rules apply to what customers can book, not to you. You can still record a reservation yourself that the public rules would refuse.