Pricing, fees & deposits
Every field on Settings > Rentals that decides what a customer pays, and the one that does not live there at all. For opening hours, blackout dates and the four booking rules, see Availability & reservations. For peak-season pricing, see Seasonal prices & minimum stay.
The section names follow whatever you rent, so this page may read Bike Rental, Boat Hire or Holiday Rentals on your own dashboard.
The security deposit is set per item, not here
This is the question we get most often, and the answer is that the deposit is not on the settings page. It is a field on each item, because a van and a city car do not warrant the same hold.
Open Cars (or Bikes, Boats - whatever you rent), edit one, and fill in Deposit.
What happens then is the part worth understanding:
- The deposit is held, not charged. It goes onto the customer's card as an authorisation through your own Stripe account, separately from the rental payment.
- When the item comes back you either capture it - in full or in part, for damage or missing fuel - or release it. Releasing is one click, not a refund you have to explain.
- Capturing less than you authorised releases the rest automatically.
- There is no platform fee on a deposit. A refundable hold is not a sale.
A card hold does not last forever. Card authorisations expire after roughly a week, and the customer is invited to authorise the deposit when they book. If you accept bookings months ahead, the hold placed at booking time will have lapsed by the time they arrive. If deposits matter to your business, keep Max advance (d) short enough that the hold is still alive on the day - and check the deposit status on the reservation before handing the keys over.
Pricing & discounts
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Weekly discount (%) | Percentage off the daily rate once a hire reaches 7 days. |
| Monthly discount (%) | Percentage off the daily rate once a hire reaches 28 days. |
| Tax rate (%) | Added on top of the quote at checkout. Leave at 0 if your daily rates already include tax. |
| Tax label | What the tax line is called on the quote - VAT, Sales tax, GST. |
Discounts are applied automatically, so you never have to remember to give one. Where both could apply, the customer gets the better of the two, not both.
There is also a switch for whether the protection line is taxed. On means protection is taxed with the rest of the rental; off means it is charged but left out of the tax base, which is correct in the many places where insurance is not a taxable product.
Driver requirements
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Minimum age | A hard gate. Below this age the booking is refused, not surcharged. |
| Young driver under | Anyone below this age pays the surcharge. Must be above the minimum age to do anything. |
| Young driver fee / day | Charged for every day of the hire. |
| Collect driver's licence | Asks for the licence number at booking. |
The two ages work together, and getting them the wrong way round is the common mistake. Minimum age 21 with young-driver age 25 means: under 21 is refused, 21 to 24 pays the surcharge, 25 and over pays nothing extra. If you set the young-driver age at or below the minimum, nobody ever pays it.
The wording follows your trade - a bike shop reads rider, a boat charter skipper - and verticals that have no licence requirement do not show these fields at all.
Mileage
Turn Unlimited mileage off and three fields appear: how much distance is included per day, the overage fee per unit beyond it, and whether you work in miles or km.
The allowance is multiplied by the days booked, so 100 per day on a 3-day hire shows the customer a 300 allowance on the quote, before they pay. The overage is collected on return, because nobody knows the distance until the item is back.
Fuel policy
Four options, shown on the booking page and repeated in the confirmation email:
- Full to full - returned as collected. The usual choice.
- Prepaid - the customer buys a tank up front.
- Same as received - matched to the level at pick-up.
- Included / N/A - fuel is not charged separately.
Fees & extras
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| One-way fee | Added automatically whenever the return location differs from the pick-up one. |
| Extra driver / day | Charged per additional driver, per day. |
| Max extra drivers | The most a customer may add. 0 allows none. |
Locations can carry a fee of their own as well, so an airport desk can cost more than the town office without repricing every vehicle.
Insurance / protection
Define your own protection products - a basic cover and a zero-excess one, say. Each carries its own daily price, its own excess and its own description, and you can preselect the one you would rather sell. They are priced into the quote per day alongside the hire.
Cancellation policy
Free cancellation up to (h before pick-up) is the one that does something automatically: cancellations made earlier than that window refund a paid card booking without you touching it. Set it to 0 and nothing is refunded automatically.
Policy text is the wording customers actually read, shown before they book and in the confirmation email. The hours do the refunding; the text explains it in your words.
Terms & conditions URL
A link to your hire agreement. Customers accept it at checkout and it is included in the confirmation email, so it is on record which version they agreed to.
Related reading
- A guide to rental security deposits - how much to hold, and when to release it.
- Unlimited or limited mileage? - the policy decision behind the field.