Linking bookings and events

Introduction

While resource bookings may be for external customers for their events, you'll also use the Bookings module to book rooms and resources for your church's events, to ensure your internal and external resource bookings don't conflict.

The Bookings module Planner is designed to help you visualise all your pending and confirmed bookings but for those Users responsible for managing your internal events (who may not necessarily have Bookings module permissions) it's especially helpful that they can easily identify which events have resource bookings and which don't. The process of adding linked resource bookings for your internal church events is easy.

The Calendar module's Events list shows a visual B icon for events that have a linked booking already created. Events without a B do not yet have a linked resource booking.

Similarly, the Bookings module's Bookings list shows an eye icon for each unlinked booking set to Show on the calendar...

...and a Calendar icon for bookings linked to events in the Calendar module.

It's not essential to set all unlinked bookings to Show on the calendar but some organisations find it helpful for Calendar module users to be able to visualise external bookings in the Calendar alongside the church's internal events. Bookings set to Show on the calendar are distinguished with a B next to the entry in the Calendar.

Adding a linked booking for an event

Not precluding the checking of resource availability first, we recommend you begin the workflow by first adding the event in the Calendar module and then adding the booking for the event - adding a booking for an event is a much quicker process because much of the booking information is already provided when the event is first set up.

Begin by adding the event to the Calendar module - see the related support article for adding events. From the event's "View" page, from the Add button select Add booking (this option is only available if there is not already a linked booking).

The Add booking pop-up opens. The booking is shown as Linked to an event. If the event is part of a multi-date sequence, the pop-up will list all the event sequence dates so that you can easily create linked bookings for one, some or all events in the same sequence. Simply untick any event dates that you don't want to create linked bookings for; typically, though, you would likely want to create linked bookings for all events in the sequence.

Review and update the other booking details, optionally adding a Customer if appropriate and selecting the booking Type, responding to any associated booking type questions that are set Required - it is not possible to save a booking until all Required questions are completed. Click Save.

The booking "View" page opens, with an 'Add resource' pop-up open over the top of it. You can now assign the relevant Resources required for this booking. If the booking is part of a multi-date sequence, the Add to sequence option is surfaced and will allow you to add each Resource to every booking in the sequence. Click Save to add your selected Resource(s).

Once you've added your Resource(s) or closed the pop-up, the booking "View" page is now in full view. If the booking is part of a multi-date sequence, the Sequence tab is shown. Notice also the clickable link to the linked event, which provides a quick navigation link back to the linked event in the Calendar module. You can return to this page at any time to manage your booking and add any additional Resources.

Identifying mismatches between booking Resources and events

To minimise the chance of mismatches occurring between events and their linked bookings, if a User edits the date of an event, the linked booking date is also updated. However, the User will need to update the associated resources that have been added to the booking, to ensure that the correct dates and times are in place.

In the example below, the Wednesday Morning Kids Club event has been changed from the 24th to the 23rd of March and this is correctly reflected in the associated booking date but the resources still need to be edited, so that the resource usage date/time agrees with the new booking date/time. A warning message will be displayed if any resources are completely outside of the booking time range:

The Bookings module's Mismatched Events report also provides a summary of all mismatched bookings and events within a range of dates, enabling you to easily identify mistakes in your data.