Linking bookings and events

Introduction

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

The Bookings module Planner is designed to help you visualise all your the 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 then really 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 a calendar icon for each unlinked booking that has Show in calendar set, and the Event column tells you the event name the booking is linked to in the Calendar module.

It's not essential to set all unlinked bookings to Show in 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 in 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 page opens. If the event is part of a multi-date sequence, the Confirm Booking Dates pop-up will list all the event sequence dates so that you can easily create linked bookings for one, some or even all events in the same sequence. Click the X next to any event dates that you don't want to create linked bookings for; though typically you would likely want to create linked bookings for all events in the sequence. Click Confirm.

The Add booking page is now prep-populated with all of the event details and the event dates. The booking is also set to Linked to an event and the event name is stated.

Next, review or update the booking details.

Remember to select the booking Type and answer any of the Type-specific questions asked on the form, including any Required questions.

Next, add the Resources associated with the booking.

The Start and End times are pre-filled based on the event's start and end times. Optionally set any additional Set Up and Set Down time for the resources.

You will be alerted to any resource clashes with other bookings. You can either Ignore clashes and save the booking to override the clash warning (perhaps to deal with the clash later), or you might select an alternative resource.

When you are happy the all the booking details are correct - you can return and further edit bookings at any time - click Save to add the linked event booking(s). The newly-added booking "View" page is displayed. If the booking is part of a multi-date sequence, the In this sequence section is shown on the right hand side of the page. Notice also the Events linked to this booking, which provide a quick navigation link back to linked event back in the Calendar module.

Identifying mismatches between bookings and events

In a busy bookings office where events and bookings can move around, it's possible that users may make changes to the date of an event without correctly mirroring the date change for the linked booking (or vice versa). If this happens, linked events and bookings might become mismatched.

A data mismatch is surfaced on the event page in the Calendar module...

...and on the booking page in the Bookings module...

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.