Booking prices

Overview of the booking prices functionality

The task of raising booking charges is often repetitive, with the same charges being raised time and again for your various bookings. The Bookings module's Prices functionality enables organisations to maintain a comprehensive library of all their various Booking prices and Resource prices.

Booking prices can be optionally linked to a booking Type, and Resource prices linked to a Resource, meaning that the suggested charges made reflect each booking's type and booked resources, making the process of adding charges quick and easy.

Prices can be a fixed amount or be priced per hour, per day or per unit, with suggested charge amounts automatically calculated using the booking's times, the booked resource usage times, or the booked resource quantity. For time-based resource prices, you can even set whether prices are calculated to include any additional set-up or set-down time outside of the booking's times. Importantly, suggested charges can always be further edited, perhaps where you wish to apply a discount or make an ad hoc adjustment for a particular charge.

In this article, we explore the functionality in the Prices section of the Bookings module - adding and managing prices. See the related support article on Booking charges for further information about adding and managing charges, including the Suggested charges functionality (shown in the image above).

Adding and managing prices

Working within the Prices section of the Bookings module click Add price.

On the Add price pop-up, begin by choosing whether the price is a Booking price or a Resource price. Let's look at each in turn:

A Booking price can be optionally linked to a particular booking Type (leave blank if the price applies to bookings of all Types). Suggested charges for this price will be calculated based on the booking's times. Later you'll be able to choose whether the price is a fixed price, like a "Marriage Service" price for a "Wedding" booking type, or a variable price per hour or day of booking time, like a "Verger per hour" price where the charge amount for the provision of a verger is calculated based on the booking's times.

A Resource price is linked to a selected Resource (required). Suggested charges for this price will be calculated based on resource usage. Later you'll be able to choose whether the price is a fixed price, like a "Church Hall half-day rate" price, or a variable price per hour or day of booked resource usage, like a "Hall Usage Per Hour" price where the charge amount is calculated based on the booked resource times. For resources that have a maximum quantity greater than 1 - like chairs and tables - or an unlimited quantity - like lunch grab bags - a price can be set to multiply the amount by the booked resource quantity, like "Charge per table". Remember, booked resource times may be different to the booking times, for example, usage of the church for a Friday wedding rehearsal ahead of the actual wedding booking times on a Saturday. Later you'll also be able to choose whether charges should be calculated to include any set-up or set-down time outside of the booking's times.

Give the price a suitable Name. Try to choose a consistent price-naming convention that will help your Users when viewing or searching the list of Prices and when later choosing Suggested charges based on the prices you've added. Enter the price Amount, choosing whether this is a Fixed amount or an amount Per Hour or Per Day. For resources with an available quantity >1, like tables and chairs, a Per unit option is shown, which will multiply to amount by the booked quantity. Optionally add a Description, perhaps elaborating on what the price includes. Customers will see the name, amount and description when viewing a list of charges on their customer-facing booking page. The price amount must be at least 0.50. Negative prices are not supported.

For Resource price amounts Per Hour or Per Day, note the option to Exclude set up and set down. If ticked, suggested charges will be calculated to exclude any usage time that falls outside of the booking's times. The available options mean complete flexibility for organisations who only wish to charge for usage within the actual booking times (ignoring any additional set-up or set-down time added) and those organisations who prefer to charge based on full usage including set-up and set-down time added. Tick as appropriate.

For example, imagine the following booking for a two-hour "Dance Class" from 7 pm to 9 pm where an additional 30 minutes of booked resource time has been added before and after the booking, perhaps to set up and set down the church. The suggested charge per hour will be calculated as 3 hours of total booked resource usage, but if the Exclude set up and set down option is selected, the suggested charge will be priced using the actual 2 hours of booking usage (additional set up and set down time is ignored).

Returning to the Add price pop-up and our earlier example, the price start and end Dates are both optional, but if specified, determine when the price is applicable when adding suggested price-based charges. For example, you may offer 'occasional offices' like Weddings that have a different price prescribed by your church denomination each calendar year. By adding price dates you'll see more intuitive Suggested charges calculated using the price applicable for the booking date. Another use-case example, you might set a price start date but leave the end date empty - the price continues to apply until there's a price increase, at which point you can add an end date to the old price and add a new price reflecting the date from which the price increase applies, enabling you to maintain a price history. This also means that if you add charges for a past booking, the suggested charges will be based on the prices applicable at that time.

Finally, optionally specify a default Due Date to be applied to suggested charges when they are later added to a booking, entering the number of days before or after a booking date that charges become due for payment. The suggested charge due date can be changed or removed when adding suggested charges to a booking.

Save the changes to add the price. Added prices are listed alphabetically in the Prices section of the module. Note the option to switch between viewing Active prices (the default) and Past prices (those with end dates in the past). Multi-site customers can use the Site selector to view resource prices for a selected site, or view prices for "All sites".

Finally, note the price actions available to Duplicate, Edit (and view) or Delete a price, and to View [price] changes. You can return to the Prices section at any time in the future to further manage your prices, perhaps to add a new price list that will come into effect shortly.

Note: Deleting a price is destructive to the price only and does not impact any previously added charges that were calculated using the deleted price. Once a price-based charge is added to a booking it is detached from the price and any subsequent price changes will not affect previously added charges. A Deleted Prices report is available in the module's Reports section. Rather than deleting prices that are no longer applicable, you may consider editing the price and setting a price end date in the past.