Schedules / Hourly Reservations

Schedules / Hourly Reservations

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Overview

A new feature called "Schedules" allows any number of different intra-day schedules to be set up, and reservations made for sites in periods such as hours, 15-minutes, half-days or whatever. You specify what periods are included in each day, and they don't even have to be the same length. For instance, you might set up a "Tours" schedule that only has the periods "10AM", "2PM", and "4PM". Periods are just "time slots" that take the place of days, for instance on the Rack view.

Once schedules are set up, then you can set up "Sites" to correspond to events or items to be reserved for each schedule. For instance, Sites can be tours, boats, training classes, or anything needed. Reservations are made in much the same way as for daily-type sites, except that you also specify a first and last "Period" along with the dates. You can also set Blocked date/period, and of course the charged-through and paid-through dates also have periods.

There are two things that determine what schedule is to be used for a reservation:

The Reservation Type. Each schedule is restricted to one or more reservation types that you define in the Pick Lists.

The Site. Each site must be assigned to a particular schedule.

A a quick example, you might set up an "Hourly" reservation type, an hourly Schedule with periods from 8AM to 6PM that is only used for Hourly reservation types, and a number of Sites like canoes and kayaks that are assigned to the hourly Schedule. Whenever you select that reservation type, the New Reservation dialog will change to allow date and period entry for the reservation. When a site type is selected on the Rack View that only includes sites of a particular schedule, then the Rack will change to show a cell for each period instead of each day. (Likewise, the Rack can ONLY show sites assigned to a single period at a time -- so your canoes and kayaks would not be shown on the Rack at the same time as your daily sites.)

There are three rules you need to keep in mind when setting up schedules:

Never select the same Reservation Type for more than one Schedule. (But one schedule can be used for more than one reservation type.)

Make sure the "Base type" for any Reservation Types for schedules are set to "Hourly".

Make sure all sites of the same Site Type are in the same Schedule. (But one schedule can be used for more than one site type.)

Setting up Schedules

There are a few steps required to enable schedules and set up the necessary tables.

First you need to enable some data fields (these are disabled by default to save database space, since most users don't need them).

Enable the Period fields for Reservations:

1.	Go to Maintenance / Data Field Definitions / Reservation Fields.

2.	Change each of the 5 period fields from Disabled to Enabled ("Resv_First_Period" through "Resv_Charged_Thru_Period").

Enable the Schedule field for Sites:

1.	Go to Maintenance / Data Field Definitions / Site Fields.

2.	Change the "Site_Schedule" field from Disabled to Enabled.

Set up one or more Reservation Types to use for scheduled reservations:

1.	Go to Maintenance / Pick Lists / Reservation Types.

2.	Check "Allow editing of fields".

3.	Click "New Record".

4.	Enter the information for this reservation type. Example:

   Abbr:       Tour
   Normal Text:    Tours
   Base Type:   Hourly   (required)
   Enabled:   Yes
5. Repeat for any other types needed, Close when finished.

Add one or more Site Types for your scheduled sites.
(While this isn't technically essential, it allows you to view schedule sites of this type on the Rack, by selecting that site type.)

1.	Go to Maintenance / Pick Lists / Site Types.

2.	Check "Allow editing of fields".

3.	Click "New Record".

4.	Enter appropriate site type info (the Normal Text field is the most important, as that will appear in the drop-down pick-lists).

Repeat for any other site types. Again, you can have more than one site type for a particular kind of schedule (e.g. you could have different tour types all using the same tour schedule, or you might have canoes, kayaks, mules, etc. all on an hourly schedule), but be sure to set up at least one site type for each schedule.

Add one or more Schedule definitions:

1.	Go to Maintenance / Park Setup / Schedules.

2.	Click "New schedule definition".

3.	Enter a name for it, which will primarily be used in a pick list so it should be fairly short. Example: "Wild tour"

4.	Enter a Periods name, which will be used in various places where "days" or "nights" might be used such as rates definitions. For example, "Tours".

5.	If most of the reservations for this kind of schedule last a certain length of time (periods) you can set a default # periods and block-to periods. Otherwise leave those fields blank.

6.	Click "Resv Types" and select the type or types of reservations (as defined above) which can be used for this schedule.

7.	For auto-rates, you can also specify extra periods to check. For instance if you have a 6-hour rate that's cheaper than 5 individual hours, you can set this to 2 or 3 so they're not charged too much for shorter reservations.

8.	Add one or more Periods:

a. Click Add New Period.

b. Enter a Period name, which is used on the Rack, reports, etc. Keep it short!. Examples: 10AM, 8-10am, Eve., etc.

c. Enter a Start time for this period. The primary use for this is so the New Reservation dialog can guess what the "current" period is.

d. Optionally enter the # of minutes in the period. This is primarily for convenience, so it will automatically set the start time for the next period you enter.

e. Optionally enter the "End text", which will be shown on receipts in place of a check-out time. Example: "Due back by 10PM", "through 2:59pm", etc.

f. Repeat for any other periods in the day. Remember there's no need to cover all 24 hours, just the periods for which you need to make reservations.

Note: Schedule periods are assumed to never "overlap", just like days. In other words if you define an 8AM period and a 9AM period but enter 120 for their # minutes, the 120 minutes is essentially ignored. To make a 2-hour reservation on a schedule with periods each hour, and assuming that this is for a resource that must be returned before it can be used again (like a canoe), you would make the reservation for 2 periods (e.g. the 8AM and 9AM periods). On the other hand if you have a tour every 3 hours, where there is no problem with conflicts because it's not using a unique resource, then you would make the periods 3 hours apart.

Add the Sites for scheduled reservations:

1.	Go to Maintenance / Park Setup / Sites

2.	Click Add New

3.	Enter the site details, and in particular be sure to select the appropriate Schedule form the drop-down list. Also be sure to select an appropriate Site Type.

At this point you should be able to see your schedules on the Rack -- just select the Site Type used for the scheduled sites, and those sites will be shown and the scheduled periods will show in addition to the dates in the column headers. There will be a column for each period defined in the schedule.

Rates for Scheduled Periods

Setting up rates for scheduled reservations is basically the same as for daily, weekly, or monthly rates.

There is one particular key to making a rate for scheduled periods -- in the drop-down for "Rate is per ___ (# of)", which normally shows Days, Weeks, Months and Years, you will see your schedule selections appear. The "Periods name" for each of your schedules will be added to the list. Once you select one of these new period names (e.g. "Tours"), then the rate is considered a scheduled-period rate instead of a daily rate.

In addition, you'll see a new field appear below the Discounts button/list, for Periods. This can be used to select which period or periods this rate applies to. Thus you can specify a different rate for each tour time, or different rates for morning vs. evening rentals, etc.

Likewise, instead of applying a rate to a range of days (Applies if >= ___ Days), it will apply to a range of periods (e.g. Applies if >= ___ Tours).

Auto-rates for periods work just like they do for daily rates. The only real difference is the setting for the number of extra Periods to check (which you specify for each schedule separately as mentioned above), instead of using the global setting for the number of extra Days to check.

Reminder -- All calculations for the number of periods is based on the list of periods you've defined, NOT on the number of hours or minutes. This includes rates calculations. For instance if you've defined hourly rates only for 8AM to 6PM, and someone rents for 6PM to 8AM the next day, then that's only 2 periods (the last period of the first day and the first period of the second day). This is where you might need to define a special rate for that 6PM period, to cover overnight rentals (or better yet, add a special "Overnight" period to the schedule to cover all of the time in between days).

Making Reservations for Scheduled Periods

You can make reservations for schedules just like you would for daily sites -- using double-click from the Rack (if a scheduled site type is selected so the periods are shown), or from the New Reservation icon or menu function.

The key is to select the appropriate Reservation Type from the drop-down on the New Reservation dialog -- once a type is selected that's assigned to a schedule, the dialog will convert to a period-based dialog, adding "Period" fields next to the dates and changing the mini-rack to show periods (and only sites that are set up for that schedule).

It's likely that many of your scheduled-period reservations will be for the same customer that also has a daily site rented. In this case, you probably want to link them together and combine their billing. To do this, you want to locate their main reservation first, and go to Reservation Details. Then use the "Add Sub" button to add a Sub-member reservation. Now select the sites, periods, etc. as usual (more than one if needed). When you're done and go to Transactions, you can use Auto-Calculate or Select Rates to add the charges for the new reservations.