Determining how your product is booked

Determining how Customers book your product in Checkfront enables you to define whether they book by date, time, or other criteria, ensuring your offerings align with your business operations and creating a smoother booking experience.

In this article, you can learn how to determine how you book your product in the Product Builder's Availability tab, with options to book all day, nightly, via timeslots, or with flextime.

Learn more about the Availability tab here: Step 3: Determining the availability of your product.

New to the Product Builder? Read the first article in this series for an introduction to the Product feature.

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

• Inventory > Products > Products > Add Product/Add New Product/Edit Product > Availability
   

What more do I need to use this feature?

• Admin permissions to manage inventory or restricted permissions to View products and assets and Manage products and assets.
   

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - classic items, classic products, or both?

• Your account must have access to the classic products (Inventory > Products), a key feature of the Checkfront classic products version. This feature is not available for use with classic items (Inventory > Items) in our classic items version. → Learn more about products. 

Determines how the product is booked and later priced. Choose between All Day, Nightly, Timeslots, or Flextime.

Inventory and availability settings Remember that bookings depend on a combination of inventory numbers and availability settings. For example, you may have several timeslots available on a given day. Still, if you have fixed inventory or inventory based on a limited number of assets, the day becomes disabled in the booking calendar once Customers book all your inventory.

You can configure your product for Customers to book All Day. Operators use this setting for full-day or multi-day experiences. Most commonly used for tours and rentals. 

You can configure your product for Customers to book Nightly. Operators use this setting for experiences booked on a per-night basis with next-day checkouts. Most commonly used for hotels and campsites.
 

Unavailable products when your business is closed If you turn on the Allow multi-day bookings to span closed days/hours setting (Manage > Setup > Calendar) and you close your business on a specific weekday, e.g., Sunday, the system marks a multi-night booking date range as unavailable if the booking's checkout is directly after the closed day, e.g., Monday. This behavior occurs because the system doesn't consider checkout as a booked night. To accommodate this scenario, you can set your product's availability to All Day so that the system fully books the checkout date.

You can configure your product so that Customers can book by Timeslots. You can use timeslots for bookings with fixed start and end times. Operators most commonly use timeslots for tours and activities. 

Timeslot display settings determine how your Customers see timeslots on the Booking page. The preview window to the right of the settings shows how those timeslot options appear to those making the booking. 

You can configure your product to offer flexible booking options. This setting is used for experiences with flexible start and end times, allowing for varying durations. Most commonly used for rentals.

Determines the time increments at which your product is available. Options always start at the top of the hour. Increments range in length from 10 mins, 15 mins,  20 mins, to 1 hr. The booking duration is flexible, allowing Customers to select one or more sequential increments.

Next Steps

In the next article in this series, we examine how to manage availability events for your product, including product closures.

  |    Understanding product availability events >