Booking Form & Field Editor

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By default, Checkfront collects a standard set of information at the time of booking. This includes customer name, contact details, and address. This information can be further customized, using the Booking Form Editor, to best suit the requirements of your business.

 

Warning! Some pre-defined fields are required for certain system functionality and add-ons, including payment processing. If these fields are altered in any way, or removed from service, you may run into functionality problems with your system. See the system fields section below for more information.

 

Data collected at the time of booking is accessible in your reports and can be used throughout the system, including customized email notifications. The Booking Form editor can be accessed at Manage > Layout > Booking Form when logged in to your Checkfront dashboard as an administrator.  

 

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You can add new fields to your booking form by clicking on the + Add new field button located at the end of your fields list, or edit existing fields by clicking the Edit link to the right of each field.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can re-order the fields on the booking form by dragging and dropping them into place. To do so, hover over the field with your mouse cursor. A dashed box will appear around the field, showing you it is active. Click your left mouse button and move the field into its new position. Release the mouse to drop in place.

 

 

 

    

 

   

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When creating a new field from scratch, or editing a field that already exists in your system, there are various options you can configure that define the appearance and functionality of said field.

The field editor modal is divided into three sections: General, Options & Advanced

The currently active tab will be highlighted with a blue line.

 

 

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Type:

Common HTML input elements including text, select, radio buttons, and checkboxes.

Some of the fields require the input of additional options which can be chosen by the customer during checkout. An example would be a drop-down menu of choices. Selecting the Drop-down Select field will allow you to ask your customer a question and provide them with a list of possible answers to choose from. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depending on the type of field you select, the Options tab will update to enable further customization. In our example of a drop-down field, you will now be presented with a list of three options in the field's Options tab. These options can be edited to reflect your requirements. See below for more details on the options tab. 

 

Label:

This is the label which will be displayed next to the field on your booking form and on your invoices. Examples of commonly used labels are Name, Email or Phone.

 

ID:

A unique ID - can be used in email notifications and CSS (alpha-numeric). Prefixing the ID with 'customer_' causes the field to be shown in the top section of invoices with the rest of the customer information.

 

Report Label:

Field name to be displayed in internal reports.

 

Tip:

This is an optional, short description that is displayed underneath the field. Use this to provide your customers with instructions on how you want them to fill out the field.

 

 

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Customer/Staff Only Fields:

You can choose whether or not to show certain fields to your customers on the booking form and/or invoice. You can also decide whether these fields are visible to staff members also. You may want your staff to collect information when taking bookings over the phone, but not want those fields visible on the public booking form. Set that up here. 

 

 

 

 

You can also control whether or not a field is required. 

 

Checkfront Tip: When a staff member edits a booking, they will see fields that are normally hidden to staff. This gives staff the power to edit a customer only booking field.

 

 

Customer Profile

Checking the customer profile option configures the booking form to add the response received via the field during checkout to the profile of the customer making the booking. This information will then autofill in the future when the customer makes a new booking.

 

 

 

This option is visible to all field types.

 

Choices

If you've selected a field type that requires choices, such as the drop-down menu, multiple checkboxes, or the radio filter, you can manage the field choices here.

 

 

 

The choice labels are fully editable and a field can be removed by clicking on the red minus icon to the right of the field.

Additionally, a new field can be added by clicking on the green plus sign icon to the right of the field.

 

 

 

 

The new field will be added directly below the field of which you clicked the plus sign icon, as seen in the animation above.

 

Checkfront Tip: At this time, field choices cannot be rearranged. To do that, you will need to manually change the labels.

 

Default Selection

The default selection switch will display when you have selected the multiple choice fields, drop-down select field, or the radio filter.

 

 

 

 

After activating the switch (1), a radio button will appear to the left of each field (2). Select the field you wish to be presented as the default choice to the customer. Of course, the customer can change this to something else if they wish.

 

Other Field Type Options

Value

If you wish to display a default value for the field, add that here. This option will only display if you have selected the single line text field or the paragraph text field.

 

Contact Info

If you wish to display the contents of the field in the contact section of the customer's invoice, select this option.

 

 

 

 

Display 'Other' Option

Sometimes your customer may wish to provide an answer that isn't included in your choices. In this case, you have the option to add another field.

 

 

 

 

Once you activate the switch, a text field pre-filled with Other will appear below the other choices. The customer can choose to enter their answer here if the other choices are not relevant to them.

This option is available to the multiple choice fields.

 

 

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Filtering:

The filtering switch has two distinct functions when activated. It can be used as a trigger to show/hide other fields on the booking form, or, it can be used to determine whether the field is shown or hidden based on being triggered by another field. If that doesn't make perfect sense yet, read on to find out what we mean.

Let's begin by looking at a specific example. Imagine we've created a multiple choice radio button with the options yes and no. The question asks the customer if they have a pet.

 

 

 

 

The response chosen by the customer determines whether an additional question is triggered by the system. If the customer selects no, a response will not be triggered and no further action is required.

If, however, the customer selects yes, we might want an additional question to be triggered by the form. That question might ask for the pets name.

The question 'Do you have a pet?' is the trigger question and must be added to the filter list. This is a list of the questions stored within the system that are used to trigger additional questions under certain circumstances. This list is not visible to you as a system user. 

So, after turning on the filtering switch under the advanced tab, check the box labeled Add to 'Filter List'. You can see this in the screenshot above.

After clicking Update, this question will now be added to the filter list mentioned above.

The next step is to create the question that will be asked if the customer answers yes, they do have a pet.

Since, in our example, we have decided to ask what the pets name is, we would simply create a single line text field.

In the advanced tab, turn on the filtering switch. This time, however, do not check the Add to 'Filter List' option.

 

 

 

 

Instead, choose what will happen when the trigger question is answered. Look for the field labeled Show when and choose your trigger question from the drop-down menu. We named ours 'pet' in the previous step. Please note that we also chose to start the question hidden so that the customer doesn't see it unless they choose the trigger option.

We will show the question we are working on when the answer selected is yes. This is highlighted in the screenshot above.

Once you've clicked Update, the filter is complete.

So how does it work? Well, basically, if the customer were to select 'no' when asked if they had a pet, nothing would change and they would continue to fill out the rest of the form. If they choose 'yes', however, the second question will magically appear below it. See below for an example: 

 

 

 

 

 

It's worth playing around a bit with the different options, as you could make the second question visible at first, and then disappear if a particular option is chosen by the customer. It really depends on what you're looking to do!

 

Item Specific:

On occasion, you may find that some of the items in your inventory require special customer details/instructions that other items don't. This is why we have created an option for item specific fields.

Let's assume for a moment you're renting out kayaks. You may wish to ask your customers, during the booking process, what their level of experience is and do they require any on-site instruction. You could add these fields to your standard booking form, but they will look a bit out of place if a guest is simply booking accommodation for the night.

Item-specific fields enable you to create specialized booking form questions that can then be tied to a particular item or items. To turn a booking field into an item specific field, simply choose the item(s) from the list provided in field edit mode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That field will now only appear during the checkout process when the item(s) is added to a booking. If no items are selected, the field will appear for all bookings as normal.

 

 

 

 

 

An item specific field can be recognized in your Booking Manager by the label seen above.

 

 

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Below, is a list of the standard system field IDs that come with your Checkfront account. Before removing or editing any of these fields, please make sure you have read the important information in the box below.  

 

Important! Checkfront has a set of pre-defined booking form fields (system fields). These are used to populate information in your database that serve a specific role in the system. These are identified by their field ID. If you choose to remove these fields from your booking form, please note that certain functionality could be lost. For example, if no customer_email is present, no emails will be sent to the customer. Some fields are auto-detected and pre-filled by the system. Specifically, the customer_country and customer_region are pre-filled using GeoIP detection. Likewise, the label of the customer_postal_zip is automatically changed based on the selected country. It's recommended that you do not replace these options. You may, however, remove them if not required (be sure your payment processor does not require them either).   Please note also that the system fields currently support English language strings only.

 

customer_prefix

Prefix to customer's name. Comes with Mr, Mrs & Miss by default, but more can be added if required

 

customer_name

Full name (first & last) of the customer

 

customer_address

Street address of the customer

 

customer_city

Customer city of residence

 

customer_email

Customer e-mail address. Used in notifications

 

customer_country

Customer country code. Dropdown with detected country auto-selected You may enter a default value for the country in the field provided. If you were to enter 'MX' for Mexico, this would automatically show to all customers, regardless of where they are located. They can, however, change this if required.

 

customer_region

Customer state or province. Dropdown with detected region auto-selected In order for the regions to appear in the drop-down, you must also be using the customer_country field. If you do not, the regions field will not populate properly. You may also choose a default value for the region by entering it in the field provided. This will show automatically to the customer, who can then change it if required.

 

customer_postal_zip

Postal or zip code

 

customer_phone

Phone number of customer

 

note

Note that can be created at the time of booking

 

customer_email_optin

The 'stay up-to-date on our newsletter' field is only displayed when either the Mailchimp or Constant Contact add-ons are activated.

 

booking_language

The language of the booking. This is a special field that only appears on the booking form if you have activated additional languages in your system. It is visible to staff members only. This enables your staff to change the language of the notification that will be sent out to the customer when a booking is complete. Only the currently active languages will be displayed in the drop-down menu.

 

 

 

 

Guest Form Fields

The following fields are reserved by the system and therefore cannot be used as field IDs on the Guest Form.

 

• guest_name
• guest_first_name
• guest_last_name
• guest_email
• guest_country
• guest_region
• guest_phone
• guest_city
• guest_address
• guest_postal_zip

 

 

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If you no longer wish to use a field on your booking form, you can choose to archive it by clicking on the Archive link to the right of the field. 

 

 

 

 

With field archiving, you can safely remove a field from future bookings while preserving the state of old bookings. 

 

Restoring Archived Fields

Below your booking form fields, you will see a section labeled Archived Fields. Click on the arrow as highlighted in the screenshot below to reveal any fields you have previously archived. 

 

 

 

 

You can edit your archived field before restoring it to a live state by clicking the Edit link.

To restore the field to your booking form, click the Restore link as highlighted in yellow above. Doing so will immediately return the field to your live form and be instantly visible to customers.

Click the arrow again to close this section and hide your archived fields from view.

 

 

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It's possible to reset your booking form fields to their original state by visiting the following link in your Checkfront account: https://YOUR-ACCOUNT.checkfront.com/manage/system/purge (be sure to update the link with your own Checkfront account!) When you arrive at this page, look for the option labeled Custom Booking Fields. Check this option, enter your password in the field provided and click the red Purge Records button.  

 

 

 

 

There is also an option labeled Custom Item Specific Fields. Selecting this will restore your item specific fields back to their original state.