Configuring base rates for your product

Learn what a base rate is and how to configure base rates with product rates, guest rates, or a combination of both.

Learn more about the Pricing tab here: Step 4: Configuring pricing for your product

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

Which plans include this feature?

Legacy: Soho, Pro, Plus, Enterprise, Flex
New: Growth (Subscription), Growth (Online Booking Fee), Managed
→ Learn more about our new plans or how to change your plan.

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

Inventory > Products > Products > Add Product/Add New Product/Edit Product > Pricing

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, new or both?

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

What is a base rate?

This is the base price of the product. Base rates are the foundation of pricing structures. Simple configurations use the base rate as the price of the product. More complex pricing structures, such as group pricing, may combine the base rate with additional amounts, for example, based on the quantity of guest types booked.

You can charge per product booked, per asset/asset seat booked, per Guest booked, or a combination of all three! This depends on your business needs and how you have configured your Inventory tab settings.

What is the difference between a Product Rate and a Guest Rate?

A Product Rate applies to the resources needed to book that Product while a Guest Rate is based on the number of Guests added.

An example is a boat resource that can hold 4 people. A Booker wants to book 5 people which then requires two boats to fulfil the requirement.

In this scenario, you may charge per number of boats, Guests, or both.

For example, kayak rentals can be priced with a base rate of $30.00 per hour versus an accommodation rental, which charges a base rate of $250.00 per double room with a surcharge of $50.00 for an additional person.

Note if a product is configured with a base rate of $0.00 without any additional rates applied, then this product is free! The product is listed with a value of $0.00 at Checkout.

Changing a product's price does not automatically change the price in existing bookings for that product.

Should you edit an existing booking product, the system queries and applies that product's current price. However, Staff can manually adjust the price as needed by editing the product's subtotal.

Learn more about editing bookings here:

Editing/changing bookings from booking invoices

Configuring base rates with product rates

Base Rate by Product

For products configured with an unlimited inventory or inventory is a fixed amount, you can configure the base rate to represent the price for the product offering, e.g. kayak rental. This rate is calculated per quantity.

For example, you can offer kayak rentals calculated by the hour and per quantity of kayaks rented.

Create Booking page showing Base Rate

The above is a preview of what this configuration example would look like to the Customer within the Book Now tab and the Create Booking page.

Product Rate by Asset

For products configured with assets, the base rate also represents the price of the product offering with the inventory tracked as assets or bundles of assets, for example, kayaks or kayaks with paddles and life jackets.

Create Booking page showing Base Rate

The above is a preview of what this configuration example would look like to the Customer within the Book Now tab and Create Booking page.

Any assets associated with the product are still included in the booking but not visible to Customers at this time.

You can view assets booked within the Daily Manifest (Booking > Daily Manifest > Booking > + Assign or Assigned Assets).

Configuring pricing using guest rates

Guest Rates Only

Is your product configured under the Availability tab to use guest types? If so, you can specify the guest rate per guest type but not charge a product rate. To do this...

You need to reduce the Product(s) Rate to $0.00.
Next, hide the product rate by clicking on the option to Disable base rate pricing and hide on invoice, if you don't want the zero amount base rate to show to Guests.
Specify the price for each guest rate (e.g. Senior: $10.00, Adult: $20.00, Youth: $15.00...).

Guest Type Create Booking

The above is a preview of what this configuration example would look like to the Customer within the Book Now tab and Create Booking page.

Disabling base rate pricing and hiding on invoice

Disable Base Rate

Are you using pricing by guest types and don't want to charge a product base rate? You can disable the base rate setting and hide the label and amount on booking invoices. Click the Disable base rate pricing and hide on invoice icon to the right of the +Add Group Rate option. This toggles on and off the corresponding product rate setting and the +Group Pricing option.

Configuring base rates with product rates and guest rates

Product Rates with Guest Rates

Is your product configured under the Availability tab to use guest types? If so, you can specify the Guest Rate per guest type and your product rates.

This may be a single guest rate (Guest) or multiple guest rates, for example, broken down by age (e.g. Senior, Adult, Youth, Child).

To do this, you need to specify the base rate for the product rate (e.g.$35.00) and each guest rate (e.g. Senior: $10.00, Adult: $20.00, Youth: $15.00...)