How do I add pricing based on the duration of the booking?

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Plan Availability: ✓ Soho | ✓ Pro | ✓ Plus | ✓ Enterprise  | ✓ Flex |
Locate:

• Duration Rates: Inventory > Products > Pricing
• Manage Duration Rates: Inventory > Custom Rates

Prerequisites: 

• Admin permissions to manage inventory or restricted permissions to View Products and Assets and Manage Products and Assets.
• Your account must have access to products (Inventory > Products), which is a key feature of our newest version of Checkfront. 
• Duration rates are available for those using All Day, Nightly, and Flex Time only, not Timeslots.

 

New to Checkfront - Products ✨ Products (Inventory > Products) is the successor feature to Items (Inventory > Items) and is available in our newest version of Checkfront. Not yet on our newest version and interested in upgrading? Please contact our Technical Support team for more information. Discover more product-related help articles here: Products (New).

 

In this article, we provide an overview of how to add pricing rates to your products that are based on the duration of the booking.

Guests can be charged a single rate or multiple rates for the duration of the booking, pricing can be adjusted based on an amount or a percentage, and priced as increases or decreases.

 

Examples of Duration Rates Single Duration Rates are where the longer the booking the lower (or higher) the rate. For example, a hotel booking for three nights is only $90.00 a night instead of $100.00 for one to two nights. Guests are charged a single reduced rate for the duration for a booking total of $270.00. Multiple Duration Rates are where the longer the duration of a booking, the lower (or higher) the rates become. For example, a hotel booking would be $100.00 for the first and second nights, but only $90.00, for the third night. Guests are charged different rates per night for a booking total of $290.00.

 

This article focuses on adding duration rates to products while configuring products. For a detailed walk-through of product creation please see the following series. Introduction to products and the product builder We also have an entire series on creating and managing custom rates including duration rates, that you can check out here! Introduction to custom rates

 

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To configure your duration-based pricing, follow these steps.

1. Add a duration rate
2. Configure the duration rate
3. Preview the Customer booking experience

 

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Start by adding a Duration Rate to your product. From the Pricing tab of the Product Builder (Inventory > Product > edit/+new product), select Duration from the Add Rate drop-down. 

 

The duration option is hidden when the Product uses Timeslots. Duration rates are available for those using All Day, Nightly, and Flex Time only.

 

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This opens the Duration Rate modal, from which you can configure the specifics of your rate. 

1. Choose a name for the duration rate e.g. Winter Long Term Rental Rates. There is a 13 character limit on rate names.
2. Specify the Date Range within which this rate applies e.g. Nov 1, 2022 --> Feb 28, 2022. You can also choose to Remove the End Date, so that the rate is always in effect.
3. Specify the various rates that are applicable:
   1. Click +Add Duration to create a second tier.
   2. Toggle the controls (+/-) next to the number fields until you have the range of numbers that you need for each tier e.g. 3 - 6 days, 7 - Max days. Max represents the top limit configured for your product e.g. A discounted rate for a booking that is 7 days or longer, the max might be 14 days.
   3. Specify the rate adjustment for each tier. Rates can be adjusted by a monetary amount ($) or by a percentage (%) per day.
   4. Repeat the process for every new tier you need. You can delete a range by clicking on the remove icon (x) at the end of the row. The system adjusts the tier range accordingly.
4. Decide whether you want to charge a single rate or multiple rates over the duration of the booking. By default, we charge the single applicable rate for the entire duration of the booking e.g. $90.00 for three nights. With the Apply Multi Duration setting enabled, each rate that applies is charged e.g. $100.00 for the first two nights, then $90.00 for the third night.
5. Next, you can see an example of what impact this rate would have on base pricing via the Pricing Preview. Use the number of days toggle to see how pricing changes the longer the Guest books!
6. Finally, decide which other products or categories of products, you need to apply this to. This can also be managed from the Custom Rates page (Inventory > Custom Rates).
7. Don't forget to Save your changes!
   
   

You can now see the Duration Rates applied to your base rate within the Pricing Table under the Pricing tab.

 

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Finally, you can Preview your pricing configuration from the Customer's perspective of the booking pages. 

The above example is of a single duration rate applied to bookings of three to six nights. Bookers are charged a reduced rate of $90.00 per night for a total of $270.00, which is a 10% reduction on the base rate.

 

The above example is configured to be a Multi Duration rate. Bookers are charged $100.00 for the first two nights, and then a reduced rate of $90.00 for the third night, which is a 10% reduction compared to the rate for the first two nights. The total of the booking is $290.00.