Bookings and rentals

Bookings turn your marketplace into a rental or appointment site. Sellers make a listing bookable by the day, the night, the hour or in fixed time slots. Buyers see an availability calendar on the listing, pick their dates or a time and send a request, and the seller accepts or declines it. Once every place is taken, the dates are crossed out, so the same item is never booked twice.

It suits equipment and tool hire, vehicles, holiday homes, rooms, venues, classes, lessons and services booked by appointment.

Bookings and rentals, with instant booking, time between bookings, time zones and price rules, are part of the Professional and Marketplace plans. Usually payment isn’t taken through your site: buyer and seller arrange it between them once the booking is accepted. On the Marketplace plan you can also take payment online when buyers book: see Paid bookings.

Bookings also work during the free trial, and sites on an older plan that’s no longer sold keep them. After the trial, on the Starter plan, Add-ons › Bookings shows a Professional plan label and Included in the Professional plan and up, with a See plans link, and Enable bookings is off and greyed out. Listings then show no booking calendar, and no test drive or viewing button either. Bookings already made stay in your members’ accounts, where they can still be read, answered or cancelled, and your settings are kept for when you upgrade.

Switch bookings on

If you chose rentals when you created your site, bookings are already on for every category. Otherwise:

1. In the admin panel, go to Add-ons and open Bookings.
2. Switch on Enable bookings.
3. Under Categories with bookable listings, tick the categories for rentals, for example equipment, vehicles or holiday homes, or tick All categories. Ticking a category includes its subcategories.
4. Choose the other settings below if you need them.
5. Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

Only listings in these categories can be made bookable. If the switch says Set by Yclas support for your site, ask us through Support to change it.

Setting	What it does
Enable bookings	Off by default. Turns bookings on for the categories you tick.
Categories with bookable listings	The categories whose listings sellers can make bookable.
Advanced settings for sellers	Off by default. Gives sellers instant booking, time between bookings, a time zone and price rules for each listing (see Advanced settings).
Calendars start on	Monday (the default) or Sunday: the first day of the week in the calendars on listings.
Paid bookings	Only on the Marketplace plan: buyers pay online when they book. See Paid bookings.

The calendar shows on listings in the Nova and default themes. With other themes, members can still manage bookings from their account, but buyers can’t request a booking from the listing page.

How sellers make a listing bookable

1. In their account menu, the seller opens Bookings, then the My listings tab.
2. Next to the listing, they click Set up bookings.
3. They tick Buyers can book this listing and fill in the settings below.
4. They click Save.

A seller looking at their own bookable listing also sees Manage bookings and Booking settings links on it.

Setting	What it does
Price per	Per day, Per night (check-in and check-out), Per hour or Per session (fixed time slots). The listing’s price is the price of one day, night, hour or session. A listing without a price shows that the total is agreed with the buyer.
Minimum duration and Maximum duration	For days, nights and hours. A maximum of 0 means no maximum. Hourly bookings stay within one day.
Session length and A session starts every	For sessions: how long each session lasts (15 minutes to 12 hours), and whether one starts every 15, 30 or 60 minutes. See Time slots.
Places at the same time	How many bookings can be accepted for the same time, from 1 to 999. See Several places.
Set opening hours	The days and hours the listing can be booked. Without them, it can be booked every day at any time. See Opening hours.
Blocked dates	Dates when the item isn’t available, one date or range per line, with a date picker to add them.
Calendar link	A private link the seller can add to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook to see the accepted bookings. Anyone with the link can see them, so Reset link makes the old one stop working.

With advanced settings on, sellers also see Instant booking, Time between bookings, Time zone and Price rules. With paid bookings on, they may also see Deposit paid online, Security deposit and Cancellation policy, depending on what you allow.

Opening hours

When the seller ticks Set opening hours, a row appears for each day of the week. They tick the days the listing is open and choose an opening and closing time for each (in steps of 15 minutes). Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 is filled in to start with.

• Hourly bookings and sessions must fit inside the opening hours of their day.
• Day bookings need every day of the booking to be open.
• Night bookings need every check-in evening to be open; the check-out day may be closed.

Blocked dates stay closed on top of the opening hours, for holidays and one-off closures. The calendar greys out closed days and hours, and the listing shows the opening days or hours under the price.

Time slots (sessions)

With Per session (fixed time slots), buyers book one session at a time at the listing’s price. This suits classes, lessons, appointments and tours.

Sessions start at each opening time and then at every interval, as long as the whole session fits before closing. For example, with 1-hour sessions starting every 30 minutes and opening hours from 09:00 to 12:00, buyers can choose 09:00, 09:30, 10:00, 10:30 or 11:00. Without opening hours, sessions run all day.

On the listing, the box is called Book a session: the buyer picks a date, then a time from the list of free sessions that day.

Several places at the same time

Places at the same time lets a seller accept several bookings for the same dates or time, for example 12 places in a class or 3 identical kayaks. Each booking takes one place, and the time is shown as full once every place is taken. The listing shows 12 places at the same time. With 1 place (the default), one booking takes the dates.

Advanced settings for sellers

Once you switch on Advanced settings for sellers in Add-ons › Bookings, sellers get more settings on each listing:

Setting	What it does
Instant booking	Requests are accepted straight away when the dates are free, without waiting for the seller. The buyer gets the acceptance email at once. With paid bookings, the booking is accepted, and the card charged, as soon as the card is held.
Time between bookings	For hourly bookings and sessions: minutes kept free before and after each booking, for cleaning or travel (0 to 1440).
Time zone	Where the listing is. Its dates and times are shown and booked in that time zone instead of your site’s. Useful when sellers are in different time zones.
Price rules	For bookings by the day or night: a weekend price, seasonal prices and discounts for a week or a month (see Price rules).

When you switch the advanced settings off again, bookings go back to normal: requests wait for the seller, every listing uses your site’s time zone, and every day or night costs the listing’s price.

Price rules

A holiday home rarely costs the same every night. Under Price rules (bookings by the day or night), a seller can set:

Setting	What it does
Weekend price	The price of a weekend night (Friday and Saturday nights) or a weekend day (Saturday and Sunday).
Season from / to / Price per day or night	A price for a date range, such as the summer or the holidays. It replaces the listing’s price and the weekend price on those dates. Up to 12 seasons: save to get more empty rows.
Weekly discount	A percentage off the whole booking for 7 days or nights or more.
Monthly discount	A percentage off for 28 days or nights or more. It replaces the weekly discount.

Discounts go up to 90%. Fields left empty change nothing: every day or night then costs the listing’s price.

Each day or night is priced on its own (season first, then the weekend price, then the listing’s price), and the discount comes off the total. Buyers see the total for their dates on the listing before they send the request, and the booking keeps that price, even if the seller changes the rules later. Price rules don’t apply to hourly bookings or sessions.

How buyers book

On the listing, the box says Book this item, Book your stay (for nights) or Book a session. The buyer picks the dates (First day and Last day, or Check-in and Check-out for nights), the hours, or a date and a session time. Booked, blocked and closed dates are crossed out or greyed out. The listing shows the number of days, nights or hours and the total. The buyer adds a message to the seller and clicks Request to book.

Visitors who aren’t signed in see the calendar and a Log in to book link.

Limits that keep things fair:

• Day and night bookings start tomorrow at the earliest, hourly bookings and sessions later today at the earliest, and bookings can be made up to 18 months ahead.
• A buyer can have up to 3 open requests per listing, and send up to 10 requests a day across your site.

Search by date

Once at least one listing is bookable, search on your site gets an Available on date field: in the filter panel in Nova, and in the advanced search of the default theme and some older themes (not Mercury). When a buyer picks a date, the results only show bookable listings with free time that day: not blocked, open that weekday and not fully booked. Listings that aren’t bookable are left out while the date is set.

Managing bookings

Everything happens in Bookings in the account menu, which has these tabs:

Tab	Who uses it	What they can do
Requests received	Sellers	Accept or Decline each request. A request that would take a time that is already full is marked and can only be declined.
My bookings	Buyers	See their requests and bookings, Withdraw request, or cancel an accepted booking before it starts.
My listings	Sellers	Make listings bookable and change their settings.
All bookings	You, the site owner	The latest 200 bookings on your site with buyer, seller, dates and payment. You can cancel any booking that hasn’t started.

A seller can also cancel an accepted booking before it starts. Pending requests can overlap each other; only accepted bookings take places. A request still unanswered when its start date passes expires.

With messaging on, sellers also see each request waiting for an answer in the Needs your action box at the top of their inbox.

Booking emails

Both sides get an email at every step. You can reword them in Email templates:

Template key	Sent to	When
booking-request	The seller	A buyer asks to book their listing.
booking-request-sent	The buyer	Confirms the request was sent.
booking-accepted	The buyer	The seller accepts the booking, or it is accepted instantly.
booking-declined	The buyer	The seller declines the request.
booking-cancelled	The other side	The buyer, the seller or you cancel a booking.
booking-update	The member who acted	Confirms they accepted, declined or cancelled a booking.

Paid bookings send a few more emails: see Paid bookings. Booking emails are sent even to members who unsubscribed from emails, because they’re about a booking they made.

Good to know

• Times are shown in your site’s time zone (Settings › General › Regional), or in the listing’s own time zone when the seller set one. Bookings are saved as a moment in time: if the time zone changes later, bookings already made keep their moment, so their clock times show differently. Set the time zone before taking bookings.
• Buyers can’t request times outside the opening hours or on blocked dates.
• A booking request is one booking: buyers can’t book several sessions in one request.
• A listing that takes bookings has no Buy Now button, even with Buy Now on, because its price is per day, night, hour or session. Buyers book it instead.
• A seller in vacation mode can’t be booked until they’re back.
• Vehicle test drives and property viewings are booking requests too, and arrive under Requests received. They need the same plans as bookings. With the vehicles pack or the property pack on, Bookings shows in the account menu even if bookings are off in Add-ons.
• Equipment hire uses bookings: see Equipment hire.
• On a private site, calendar apps can’t read the calendar link, because your site asks them to sign in.

Related guides

• Paid bookings — take payment online when buyers book, with deposits and a cancellation policy.
• Categories — set up the rental categories bookings use.
• Messaging between members — let buyer and seller talk before and after a booking.
• Email templates — reword the booking emails.
• Calendar sync and video links — two-way Google or Outlook sync, and Meet, Teams or Zoom links.