(DA-3) Activity Booking and Payment Options

Now we know how to create and describe an activity, let's take a look at managing the options for making bookings and taking payments.

Activity Dates Tab

There are four specific dates which are defined for an Activity on the Dates tab. To reach this tab:

All four of these dates are automatically added for your when an Activity is created:

These dates have the following functions:

  • Start date - the day the activity starts. This is for your reference, and this date can be accessed and placed in messages you send to your clients.

  • End date - the day the activity ends. This is for your reference, and this date cannot be accessed and placed in messages you send to your clients.

  • Booking available to clients until - this is the last day that clients can use the booking form to book onto the activity. By default this is set to be the start date, but the value can be changed if someone wishes to make a booking after the activity has started.

  • Activity shown as current until - this is the last day the activity can be found in a normal search in the app without selecting the "Show deleted and past activities" option. By default this is set to 1 month after the end date.

Activity Booking Tab

To reach the Booking tab:

Here is the Bookings tab, showing the default options that are set when you first create an Activity:

These options perform the following functions:

  • Your objectives for the number of attendees These three numbers allow you to be clear about your minimum and maximum number of attendees. At the moment, the maximum number of attendees value is the only one that is used elsewhere in the app. It sets the maximum number of attendees who are able to book onto the activity before clients are told the activity is full and are offered the option to be placed on a waiting list.

  • Number of attendees per booking This controls the number of attendees that the booking form will allow per booking made. In most cases the default numbers should be fine. If you had for example a couples workshop, then you would want to set both numbers to be two.

  • Clients pay to attend / This activity is free to attend Setting this switch on allows you to create a free to attend activity.

  • The prices specified are for each Attendee / Booking This defaults to Attendee... so if the entry price is 100 and two people book, the total price to pay will be 200. By setting the option to Booking, you can define prices which are per booking, which could be useful if you have activities which are booked by couples, or other combinations of more than one person.

  • Please send me an email... This defaults to on, and controls if you are to be sent an email as soon as you receive a booking for the activity.

  • Additional Contributions disabled / enabled This option allows attendees to make an additional contribution to their initial payment once the activity is complete, in the form of a donation. Click here to read more details about how to work with this option.

  • Activity Discount Codes You can define discount codes to give to your clients. Click here for more details about how to work with these.

Activity Payment Tab - Default Layout

Here is how this tab looks when you have just created a new activity:

These fields perform the following functions:

  • Payment Methods Accepted - set the payment methods that you wish to accept for this activity. These methods will be presented to your attendees when they complete the booking process. Card Payment and Bank Transfer are set by default. Note that for Paypal there is no automatic connection to your Paypal account - the email sent out will display the Paypal account details you have set in the Settings - Business Settings area of the app for them to pay into after their booking process is complete.

  • Payment Currency - this will default to your normal "Accounting Currency" as defined in Settings - Business Settings. You can select another currency here for your attendees to pay in. Please contact us if the currency you wish to use is not listed and we will add it for you.

  • Payment When Client Books - this determines whether the client pays the full amount when they book, or if they pay a deposit followed by one or more subsequent payments. The default value is "Full Amount". Other values are "Deposit - Fixed Amount" and "Deposit - Percentage"

  • Discuss other pricing options - when set on, this will display the following message as your clients book: If you would like to discuss other pricing and payment options, please email us at {your email address}

If you set the Payment When Client Books field to one of the deposit values, then a number of other fields appear which allow you to control how the deposit and final payments amounts and dates are managed...

Activity Payment Tab - Deposit Fields

When one of the deposit options is chosen, you have the following extra fields appear:

  • Deposit amount is - this allows you to specify either the fixed or percentage amount that your client is required to pay as a deposit. The default values are 20% or 1 (£, $, €... whatever is your selected payment currency)

  • Final payment due - the number of days before the start date (as defined in the dates tab) when the final payment will be due, assuming that there is just one final payment. The default value is 14 days.

  • Deposit can be paid up to - the number of days before the start date after which the option to make a deposit payment is no longer offered. The default value is 28 days.

  • Payment by monthly instalments - This will enable to the activity based payment by instalments option. This is discussed in detail in lesson AF-1. The default value is off.

Note that the "Final payment due" and "Deposit can be paid up to" options are ignored if a client chooses a pay by instalments option when making their booking. These two values are only used in the situation of a client choosing a 'deposit plus one final payment' option.

Activity Organisation tab

The options in this tab are discussed in detail in lesson AF-6.

Summary

We have looked at the majority of the options available for managing the booking and payment options for an activity.

You will see in the next couple of lessons that there are some similar payment options available for an individual price, and there is a discussion of ways to combine all these options in lesson AF-4

So now we have looked at all the options to manage across the complete activity definition, let's now dive into the individual elements of an Activity, starting with Prices.

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