Online booking gives your guests a page in your branding where they reserve a spot. Every online booking arrives as Reserved, and you confirm it. With a Stripe account connected you can also ask for a deposit when they book: a paid deposit can confirm the booking by itself, and an unpaid one releases the seat, see Deposits for online bookings. Without one, nothing is paid online.
Choose what guests can book
- Open Settings and choose Online booking in the Guests & bookings group.
- You see two cards, Fun dives and Courses. Pick a mode for each:
| Mode | What the guest can do |
|---|---|
| Off | Nothing; it is not offered on the booking page |
| Scheduled only | Book one of your published boat trips or planned courses |
| Scheduled + requests | Book a published trip or course, or request their own date; for fun dives also ask for a number of dives |
| Requests only | No list; the guest just requests a date or a number of dives, or a course and start date |
The choice saves immediately. As soon as one of the two is not Off, your booking page is live.
Group and multi-dive bookings
The same page has a Group and multi-dive bookings card with two numbers, each saved as you change it:
- People per booking, from 1 to 20, 8 to start with: how many people one guest may book for at once. With 1 person, everyone books on their own.
- Dives per person, from 1 to 30, 10 to start with: how many dives one person may book at once. It counts the dives of the trips a guest picks plus the dives they ask for: a two-dive trip counts as 2, a requested date as 1, and a request for a number of dives as that number. With 1 dive, guests book one departure at a time.
Set both to 1 and the page books one person on one trip, as before. Your team is not bound by these numbers; see Bookings made together.
Publish the trips guests may book
For the scheduled modes a trip has to be published. When you create or edit a boat trip, switch on Online booking. Courses work the same way: switch on Online booking when you create or edit a course. Published trips appear on your page while spots are free and until the boat leaves, and the Boat trips list can be filtered by Bookable and Not bookable.
Spots left are worked out from the boat's capacity minus everyone in the trip's dive groups and Guests panel, and minus the reserved or confirmed fun dive bookings for that date and departure that are not in a dive group yet. A trip with no spots left disappears from the page. A booking made together takes one spot per person on each trip they go on, and is booked only when every trip has room for everyone ticked on it.
Offer rental gear
On the same tab, under Rental equipment, switch on Offer equipment rentals online to let guests request gear while booking.
Show prices
The same card holds Show prices on the booking page. It works on its own, whether or not you offer equipment. With it on, guests see dive, course and gear prices before they book, and an estimated total when the dive or course has a price; with it off, the booking page shows no prices at all. Turning it on or off is recorded in the Activity log and change history. You set the prices in the Price list.
Share the booking page
Open Settings, then Registration. The Online booking card shows the link and its QR code with Copy, Download QR (png) and Download PDF for a printable poster. See Share the self-registration link for the link type and how to rotate a leaked link. Rotating the token invalidates the booking link and the registration link at the same time.
What the guest sees
The page shows your published trips with date, boat, departure time, dive sites and the spots left, or your planned courses with their start dates. If you show prices, each trip and course carries its price too, and a Price estimate with an Estimated total shows the guest what the booking comes to; the estimate charges nothing, a deposit, when you ask for one, is shown before they book, and so is your cancellation policy whenever you have one. See What guests see on the booking page. The guest then fills in the details you ask for under Settings, then Customer form, agrees that your dive center stores and uses their details, and presses Reserve my spot. They get an email that you have received their booking (when you ask for a deposit, the email asking to pay it comes about ten minutes later instead, only if it is still unpaid), and a new customer record is created for them. A guest may also book for several people, pick several trips, or ask for a number of dives between two dates: each person gets their own record and their own bookings, tied together by a GR number, see Bookings made together and Schedule requested dives.
When a booking comes in
You get a notification titled New online booking. The booking sits in the Bookings list as Reserved; open it to see the Booked online pill. There is no separate accept or decline:
- Seat the guest on the trip they picked, enrol them in the course from Pending bookings, or press Confirm. The guest gets a confirmation email with a calendar entry attached.
- Press Cancel if you cannot take them. The guest gets a cancellation email.
- A booking whose deposit was paid but could not confirm by itself shows "Deposit paid, needs confirmation", with the notification of the same name: confirm or seat it as usual.
Requests for a guest's own date arrive without a trip or course. Plan a trip on the requested date and departure and seat them, or plan the course and enrol them from Pending bookings. A request for a number of dives appears on the dashboard under Dives to schedule instead; see Schedule requested dives.
Note: Every online booking creates a new customer record for each person in it, even for a returning guest. Merge duplicates from the Customers page when you spot them.
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