Schedules

Schedules are used for intra-day reservations, for instance hourly rentals, tours, etc. There are several steps required to set up Campground Master to handle reservation "schedules", which are detailed below.

1.	Never select the same Reservation Type for more than one Schedule. (But the same Schedule can use more than one Reservation Type.)

2.	Make sure the "Base type" for any Reservation Types used for schedules is set to "Hourly".

3.	Make sure all Sites of the same Site Type are in the same Schedule. (But the same Schedule can be used for more than one Site Type.)

First you need to enable some data fields (these are disabled by default to save database space, since most users don't need them).

1.	Go to Maintenance / Data Field Definitions / Reservation Fields.

2.	Change each of the 5 period fields from Disabled to Enabled ("Resv_First_Period" through "Resv_Charged_Thru_Period").

1.	Go to Maintenance / Data Field Definitions / Site Fields.

2.	Change the "Site_Schedule" field from Disabled to Enabled.

4.	Enter appropriate site type info (e.g. Kayak, Canoe, Horseback Tour, etc.). The Selection Name field is the most important, as that will appear in the drop-down pick-lists.

5.	Repeat for any other site types, Close when finished.

Note: You can use more than one site type for a particular kind of schedule (e.g. you could have different tour types all using the same tour schedule, or you might have canoes, kayaks, etc. all on an hourly schedule), but since you can't use the same site type for multiple schedules, you need to set up at least one site type for each schedule definition needed (see below). So for instance if you have canoe trips hourly but raft trips only twice per day, then they would need separate Schedules and thus separate Site Types.

1.	Go to Maintenance / Pick Lists / Reservation Types.

4.	Enter the information for this reservation type. Example:

Note: As with Site Types above, Schedules must each have their own Reservation Type (or types). Therefore make sure you have at least one Reservation Type defined for each Schedule. For instance if your Jeep tours are on different schedules than your Raft tours, then you need separate Reservation Types for each one, not just "Tours" for both.

3.	Enter a name for it, which will primarily be used in a pick list so it should be fairly short. Example: "Wild tour"

4.	Enter a Periods name, which will be used in various places where "days" or "nights" might be used such as rates definitions. For example, "Tours".

5.	If most of the reservations for this kind of schedule last a certain length of time (periods) you can set a default # periods and block-to periods. Otherwise leave those fields blank.

6.	Click "Resv Types" and select the type or types of reservations (as defined above) which can be used for this schedule. Also remember that you can't use the same Resv Type for more than one Schedule definition.

7.	For auto-rates, you can also specify extra periods to check. For instance if you have a 6-hour rate that's cheaper than 5 individual hours, you can set this to 2 or 3 so they're not charged too much for shorter reservations.

b. Enter a Period name, which is used on the Rack, reports, etc. Keep it short!. Examples: 10AM, 8-10am, Eve., etc.

c. Enter a Start time for this period. The primary use for this is so the New Reservation dialog can guess what the "current" period is.

d. Optionally enter the # of minutes in the period. This is primarily for convenience, so it will automatically set the start time for the next period you enter.

e. Optionally enter the "End text", which will be shown on receipts in place of a check-out time. Example: "Due back by 10PM", "through 2:59pm", etc.

f. Repeat for any other periods in the day. Remember there's no need to cover all 24 hours, just the periods for which you need to make reservations.

Note: Schedule periods are assumed to never "overlap", just like days. In other words if you define an 8AM period and a 9AM period but enter 120 for their # minutes, the 120 minutes is essentially ignored. To make a 2-hour reservation on a schedule with periods each hour, and assuming that this is for a resource that must be returned before it can be used again (like a canoe), you would make the reservation for 2 periods (e.g. the 8AM and 9AM periods). On the other hand if you have a tour every 3 hours, where there is no problem with conflicts because it's not using a unique resource, then you would make the periods 3 hours apart.

3.	Enter the site details, and in particular be sure to select the appropriate Schedule form the drop-down list. Also be sure to select an appropriate Site Type. Remember that all Sites of a particular Site Type must use the same Schedule also.

At this point you should be able to see your schedules on the Rack -- just select the Site Type used for the scheduled sites, and those sites will be shown and the scheduled periods will show in addition to the dates in the column headers. There will be a column for each period defined in the schedule.

Setting up rates for scheduled reservations is basically the same as for daily, weekly, or monthly rates.

There is one particular key to making a rate for scheduled periods -- in the drop-down for "Rate is per ___ (# of)", which normally shows Days, Weeks, Months and Years, you will see your schedule selections appear. The "Periods name" for each of your schedules will be added to the list. Once you select one of these new period names (e.g. "Tours"), then the rate is considered a scheduled-period rate instead of a daily rate.

In addition, you'll see a new field appear below the Discounts button/list, for Periods. This can be used to select which period or periods this rate applies to. Thus you can specify a different rate for each tour time, or different rates for morning vs. evening rentals, etc.

Likewise, instead of applying a rate to a range of days (Applies if >= ___ Days), it will apply to a range of periods (e.g. Applies if >= ___ Tours).

Auto-rates for periods work just like they do for daily rates. The only real difference is the setting for the number of extra Periods to check (which you specify for each schedule separately as mentioned above), instead of using the global setting for the number of extra Days to check.

Reminder -- All calculations for the number of periods is based on the list of periods you've defined, NOT on the number of hours or minutes. This includes rates calculations. For instance if you've defined hourly rates only for 8AM to 6PM, and someone rents for 6PM to 8AM the next day, then that's only 2 periods (the last period of the first day and the first period of the second day). This is where you might need to define a special rate for that 6PM period, to cover overnight rentals (or better yet, add a special "Overnight" period to the schedule to cover all of the time in between days).