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Booking Rules and Cancellation Policies

Booking Rules and Cancellation Policies

General Information

A booking rule determines how a product can be booked and canceled. Remember to link the booking rule to the products it applies to once it’s created.

  • Rules linked to Group Activities: Only affect your customers’ ability to book spots through your online booking.

  • Rules linked to Services: Affect both online bookings and when you manually book customers in BRP.

Create a Booking Rule

Go to Configuration > Booking > Booking Rules, then click the "+" (Plus) button.

  1. Fill in the desired details for the booking rule, such as:

    1. Name

    2. Earliest time to book/cancel

    3. Maximum number of simultaneous bookings

    4. Whether a cancellation rule should be linked, etc.

  2. If certain customers should be exempt from the booking rule, use a replacement rule:

    1. In the "Replacement Rules" field, create an exception so that if the customer has a specific right, it overrides the standard booking rule with a different one.

    2. Priority only needs to be specified if you use more than one replacement rule.

  3. Click OK to save your booking rule.

Explanations

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May be booked no earlier than

Enter how many days, hours or minutes before the class or service it can be booked.

Note that services will not be shown as available before this time, group activities can be shown but not booked (decided by this setting: numberOfDaysAhead)

Base on booking

Decide whether “may be booked no earlier than” should be based on the booking start time or end time.

Use fixed time for release

If a service or a spot in a class can be booked no earlier than one week in advance, the earliest booking time is set to the same time of day as either the start or end time, but seven days earlier. However, it is usually allowed to book starting from the time the facility opens, for example, 07:00. If you want to adjust the time calculated in the field above, you can instead enter a fixed time in this field.

May be booked no closer than

Enter how many days, hours or minutes before the class or service it should no longer be possible to book.

Latest booking from waiting list

Specify how long before the start time people on the waiting list can be moved to regular spots. In other words, this field determines how long the waiting list remains active. If no value is entered, the value from “may be booked no closer than” will be used.

May be cancelled no closer than

Specify how many days, hours or minutes before the start time it is allowed to cancel the service or the spot in the class. If the time is set to 1 day and the booking starts at 15:00, it can be canceled up until 15:00 the day before, but not at 15:01 the day before.

Allow late cancellation of classes, with no-show

Select this checkbox if you want users to be able to cancel classes late and make room for other customers, while still getting a no show and warning/suspension/fee (depending on settings).

May leave waiting list no closer than

Specify how many days, hours or minutes before a class it should no longer be possible to leave the waiting list. If the 'Use fixed time for cancellation' option is enabled, it takes precedence and overrides both the 'May be cancelled no closer than' and 'May leave waiting list no closer than' settings.

Use fixed time for cancellation

  • Booking rules can now have fixed times for cancellation on booking rules. For example, all classes during the day may not be cancelled later than 21:00 the night before, and classes during the evening may not be cancelled later than 15:00 that afternoon. The fixed times is required to be used in combination with "May be cancelled no closer than" minimum 1 min.

  • If one or more fixed times have been added, the timepoint of the class - the days, hours and minutes before which the class participant must cancel, will be adjusted to the first (back in time) fixed time.

  • Example: If the class is at 14:00 on Friday, it must be cancelled 2 hours before, but we have also entered two fixed times "15:00, 21:00" for cancellation (yes, we need to be able to add more than one time), then 14:00-2 hours is 12:00, and 12:00 is adjusted to the earliest time before that which is 21:00 on Thursday.

Maximum number of bookings

Specify how many service bookings and class bookings a customer is allowed to have active/current at the same time, starting from the time of booking and onward. You can enter several options here, for example, a total of 5, with a maximum of 2 per day.

  • Max bookings per week applies to each calendar week.

    • If, on a Monday at 5:00 a.m., a customer books classes at 7:00, 9:00, and 11:00, they cannot book any more classes for the rest of that calendar week.

  • Max bookings per day means a customer cannot book additional classes on that specific day once they’ve reached the daily limit.

    • Using the same example above (7:00, 9:00, and 11:00), they can’t book more that Monday.

  • Max total bookings indicates the customer can’t exceed that total number of bookings at any one time.

    • In the same scenario, the customer can’t book a new class until the start (or end) time of the earliest booking has passed—depending on whether the booking rule is based on the start or end of the booking.

      • If it’s based on start time, once the 7:00 class starts, the customer can make a new booking.

      • If it’s based on end time, then the customer has to wait until the 7:00 class has ended (say at 7:45) before they can book another class.

Count waiting list separately

If this is checked, you can specify separate limits for the waiting list. Otherwise, waiting list spots and regular spots are combined in the same overall count.

Max number of waiting list slots

Specify how many waiting list class bookings a customer is allowed to have active/current at the same time, starting from the time of booking and onward. You can enter several options here, for example, a total of 5, with a maximum of 2 per day.

Allow simultaneous internet bookings

This option lets a person book two group activities at the same time online.
One scenario where this is necessary is if group activity products are used for childcare, which must be bookable at the same time as a regular group activity. Only the childcare product needs this setting enabled. The group training’s booking rule should not have this enabled.

Note! This does not allow booking multiple spots for the same childcare session. To achieve that, you would need service bookings with capacity.

Cancellation policies

If a fee is to be charged for cancellations, specify here which cancellation rule should apply.

Replacement rules

The booking rule can be replaced by another booking rule if a customer has a certain right. This can be used if a specific customer group should have different booking rules than others. If there are several replacement rules, it is recommended to set priorities for the different rules in order to achieve predictable behavior if a customer happens to have access to multiple replacement rules. If any priority is left empty, that rule will always be applied, so make sure to set a priority for all rules if priorities are to be used.

Exceptions for Daylight Saving Time

(TP46105 / 2022.3304)

When the clock shifts between daylight saving time and standard time, the earliest booking time is adjusted so that customers can still book, for example, three days in advance, rather than three days plus or minus one hour. This ensures a consistent window despite time changes.

Create a Cancellation Policy

Note! Activate the system setting “Enter reason for cancellation” (debookReason) to use cancellation fees.

This feature allows you to charge a fee when a customer cancels. To apply this fee, you must link it to a booking rule.

  1. If you haven’t already, create a product for cancellation fees

    • Create an item with the correct revenue account and VAT rate for cancellation fee income.

    • Give the product a name that will clearly appear on the invoice, for example, “Cancellation Fee.”

    • In Configuration > Facilities > Facilities, open the desired facility. Scroll down, and under "Product cancellation" select the product you just created.

  2. Go to Configuration > Booking > Cancellation Policies and click "+" (Plus).

  3. Define how late you want to charge the cancellation fee and what percentage of the original price should be charged (see the example below).

  4. Click "OK" to save the cancellation rule.

  5. Go to Configuration > Booking > Booking Rules and locate the booking rule that should include this new cancellation rule.

  6. In the "Cancellation policies" field, click the pencil icon, select the cancellation rule, and move it to the right side of the dialog. Then click OK.

  7. Click OK again to save your changes.

  • No cancellation fee is charged for a preliminary booking.

  • When a cancellation meets the criteria for applying a cancellation fee, the resource will be freed up, and a booking for the cancellation-fee product (a certain percentage of the original price) will be created.

Connect a Booking Rule to a Product

  1. Go to Configuration > Products > Products.

  2. Find and open the relevant product (for example, a group activity).

  3. Under the “Class” tab, use the “Booking Rule” dropdown to select the desired booking rule.

  4. Click OK.

Recommendations for Group Activities

  • May be booked no later than: 1 hour before

  • Latest reservation from waitlist: 2 hours

  • May be canceled no closer than: 58 minutes

The idea is that customers who are moved from the waitlist still have enough time to get to the facility. Even if someone books right before the start time, they have two minutes to cancel if needed.

Troubleshooting

If the rules do not take effect immediately after you make a change, restart BRP and try again. If they do not take effect right away for web booking, contact BRP to restart the web service.