Offering control is all about fine-grained control of what you offer for rent, when and how.
When you visit the page in Settings > Online > Offering Control you're going to see something like this:
Time Limits
This setting allows you to set up the minimum and maximum rental periods permitted as well as the minimum time a reservation can be placed in advanced (lead time).
Min rental & Max rental. Pretty self-explanatory.
Lead time. How much notice do you require before an online booking can start.
Booking Slots
These can be toggled on or off. When off, customers can select any pick up and drop off time within your opening hours. When on, you can specify the valid pick up time and rental durations. Example: allow customers to pick up at 09:00 or 12:00 and choose between rental durations of 4h and 8h.
No: Customers can freestyle any rental times within your booking hours.
Yes: Customers are constrained to pick up times and durations of your choosing.
Booking Mode
This setting determines the type of bookings you'll receive. An instant booking guarantees that the bikes are available at the time of booking. Booking requests do not check the inventory is available and so can be accepted or denied by the store once made.
The default behaviour for FREE stores is booking requests. Booking requests don't block out the inventory or confirm the reservation, they send a booking request to the store operator.
Registration Mode
Allows you to choose how you wish customers to register online. Account mode allows them to create an account, meaning they don't have to enter their information all over again if they are a returning customer. Alternatively, you can choose Guest checkout mode where no account registration is required. This will however create duplicate records of returning customers.
Options:
- Guest Checkout - they just leave their details.
- Client Account - the create an account, so can log back in again.
Auto Cancel
This is a powerful feature that allows you to cancel Provisional bookings made online if the customer has not paid or left card details within a set time period. For busy shops, this frees up their inventory for other paying customers. The minimum time out duration is 30 minutes. If you do not have a payment processor set up, do not turn on auto cancel as it will result in all your online booking being cancelled.
Multi Location
This allows you to show you store locations when you are using Multi-location mode. Show stores so customers can select store to choose item from. And select A2B Rentals if pickup and drop off can be two different locations.
Payment
What is your payment processor? The Payment section allows you to take a booking deposit anywhere between 0 and 100% of the total cost of the rental. You may require this as confirmation if you choose to take instant bookings. You can take payment via either Stripe or PayPal, if you have connected either of these in the payments page.