Find out how and where you can edit your Online Block Bookings settings
Where do you have to update to manage online block bookings?
Below are the sections that you need to review and update in order to enable Online Block Bookings for your venue. By default, these will have set values which can be updated depending on your requirements.
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Block Booking Settings
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Invoices & Payment Plans
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Block Booking Approvals Expiry Period
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Widget Settings
Block Booking Settings
In this section there are 3 fields that you need to review:
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Facilities Table
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Discounts
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Block Booking Period
Each field is explained in more detail below:
Facilities table
Here you select which facilities you would like to accept online block bookings for through your booking calendar widget
Discounts
Here you determine if you would like to offer a sports VAT exemption for block bookings of 10 or more bookings or if you don't want to offer a discount for block bookings
Block Booking Period
Here you determine when you would like to accept block bookings until. This can be either a specific date determined by weeks e.g 10 weeks from now or a specific date.
If you manage your block bookings on a quarterly or annual basis, you might want to choose the end of the quarter or academic year.
Invoices & Payments
If you want to offer payment plans for your customers so that they can pay for their block bookings weekly, monthly or quarterly, you can enable this through the Invoice & Payment section. You can find this in the Venue Settings menu on the left sidebar.
It's up to you which payments plans you would like to activate. You can select all, or a combination of, Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly.
Weekly Payment Plans - The first instalment is paid immediately to cover the first week of bookings. Thereafter, an upcoming payment notification is sent 2 days before each instalment is settled. The payment is then processed on every Monday for the upcoming week's bookings.
Monthly Payment Plans - The first instalment is made immediately to cover the first calendar month of bookings. Thereafter, an upcoming payment notification is sent on the 1st of each month. The payment is then processed on the 3rd of the month which covers the bookings for that month.
Quarterly Payment Plans - The first instalment is made immediately to cover the remaining bookings within the first quarter. Thereafter, an upcoming payment notification is sent on the first day of each quarter
If for any reason the payment fails, the customer will be asked to update their account accordingly and the payment will be re-tried. Both you and the customer will be notified of this and you can chase the customer for payment separately if necessary.
Approval Expiry Period
If you are new to Approvals, you can find out more in our article How to set up Approvals. By default, the Block Booking approval expiry time after a booking has been requested is 48hrs. However, this can be changed to suit your venue requirements.
Widget Settings
By default, Online Block Bookings are activated for all the facilities that you have on your booking calendar widget on your website. However, if you would like to deactivate Online Block Bookings for all of your facilities, you can do this through your Widget Settings (under Venue Settings).
In your Widget Settings, click on the type of widget that you have, either Default or Custom. Then all you have to do is go to the Accept Online bookings section, and you can untick Block Bookings and save your changes.
Further articles related to Widget Settings which might be of interest are Installing a booking calendar widget on your website and What is PaySplit and how does it work?
Last but not least, Bookteq training and support
We're always on hand to help if you need support updating your Online Block Booking settings or using any other areas of the software.
Please contact our Bookteq Support team by emailing support@bookteq.com if you need assistance.