This screen allows services to configure booking rules that will be used to determine both casual sign-in based bookings (such as those from the Hub) and mobile bookings.
When a child is signed-in without an existing booking in the Master Roll, the system will need to create a booking for them. The room and fee assigned to this booking will be based on the Booking Rules you set. If no booking rules are set the system’s default fallback rule is set to creating a booking using the child’s default room set on the child’s profile with the default fee set on the service setting 'fees' tab.
NOTE: The parent mobile bookings feature will only display bookings defined in the Booking Rules. If no rules are defined, parents will only be able to book into the system default booking. To continue to provide parents with a variety of available bookings, services will need to define booking rules in Office.
Booking rules are set at a service level from Setting > Service Settings > Booking Rules > Scroll to 'Create New Booking Rule'
Booking rules are configured by:
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Selecting a min sign in time from and max sign-in time to (for casual attendance bookings) to apply the rule to
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Selecting a min age and max child age group to apply the rule to (in years and months)
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Setting a room to apply to the booking that is created
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Setting a fee to apply to the booking that is created
- Selecting a day or group of days to apply the rule to
Click 'Create Rule' to save.
Booking rules are then executed by the system in the order that they appear in the booking rules table.
We suggest that rules are created by shortest bookings to longest bookings, to allow the system to attempt to create many individual bookings before falling back to one long booking.
To reorder the booking rule hierarchy, use the blue down arrow or green up arrow under the 'action' column to move the rule down or up.
The hours that apply to the booking that is created are determined by the service’s setting to determine booking times by either room or fees.
Use the red Rubbish Bin icon under the 'actions' column to remove a booking rule completely
This dictates how many minutes a parent can sign their child in before the booking start time. The Grace Period is for all bookings in the Master Roll.
The booking start time will be based either on your Fee times or Room times, depending on your service set-up.
By default, all services are set to 90 minutes.
If a parent attempts to sign in earlier than the Grace Period, and there are no casual booking rules which apply to that time period either, the sign in will fail.
To Update: Click on Settings > Service Settings > click on your service > Booking Rules
Under the heading 'Attendance Sign In Grace Period' you can select the number of minutes you want your Grace Period to be, and then click 'Update.'
Note: If you have set up Multi-Sessions, you do not want your Grace Period to overlap with the next session time.
Mobile bookings allow parents to view the available bookings for a service on a given day on the Home app and instantly book a session. The default behaviour of Home app is to allow Mobile Bookings. If you would rather require staff approval for bookings coming from the Home app, you can enable Mobile Booking Requests. When this setting is enabled, parents will only be able to request a booking instead of allowing them to book straight onto the roll.
Mobile bookings requests need to be enabled or disabled from Admin for each service under Settings > Service Settings > select Service > App Settings > Home > Mobile Booking Requests. If this setting is toggled:
- ON: Parents will be forced to make booking requests through the Home app or web. These will need to be actioned by the service before any changes are made to the Master Roll. Learn about actioning booking notifications here. You can see this setting in the ON state below:
- OFF: Parents will be able to make bookings directly into the Master Roll if there are spaces. To ensure these are assigned the right fee, you will need to set up booking rules. Learn about how to create booking rules here. You can see this setting in the OFF state below:
Built-in conditional logic ensures parents can not book if the room has exceeded its maximum capacity (capacity is set via the room settings in Office). It also ensures that only rooms that match the child's age will show availabilities.