Guide
A custom online booking system: when an off-the-shelf calendar is not enough
Off-the-shelf booking systems are fine as long as you book one resource for one slot. Once several resources are involved at once, plus transport, deposits and rules the calendar's vendor never thought of, the company ends up running bookings on the side, in a notebook or a spreadsheet.
When an off-the-shelf calendar is enough
If you book one resource for one slot, a ready-made calendar will do. A hairdresser, a clinic, a room by the hour. The customer picks a time, gets a confirmation, done. For a small monthly fee you get something that works straight away, and there is no point building it from scratch.
Booking portals that bring you customers take a commission on every booking and keep your customer base on their side. For a company with its own customers, that is a cost that grows every season.
When the calendar stops being enough
- Resources depend on each other. Booking a river trip needs kayaks, but also the vans with trailers that take people to the start. Equipment hire needs an instructor. A calendar knows one resource at a time.
- There is logistics. Drop-off, pick-up, route, sequence. The calendar knows the slot is free, but not that the vans are out collecting the previous group at that moment.
- There are deposits and your own terms. For example a deposit within 48 hours, the rest on site, a refund up to three days before. Ready-made systems have their payment rules, not yours.
- There is seasonality and variable pricing. Different prices at weekends, in season, for groups, with a voucher. Setting that up in a calendar ends with a spreadsheet next to it.
- The booking is the start of a process, not the end. After the booking comes preparing the equipment, assigning a worker, documents, settlement. The calendar stops at the confirmation.
If even two of these points sound familiar, the ready-made calendar handles only part of your bookings, and the rest lives in the owner’s phone.
What a custom booking system has
The system is made of modules, meaning self-contained parts. For companies that book more than a time slot, I usually build these:
Availability calculated from resources
The system knows how many kayaks, vans, instructors, rooms or pieces of equipment you have. A slot is available when everything the booking needs is free. The customer sees only what can really be sold.
Your company’s rules
Minimum number of people, maximum per van run, gap between rounds, days with no sales, prices in and out of season. The rules are yours and you change them yourself in the panel, without a developer.
Payment and deposit
The customer pays a deposit or the full amount online. The booking is confirmed after payment, and unpaid ones release the slot after a set time. The invoice is issued on its own.
A panel for staff
The day’s bookings, resource load, phone bookings entered on the same screen, who is preparing what. A worker on site sees it on their phone.
Notifications
Confirmation, a reminder the day before, meeting point details, a request for a review afterwards. Email or text.
Vouchers and groups
Gift vouchers with a code, group bookings with one payment, discounts for regulars.
An example: a kayak rental
Rapil rents kayaks on the Pilica river. The bottleneck is not the kayaks but the vans with trailers that take people to the start and collect them at the finish. No ready-made booking system understands that. I built online trip sales from scratch that watches the vans for the owner: the customer sees the routes and only the start times with enough kayaks left that do not clash with a van run on another route. They pay through Przelewy24, a deposit or the full amount, and staff work on a panel with the list of trips for the day. The company has run on it for three seasons.
Where to start
With availability and payment, because that stops double bookings and the “is it free” calls. The staff panel and vouchers follow in later stages. The system has to work before the season, so we plan the timeline backwards from the sales start date.
We settle up after each module you accept, and prices come in writing along with the written scope. Other screens a customer can have in a portal are on the main page of the guide. If customers want to follow what happens with their booking afterwards, see the page on order status online.
Describe in the form below what your customers book and what gets complicated. I will get back to you with an answer whether a ready-made calendar will do or you need your own system.
Questions and answers
Is a custom booking system overkill for a small company?
It depends how much work goes into workarounds. If a ready-made calendar holds the bookings but you still check each one by hand because it does not know your rules, you are paying twice. The kayak rental system serves a seasonal company, and I have looked after it for three seasons.
Can the customer pay a deposit when booking?
Yes. The customer pays a deposit or the full amount online, and the booking is confirmed only after payment. You set the deposit size and the time allowed to pay. Unpaid bookings release the slot on their own.
What about bookings by phone?
A staff member enters them in the panel, on the same screen that shows bookings from the website. The system checks availability the same way, so a slot cannot be sold twice.
Contact
Describe what your customers book and what gets complicated, and I will tell you whether you need your own system
You do not need a specification. Describe how the work looks today and what should change. We will write the scope together.