Example: How to setup a tennis court reservation system

Example: How to setup a tennis court reservation system

Overview

Situation: We are going to setup a tennis court reservation system for a Swim Club that has three (3) tennis courts. 
Policy:
  1. Members can reserve a court starting May 1st.  
  2. Members may only reserve a court during pool season.  May, 23rd to Sept. 6th
  3. Only members may reserve a court.  No guests or drop-ins.  
  4. Members may reserve a single court Monday - Friday 10am to 8pm.  Saturday & Sunday, there are no reservations. 
  5. Member's may reserve only 1 hour.  Reservations start at the top of the hour.  Max 1 hour.  
  6. There is no fee.      

What booking portal features are we going to use?  

  1. Since the reservation is a time your members will be selecting, we are going to build a Service. 
  2. Since there are 3 courts using the same service, we will use the Resource feature to manage the 3 courts.  

Step 1) Add three (3) resources

You'll add three (3) resources.  i.e. your 3 tennis courts.   All with the same category (Tennis Courts).  Use a name and description to help your members choose which court they would like to reserve.  
CLICK HERE to learn how to add a resource.  

Step 2) Create a new service

Use a name and description to help your members choose the service.  The category is optional.  
To learn how, CLICK HERE (part 1).  

Step 3) Edit the service settings

This is the second part of our general help article.  We'll recommend your settings below.  

  1. Click Assign Resources
  2. Check your 3 tennis courts you created in step 1
  3. Click Done
  1. Service Opens After: May 1st because you do not want your members signing up to early, prior to May 1.  (if members can signup anytime, uncheck this)
  2. First Available Booking: May 23rd because this is the 1st day of the pool season and when your courts are "Open for Reservations".
  3. Last Booking Before: Sept. 6th because your pool closes at 8pm and your courts are "Closed for Reservations".
  4. Requires Membership: Check this to require a membership check.  Members must supply their Barcode # or Membership ID in order to make a reservation.  (uncheck this to remove this step)

  1. Check Mon - Fri because these days and times, reservations are allowed.  
  2. Uncheck Sat & Sun because there are no reservations allowed.  

  1. Interval Length: 6o minutes because members can reserve a court for 60 minutes.  
  2. Max Intervals: 1 because they can only reserve 1 hour at a time.  (increase this if you allow members to reserve 2, 3, 4 hours at a time)
  3. Pre & Post Buffer: 0 because there is no setup or cleanup time in-between reservations. 
  4. Required Lead Time before Booking:  None because this will allow members reserve a court a few minutes prior to the reservation time.   
  5. Align Bookings: Top of the hour because your reservations start at the top of the hour rather than quarter or half hour.  
  6. Allow Overlapping Bookings: Checked because this will allow up to 3 reservations at the same time due to your 3 courts.  This setting (check) is important  in this case. 
 
  1. Require Available Resource: Checked because this will prevent double bookings on the same court.  This setting (check) is important  in this case. 
  2. Allow Patron to Select Resource: Checked because this will allow your member to select which of the 3 courts they want to reserve.  

  1. Allow Cancellation: This will allow your member to cancel the reservation online without your help.  
  2. Allow Rescheduling: This will allow your member to reschedule the reservation online without your help.  

Step 4) Save & Test


  1. Don't forget to Save.  Any changes will not be visible on the live booking calendar until you click SAVE.  
  2. Click Go to Patron Booking Page to view and test your service.  

Notes

We did not need or use the following features & settings.  
  1. Service Owner: Since this service does not need an employee to oversee it, a service owner was not needed.  
  2. Booking Instructions: Since the signup form and policy was simple, we did not need to give our member's any "Special Instructions".
  3. Fees: Since there were no fees associated with this rental, we left the entire fee section at $0.00.  
  4. Additional Questions: No additional information was needed from our members.  We did not need to custom build any questions.    
  5. Terms & Conditions: The policy did not require a T&C acknowledgments.  If you needed to add a T&C , you can.
  6. Blocks: Since the courts were available all summer, we did not need to block off any dates/times that the courts could not be reserved.   If one of the courts because unavailable due to a repair needed, I could add a block to the resource.  
  7. Availability: We did not need to add any special dates/time the courts could be reserved outside the normal hours of operation.   If the Swim Club was open a bonus day in October, we could add availability.