Booking facilities together, and telling your staff
When the first team books the stadium pitch for a match, also book the events space from an hour before. Or tell your booking staff whenever a pitch is booked or cancelled. That's an automation.
What an automation does
An automation watches one or more of your facilities. When a booking on one of them is booked, changed or cancelled, it can:
- book another facility with it, for its own hours: for example, from an hour before the booking starts until half an hour after it ends;
- tell staff: your club’s booking staff, your admins, or the staff of the team the booking is for.
It can apply to every booking, or only some: what the booking is for (a match, a training session or event, or a hire), which teams, which days, and what time it starts.
Which plan has them
Automations are on the facility booking plan for three or more facilities, and on a free trial. On a smaller plan the Automations page explains this and links to your club’s plans, and nothing can be added. If your club moves to a smaller plan, its automations pause: they stay on the page marked Paused, nothing they would do happens, and they start again as they were when you’re back on that plan. You can still change, switch off or delete them while they’re paused. See Pricing.
Adding one
In Facilities, open Automations (in More on a phone) and press Add an automation. A few short steps:
- When: the facilities it watches, and whether it runs when a booking is booked, changed or cancelled.
- Which bookings: leave everything empty for every booking, or choose what it’s for, the teams, the days and the start times.
- What it does: Book another facility, with the hours it takes, or Tell staff. Add as many as you need.
- Check it: the whole automation in one sentence, before you save.
On the last step, Check it, there’s an example: a booking you can change (the facility, what it’s for, the team, the day and the times) and what the automation would do with it. Try a team or a time it shouldn’t apply to, and it says it does nothing, and why.
What the other facility costs
When an automation books another facility, choose what it costs under It costs: Its own price, Nothing: it’s free, A percentage off or An amount off. Somebody booking online pays for both, at that price, and sees it in the price on your booking page. Your club’s own bookings charge their cost centre the same way.
Somebody booking online sees it named under their time, with its hours and price (even when it’s free), on your booking page, in the booking form on your website and on the pay page.
Tick Hirers can leave it out when booking if it’s optional. They then see a tick box beside it, and leaving it out takes its price off. Leave it unticked when they must have it. If an optional one is already taken at a time, that time is still offered, without it (they see it isn’t free then); if a required one is taken, the time isn’t offered. Weekly bookings can leave an optional one out too.
A change applies to bookings made from then on.
When the other facility is taken
If something already has the other facility at those times, your club’s own booking still goes ahead without it, and your booking staff are told. People booking online are only offered a time when everything their booking would also take is free.
Choosing not to book it this time
Whenever your club books a facility (in Facilities, adding a home match in the Club Hub, or a team booking its pitch or training in the Team Hub), the last step says what it also books, each with a tick. Untick anything this booking doesn’t need. The calendar then shows it as declined, so nobody wonders why it’s free.
Changing or switching one off
Open Automations and choose one: Change, Switch off or Delete. A change applies to bookings made from then on. Bookings it has already made stay as they are.
The facilities that used to be linked under Also book with it became automations, so they still book together.