Make a Rental calendar
In the business app open Calendars → Calendar settings → Calendars → New calendar and pick Rental ("Items booked for a period"). The calendar opens on its Rentals tab: Today, Listings, Blocked time, Calendar sync, Rental settings and Test a rental. Its other tabs work like every calendar's: Rules & limits (notice, how far ahead), Questions, Notifications, After booking, Reschedule & cancel and Booking page (its link and embed code).
Listings
A listing is one thing you rent out — a kayak, a cabin, a camera kit. Listings belong to the business: each Rental calendar picks the ones it offers, in its own order. Listings shows On this calendar and Other listings, with Offer on this calendar / Take off this calendar and which calendars offer each. Two calendars offering the same listing share its stock. New listing (made on a calendar, it's offered there) asks for:
- Name, Category (groups listings on the booking page), Description and Photos: upload them (or drop them in), or Choose from your images. Up to 30; the first is the cover, and they can be moved and removed. Show it on the booking page switches it on or off.
- How many you have (the stock: 3 kayaks can go out at once) and Most per booking.
- How customers book it:
- Customers pick a start and an end (date and time), Billed by the hour, day, week or month. A day is 24 hours; one minute over a unit counts the next one; a month runs to the same date next month (or that month's last day).
- Customers pick dates only — check-in and check-out at set times — Charge by Days (same day = 1 day) or Nights (the check-out day isn't counted), with the Check-in / Pick-up time and Check-out / Return time.
- Fixed lengths (packages) like "4 hours" or "1 week", each with its price.
- Prices: per hour, day, week and month. Each is its own price — a week isn't 7 × the day price — and the length is billed with the cheapest mix of the prices you set ("1 week + 2 days"). Leave a price empty if you don't offer it.
- Shortest rental and Longest rental, a Minimum charge, a Cleaning fee (per item rented) and a Security deposit (per item, never taxed).
- Turnaround before / after: prep and cleaning time that blocks the item around each rental (empty = the calendar's).
- Discount for longer rentals and Discount for booking several: the highest tier reached wins; longer-rental discounts go first.
- Add-ons (life jackets, a cooler), charged once or per item rented, optionally Always included.
- Tax (or the default tax rate) and Price rules.
Variants (after the first save): versions of a listing — "Single" and "Double", "Body only" and "With lens" — each with its own stock, day / hour price and deposit (empty = the listing's).
Listings can be duplicated (the copy starts switched off), moved up and down, and searched. Each shows what to check: a missing price, a deposit while the calendar's deposit is off, or holds on long rentals.
Share links
Listings → Share links copies the link to the calendar's booking page, to one category, or — with each listing's Copy link — to one listing (it opens just that listing, with See everything we rent). Use them on Instagram, Google or in emails. The embed takes the same listing= or rental_category= on its address.
Timeline
Rentals → Timeline shows a row per listing (one per variant when it has them), with a lane for each unit, over 7, 14 or 31 days. Rentals and blocked time are bars: gray for blocked, blue for out, red for overdue. Drag a reserved rental to other days to move the whole booking — the stock, turnaround and price are checked, and if it doesn't fit nothing changes and you're told why. Click a rental to open it.
Prices, rules and the order they're worked out
Seasonal, weekend and holiday prices use the same Rules as the rest of booking (Staff, services & setup → Rules). A rule applies to a listing when you pick it in the listing's Price rules, or when the rule names the listing. Each billed unit uses the rules that match its own start, so a week that runs into high season pays the high-season price only for those days. Time-of-day rules only change hourly prices.
The order: the price per unit → rules → the minimum charge → the longer-rental discount → the several-items discount → add-ons → the cleaning fee → tax line by line. Delivery is added once per booking. Test a rental shows exactly what a customer would pay, line by line, why, and how many are free — nothing is booked.
Stock, turnaround and blocked time
A listing is free while the most units out at any moment, plus what the customer wants, stays within its stock. Turnaround counts; an item still out after its return time keeps blocking until it's marked back. Several items in one booking count against each other.
Blocked time blocks a listing, one variant, or part of the stock ("2 of 10 kayaks") for maintenance, your own use or a booking taken elsewhere. Customers just see less available; the title is for your team only.
Rental settings
- Payment: pay in full, a payment deposit now, save the card and charge after, or pay later.
- Security deposit: Hold it on the card at pick-up (released after the return) or Keep the card on file and charge it only if needed, with its name. The hold is placed on the saved card a day before pick-up. Card holds last about a week, so rentals longer than 6 days keep the card on file instead. Release the hold when everything comes back undamaged is on by default. A booking with a deposit always saves a card, even on pay later.
- Pick-up and delivery: your pick-up places (name and address), and Offer delivery and collection with its fee and a note.
- Rental agreement: text customers must accept to book; the text they accepted is kept with the booking. Other tick boxes and waivers are Questions (agreements) picked on the calendar's Questions tab.
- Reminders and timing: the return reminder (hours before), when a rental counts as overdue, the turnaround between rentals, the start-time step, and Also send reminders by text.
- Booking page: cards with photos or a simple list, the button words, and Away mode — pause new online bookings with a message (you can still book by hand).
Calendar sync (Airbnb, VRBO, marketplaces)
- Import from other sites: paste the iCal link the other site gives you (https:// or webcal://), pick the listing, the variant and how many units each of its bookings blocks. Date-only stays use the listing's check-in and check-out times. Links are read every hour, or press Refresh; a link that can't be read keeps its last blocks and says why.
- Export to other sites: each listing has its own link for the other sites to subscribe to. It shows only "Booked" and "Blocked" — never customer names — and leaves out bookings imported from those sites. Make a new link stops the old one.