From bookwithdoris.com/guides/how-pricing-works. Doris is the room booking diary for small organisations, and “I” on this sheet is her.
The idea
Two questions, five things.
A room booking diary that knows what things cost has to answer two questions every time someone books: what can this person book, and what will it cost them? I answer both from five things, set up once. Most venues only ever need the first two. This page is two sides of one sheet on purpose: print it, hand it to the treasurer, and the committee can argue over a piece of paper instead of a screen.
One word first. The things people book are resources: a physical thing that can be booked, like a meeting room, a desk, a parking space or the kitchen. Everything below sits on top of those.
Prices, statements and plans are part of the Diary & Billing plan. A trial runs on it, so you can set all of this up and watch it behave before you decide anything.
Your rate card
A rate card is a price list. Every organisation has one, called Default, and it lists every resource you have with what each one costs. Everyone starts on it. You can have more than one: a Members card, a Staff card, a Commercial card for hirers, each with its own prices and its own choice of rooms, so different people pay different rates for the same room. A card is also the complete picture: a room that is not on someone’s card is a room they cannot book, and there is no small print underneath. Offering a room, pricing it and allowing it are one thing, not three.
For example
St Mary's Hall has a hall, a kitchen and a meeting room. Its Default card lists all three, and everyone who books at St Mary's is on it. Later, a Commercial card prices the hall higher for outside hirers.
Leave it alone if
Everyone pays the same and can book the same rooms. Then the Default is the only card you will ever have, and you never need to think about it again.
Products and prices
A product is one way of paying for a room: by the hour, by the session, by the morning or the evening, by the day. A room can carry more than one, and I pick the one that fits the booking. Members see the price before they confirm, so a statement never surprises anyone. £0 is a real price: a free room with a product is still a room I keep the diary for.
For example
The hall by the hour at £20. The hall for an evening at £60. The meeting room per session at £8. The kitchen at £0, because it is free but still has to be booked.
Leave it alone if
You do not charge. Then no room has a product, everything on the card is free to book, and nobody ever sees a price.
Who pays what
Each member is on exactly one rate card and pays that card’s prices. To give some people different prices, or fewer rooms, add a card. It can start as a copy of Default, and you change what you like: a lower price here, a room left off there. Then move people onto it from the Members page. A guest hire picks up a card too, so a community tariff and a commercial tariff are two cards, not two spreadsheets.
For example
A Members card where the hall is £15 an hour instead of £20. A Staff card where everything is £0. A Commercial card for hirers, with the meeting room left off it altogether.
Leave it alone if
Everyone pays the same. One card, the Default, and this page is finished for you at beat two.
Groups
In its simplest form I stop people double-booking themselves: one person, one booking at a time. Sometimes that is exactly wrong. A class needs the hall and the kitchen at the same time; a co-worker wants a desk, a parking space and a meeting room by the hour, all at once. Groups are how you tell me which things can be held together. A group is a named set of rooms on a card, and a member can hold one booking at a time in each group, so the hall and the kitchen as two groups can both be held by the same person.
Mark a group interchangeable and its rooms become “a desk” or “a therapy room”: members book the group and I pick a free one for them. Groups carry no prices of their own, and the rooms in an interchangeable group must cost the same, because the booker is told the price before I choose the room.
For example
The hall and the kitchen are two groups, so the Tuesday class holds both at once. A co-working space has three: desks, parking spaces and meeting rooms, so one member can hold one of each. Two therapy rooms of the same size and price become the interchangeable group “a therapy room”: the booker asks for one and I find a free one.
Leave it alone if
Nobody ever needs two rooms at the same time, and no two rooms are interchangeable. Most halls and practices are here.
Membership plans
A plan is a bundle on a card: so many hours or bookings in a group, each week or each month, for a fixed fee. Bookings inside the plan cost nothing extra. Beyond it, the product price applies, unless you switch that off, in which case the plan is what you get and the diary greys the rest. Unused allowance can carry over for as many days as you say. The fee goes on the member’s statement, which is paid to you. I record it; I never keep it.
For example
“Four hours a week” on the Members card at £40 a month: up to four hours in a therapy room each week included, a fifth hour at the card’s hourly price, and unused hours carried for ten days if you say so.
Leave it alone if
Nobody pays you a standing fee. Pay as you go at card prices is the whole story, and it needs no plan.
Desks, briefly
The same five things, with more of them.
A co-working space is not a special case. Twenty desks are twenty resources, added in one go. One group, “a desk”, makes them interchangeable, so a member books a desk and gets one. A Staff card lists all twenty at £0; a Charity card lists sixteen of them at a discount; the Default lists them at full price. A plan on any card turns a standing fee into so many desk days a week. Every word above still means what it meant.
What I never do
- I never take a payment at the moment someone books a room. Prices go on a statement; the money goes to you.
- I never charge you by the number of rooms. Ten rooms or a hundred, the card is the card.
- I never hide a room behind a price. Not on the card means not offered: the member never sees it, and never sees a price they cannot pay.
- I never put a price on a group. A booking costs the price of the room I pick, and the rooms in a group cost the same.
- I never keep a plan’s fee. It goes on the member’s statement, the statement is paid to you, and I count what the plan covers.
Where it lives
Settings, then Pricing, is the whole of it on one screen: your cards, the products on the selected card, its groups and its plans. The setup wizard walks the same five things in the same order when you first sign up, and the owner can run it again from Settings. For the tap-through of pricing a room, see Charging for your rooms (bookwithdoris.com/guides/charging-for-rooms). What Doris herself costs is on the pricing page, and it is never on a member’s statement.