You set up a rental item once: price, deposit, units, terms. How that works is in creating a rental item. After that comes the work that returns every week: who has what, when nothing can go out, and what to do with the customer who calls. That all happens on one screen — the Calendar tab in the Rentals & reservations module.
Note: the dashboard shows the Dutch interface.
Reading the monthly view
The calendar shows one month as a grid, with a few lines per day about what is going on. A line is either a booking or a block. A booking shows the item and, if the item has units, the unit behind it: "Canoe · Canoe #2". A block shows the item that is closed, or All items if the block is a broad one. Blocks sit at the top and are marked in red, so "closed" looks different from "rented out".
Multi-day bookings appear on every day they cover, not just on the starting day. A sloop that is out from Friday to Sunday shows up on all three days. That way you see at a glance where it gets tight, instead of working periods out yourself.
A day cell fits three lines. If there are more, the cell closes with +2 more. That is not an error but a busy day: the full list is in the day detail. Today is recognisable by the date in the accent colour, and above the calendar sit an arrow back, Today and an arrow forward — so looking a few months ahead and jumping back is one click.
Opening a day
Every day in the grid is a button — an empty day included. Click it and the day detail opens.
At the top sits Bookings this day: per booking the item, the status, the period, the unit, the renter's name and the amount. If the booking was recorded by phone or at the counter, it carries a Manual badge. As long as a booking has not been returned or cancelled, a Cancel button sits next to it as well. Below that is Blocks this day, showing per block the item or unit, the period and the reason you filled in.
At the bottom are the two actions the day detail really exists for: Block date and Book manually. That is also why an empty day opens: that is exactly where you want to record something.
Blocking a period
You block for everything that is not a booking but does take up room: maintenance, cleaning, your own use, a day you are simply closed.
Fill in a date From and Until, the end date included — so 12 to 14 May closes three days. The Reason (optional) is for you and your colleagues; the field suggests "e.g. maintenance", and the reason appears with the block in the day detail.
Above that you decide how wide the block goes. Pick an Item and you can zoom in further on a single Unit — only Canoe #2 out of rotation, the rest stays bookable. Leave the item empty and the block applies to All items. That is the version for a public holiday or a storm.
Click Block period and those days are no longer bookable, not even for somebody who is on your site at that moment. You undo it in the day detail with Lift block; the period is free again straight away.
A block is not the same as a unit status: a status holds until you change it back, a block has a beginning and an end. If you know when the canoe can go back in the water, use a block.
Booking manually: the customer who calls
Not everybody books online. Somebody calls to put the sloop down for Sunday, or stands at the counter with cash in hand. That is what Book manually is for.
You pick the Item and optionally a Unit. Leave that empty and the system assigns a free unit itself — usually exactly what you want, because on the phone it makes no difference which canoe it becomes. Then the period: a start and end date, and for hourly rentals a Start time and End time as well.
The rest is short. Renter's name is required; on the phone you often have no more than that, and that should never be a reason not to put the boat down. The Email address is optional: leave it out and the booking is recorded internally only, with no confirmation going out. Under Rental sum you enter a different amount; leave the field empty and MijnEvent charges the normal rate for that item over that period. The Already paid tick box is on by default — change it if you only get the money at pickup. In the Note you put whatever you want to read back later: "picking up at 8", "regular customer".
Click Record booking and the unit is taken. No payment request goes to the renter; you settle that however you agreed. The booking then simply sits with the others under the Bookings tab, carrying the Manual badge.
What the system does and does not guard
One rule stays hard: double booking is impossible. The chosen unit has to be genuinely free according to the same availability calculation as the shop, even if somebody is booking online at that exact moment. If nothing is free, the screen refuses the booking rather than quietly laying it over an existing one.
The rest is deliberately looser than the public side. An item still sitting at Draft can be handed out fine. Your opening hours and minimum hire length do not apply here: if you want to let one canoe go out on a Monday you are closed, you can. On the phone you make the exception, not the system.
One thing comes with that, and it is yours to arrange. When somebody books online, they explicitly accept your rental terms in the checkout, and MijnEvent records when and on which version. A manual booking has no such electronic acceptance. You are then responsible yourself for providing your rental terms and the legally required information beforehand — the terms of the rentals module say as much. In practice: send the terms afterwards, or have them signed at pickup.
After that it runs like any other booking
A manual booking is no odd one out from there. It comes in as Confirmed, you set it to Picked up when the customer arrives and to Returned when the gear is back. If there is a deposit on it, that works as described in deposits on rentals — with the difference that a deposit paid online needs a checkout, which a phone booking does not have, so there you collect it at pickup.
What your customers do online in the meantime runs through the shop on your own subdomain, described on the Rentals & reservations module page. The calendar shows both streams together: last night's half-past-eleven booking and this morning's phone call sit in the same cell.
