Setting up the club crane, hoist and boats for booking

Most clubs have something members need to book: the crane for lift-out weekend, the boat hoist, a club dinghy or RIB, the training room. Usually it runs on a whiteboard, a diary behind the bar, or one committee member's phone. If your club has switched on resource booking in Yacht Clubs Manager, you can move all of that online. This guide is for the person setting it up: the decisions you need to make for each resource, what members see as a result, and how to manage bookings through the season.

Before you start

Resource booking is an option the club turns on, so if you cannot see Resource Booking and Bookings in the admin console, ask whoever looks after your club's account. The section is limited to people with full admin access, because resources can carry a price and take payments.

If you intend to charge for anything, the club's Stripe account needs to be connected first. Until it is, the price box is locked and only free resources can be offered, so that no payment can go anywhere other than the club's own account. Your treasurer can connect it in a few minutes; see Stripe and Xero for club treasurers.

Finally, set where booking notifications go. Under Settings there is a "Resource Booking Notifications" email address. A shared address such as the bosun's or the boatyard's mailbox works better than a personal one.

Group resources into types

Resources sit inside types, which are simply headings: "Lifting", "Club Boats", "Rooms". Members browse by type, so choose names they would recognise. Create a type with a name and an optional description, then add resources to it.

Setting up a resource

Each resource has a name, a type, a description and an optional photo. Then come the decisions that shape how it can be booked.

Slot length

Choose 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, half a day (4 hours), a full day (8 hours) or a full 24-hour day. Match it to how the resource is really used. A crane lift might be one hour; a club Laser for an afternoon, half a day; a RIB for a coaching session, a full day. Members book whole slots, so if lifts genuinely take 45 minutes, use one-hour slots rather than squeezing them.

Price

Set a price per slot, or leave it blank for a free resource. If the club is VAT registered, the form shows how the price breaks down. Payment is by card through the club's Stripe account.

How far ahead, and how many

Max advance booking (days) stops people booking the whole summer in March. Max active bookings per member limits how many upcoming bookings one member can hold at a time, so a popular dinghy is shared around. Leave either blank for no limit. For a crane on a busy lift-out weekend, a limit of one or two active bookings per member is a fair starting point; you can always relax it.

Members only, or open to guests

Tick Members only for anything that should be limited to members, such as club boats. Leave it unticked for things you are happy to offer the public, like a room hire or a hoist for visiting boats. Guests book from the public website, give their contact details and pay by card through a secure link.

Approval

Tick Requires admin approval when someone needs to check a request first: the crane where the operator must be available, or a RIB that only qualified members should take out. Without approval, a free booking is confirmed immediately and a paid one is confirmed once paid. With approval, the request waits for you. When you approve a paid booking, the member is emailed that it has been approved and asked to pay to confirm it.

When it is available

Under Availability, build the weekly schedule: tick the days the resource can be booked and set opening hours for each. Shortcuts fill in weekdays, weekends, every day or the same hours for all. Then there are two kinds of exception:

• Date overrides open the resource on days it normally is not, with their own start and end times. Useful for an extra lift-out Saturday.
• Closed dates block a single day or a range: maintenance, the annual crane inspection, a regatta weekend when the hoist is reserved for visitors.

Save the resource and it appears to members. Untick Active later to hide it without losing its history.

What members experience

Members choose a resource, pick a date and an available slot, and either get an instant confirmation or are asked to pay by card. With approval switched on, they see that the request is pending until you act on it. Their bookings are listed in the members area, and they can cancel their own. The member side is explained in booking the club crane or boat, which is worth sharing with members when you launch.

A booking waiting for payment holds its slot for a while, but if it is still unpaid after 72 hours it stops counting against the slot and the member's limit, so abandoned bookings do not block the calendar.

Managing bookings

Open Bookings. Requests waiting for approval are listed first, and each one also appears as a to-do item on the admin dashboard. You can search by name, email, resource or invoice number, and filter by status: pending approval, pending payment, confirmed or cancelled.

Open any booking to see the details and act on it:

1. Approve a pending request. Free bookings are confirmed; paid ones move to awaiting payment and an invoice is raised.
2. Move booking to another date or slot, with an optional note to the member. The member is emailed with the old slot, the new slot and your note. The booking keeps a record of the move, showing who moved it and when, and the payment and invoice are unchanged. You can move a booking beyond the normal advance limit, which is handy when the weather forces everything back a fortnight.
3. Cancel booking with an optional reason. For a paid booking you can issue a refund to the member's card at the same time, or record that it was refunded outside the system.

Add Booking creates a manual booking for a member (search by name or email) or for someone who is not a member, with their name, email and phone. Use it for phone bookings and for people paying in cash or by bank transfer, and add internal notes if needed.

Export produces a PDF or Excel file for a date range, optionally filtered by status or category. Print a PDF of the lift-out weekend for the crane driver and pin it up in the yard.

Approvals, moves and cancellations are all recorded in the admin actions log, so if a member asks why their booking changed, you can see who did it.

Practical tips for the season

• Start with one resource. Put the crane or hoist online first, run one lift-out through it, then add club boats and rooms.
• Block dates early. Add closed dates for inspections and events as soon as the club programme is agreed.
• Use approval sparingly. It gives you control but adds a step for you and the member. Keep it for resources where a person genuinely has to check something.
• Tell members once, clearly. Post a news story or include it in the next newsletter; see the sailing club newsletter guide.

Next steps

Paid bookings raise invoices like the rest of the club's billing, so they appear alongside subscriptions and event entries; see invoicing and payments. The resource booking page has screenshots of the admin and member screens, and all features gives the wider view.