Duration and pricing

Pricing is the part of setup people put off, and it is the part that pays them back fastest. Once a service knows how to price itself, your booking page can quote a real number and take real money without you touching it.

Why duration matters

Duration is how much of your day a booking takes up. It is what lets Bookables offer a genuine time slot rather than a vague enquiry, and it is what stops your calendar from quietly overcommitting.

Set the typical job length. It does not have to be exact. It is the average, and it is what the scheduler sizes the booking from.

The one service that has no duration is a quote-priced one. You cannot know how long a job takes before you have seen it, so those services ask the customer for details instead of a slot.

The pricing models

You are offered the models that suit the shape of service you picked.

Fixed price. One price, or a small set of named choices: Small, Medium, Large. The simplest thing that works, and the right answer more often than people expect.

By the hour. You set an hourly rate, and how long the work takes for a given size of job. Bookables works out the hours, then the price. This is the model for cleaning and similar work where the job scales with the property.

Per unit. A price per measurable thing: per window, per room, per square metre. Bookables multiplies out from what it knows about the property.

By time. A rate applied to the length of the booking itself, for hire measured in hours.

By day. A daily rate for hire measured in days, with the ability to charge less per day as the hire gets longer. A week does not bill as seven days at any real hire business, and it does not here either.

Per seat. A price per person, for classes.

Quote only. No automatic price. The customer sees a starting figure, either your hourly rate or a "from" price, and you set the real number after you have looked at the job.

Free. No charge at all, for community classes, council facilities and free consultations. This is deliberately separate from quote-only, which still expects a price eventually.

The extras most models share

Base fee. A fixed amount on every booking, before anything is calculated. For mobile work this is your call-out fee.

Minimum charge. A floor. However the sums come out, the booking never prices below this.

Booking fee. A one-off fee on a hire.

Watching it price

Where a service prices from the size of a property, the editor shows you a live preview: a handful of example homes and what each would be charged. Change your rate and the numbers move.

Use it. It is much easier to tell whether your rate is right by looking at three real-looking prices than by staring at the rate on its own.

Tax

Whether prices include tax is set once for the whole account, in Settings, under Tax. You do not set it per service. See Tax.

What is next

Next: Add-ons and options.