Price calculation of reservations
Whether you use direct payments in the system or not, it is best to give your customers information about the cost of the services they reserve. The customer will always know exactly how much the service will cost him when paying on the spot, respectively how much you will need to pay using a payment gateway.
Pricing is an important element in offering and providing any services. The resulting price for a service may be influenced by a number of factors, and may be increased or decreased in certain situations. The reservation system provides several techniques for defining the final price and calculating it in real events. It is possible to combine individual techniques of price adjustment, use all or some of them.
1. Entry price of the reservation
The first step is the sum of the prices for the individual booked elements (persons, places, etc.). If only base price is used for the term, the calculation is simply multiplied by the booked capacity/time and this price.
In the system there is a possibility to define price variants, which will allow to easily distinguish different types of prices (Adult, Child, etc.). In this case, the entry price is equal to the sum of the individual options multiplied by the corresponding booked capacity/time. A specific case is when group size greater than 1 is defined within a price variant (not applicable for "Seat reservations" type terms). This setting allows to define a typical family admission, where one price will result in e.g. 4 occupied people in one reservation. This allows you to offer your customers discounted/group rates while still ensuring standard event capacity counting. Pricing variations can also be used for "Seat reservations" event type, where different prices can be defined within each category of the map. This makes it easy to offer e.g. discounted child admission.
Another option at this stage of pricing is the use of conditional prices. With this option, you can define specific conditions and a price value to be applied to the customer within the base price (or each price variant). There is a possibility to define one or more conditions for each price separately (conditions within one conditional price are always applied together, i.e. by logical link AND at the same time and condition prices are evaluated on a first-come, first-served basis, i.e. the first conditional price that meets the conditions is always applied). These conditions may make the price subject to the length of the booked time, the time before the deadline or the number of persons booked. For example, you can easily influence the price for a long-term lease or favor customers who register long before the event. The conditional price always only replaces the base price/price variation, which means that the customer always sees only the resulting price and is generally a unit price, eg in case of interval type of event, this adjusted price value is used when multiplying number of booked intervals!
If you have the price respectively price variants of multiple conditional prices, their evaluation takes place in the given order (you can change it by dragging the mouse) and if the system encounters the first conditional price, when all conditions are met, this price is applied and other prices are ignored. Therefore, it is good to think carefully and plan the parameters of the contingent prices and their amount when using this function, also with regard to further pricing steps (multiplication by capacity, length, etc.).
2. Reservation form
The reservation form itself is a powerful tool for obtaining additional information and information from customers. At the same time it is possible to adjust the booking price based on these data. The form field options are wide and affect the total cost in different ways.
Typical use can be premium for extra services (positive value, absolute (CZK), for the whole reservation) or ** discount for members ** (negative value, relative (%), for the whole reservation). For more complex configurations, it is always recommended to test the behavior of the price fields to maintain the expected performance with respect to different combinations of values (eg relative discount and absolute surcharge).
3. Discount coupon
As a next step that allows you to adjust the resulting price is the application of the so-called discount coupon. The booking system records individual discount coupons together with their parameters (validity period, value of discount/surcharge, possible number of uses). These coupons can then be distributed among customers and their use in booking will achieve the desired adjustment of the total price of the reservation. Typical uses are various marketing discounts, but also managed booking of reservations between a limited group of customers (zero value code and one use).
Another option is to take advantage of direct sale of discount coupons to customers who buy a unique discount code, which they then redeem at a specific booking.
4. Method of payment
The result is a total price that can then be paid by the customer directly in the web browser environment. It takes into account the application of individual pricing tools and is used only for information (without on-line payment) or as a basis for making a payment using payment gateway .
A specific case is the possibility of paying the price of the reservation by credits, which can be especially advantageous compared to other payment methods (the discounted amount does not include discounts or surcharges within the pricing process).