Rental or Availability Calendar

The Rental or Availability Calendar allows you to add rooms, properties, tools, or services to a Calendar and then mark them as being Available, Pending, or Reserved. If you rent out vacation property, for example, you can mark certain dates as available, pending or reserved. Similarly, if you provide services where you are generally reserved for the day, then you can use this calendar to show your availability for certain days.

To manage the Rental or Availability Calendar:

• Click on the Manage Programs icon at the top
• Click on the Manage Rental or Availability Calendar link which will take you to the main Availability & Rental Calendar Management section.

Inclusion codes to use:

Check the Availability & Rental Calendar Management page for the inclusion codes.

• There is an inclusion code available for a full listing where all the rooms or services will be displayed: %%rentalcal-default%%
• There is also an inclusion code for each room or service: these inclusion codes change based on the name of your room

Who can use the Calendar Program?

This Calendar program can be used by those who provide vacation rentals or those who run a bed and breakfast. This Calendar program can also be used by those who have a car rental service (e.g., classic car rental, exotic car rental and chauffeur rental services).

Calendar Colors and Settings

To use the Calendar program, you must first configure the settings. To configure the settings, click on the Manage Programs icon, click on the Manage Rental or Availability Calendar link, and then click on the Availability Calendar Colors & Settings link.

1) You should select a display style. There are two options: "Full list of all listings" and "Small calendars for each listing":

You can see from the few examples listed above that you can fully customize the calendar to match the colors of your website.

If you are using the Small Calendars

• You can select to include the Color Legend so that your customers can see the meaning of the different colors. The above example includes the color legend.

• You can select the Day Display format. There are several options. The default option is the Su Mo Tu, etc. option.

If you want every small calendar to appear on one page like the example below, then you should select the "Small calendars for each listing" option and then use the %%rentalcal-default%% inclusion code.

2) Select a Font, Text Color and Link Color. Select the font you want for your calendar. The font changes for both the Full Listing and the Small Calendars. You can also change the Text Color and the Link Color. The Text Color is the color of the text on the calendar including the month, the dates, and the names of the rooms or services. The Link Color is the color of the link for the name of the room or service. That is, when you add a new room or service, you can make that room linkable to a page so that someone can click on that room name and see a full description. Note: The Link Color only applies to the Full List display style because the Small Calendars listing does not have any links.

3) Select a Text Size. Select the text size you want for your calendar. After you make your selection, make sure you double check the settings on your website to make sure that the calendar still fits on the page. The extra large text size, for example, may not be appropriate on the Full List display style because it may stretch out your page (given that all 28-31 days are listed on the calendar) depending on the page template or layout you select. But, it may be more appropriate if you are using the Small Calendars style.

4) Select Colors for Display Calendar. Here you can select the colors for just about everything. Pick the colors that will match the look of your website. You can see the default settings in the two calendars listed above.

5) Click on the Update Settings button when you finish.

6) Go to your website and double check your work. To see the changes, click on the Website Home icon at the top. Then click on the page where you added your availability calendar program.

Add New Listing

To add a New Listing or new service, click on the Add New Listing Link. Type in the listing name and click on the Submit button. You will also see your current listings listed.

Once you add your listing, the system will add this listing to the listing of Current Listings in the main Availability & Rental Calendar Management section.

Updating the Availability Calendar

Once you add your Listings, you must now tell your customers whether the particular Listings are Available, Pending or Reserved for certain dates.

Click on the Update Availability Calendar link in the main Availability & Rental Calendar Management section. You will see your calendar. The page includes all your Listings. You can select the whether the particular property/service is available, pending or reserved for a specific date.

To make the available, pending or reserved selection, find the Listing, find the date in the Calendar, and then click on the appropriate circle. The top circle is available, the center circle is pending and the third circle means reserved. As you click on the circles, the color in the Calendar will change to reflect your selection.

When you finish making your selections, click on the Update Availability button below the calendar. Then click on the Return to Management Area link to return back to the Main Management section.

If you need to make changes to a different month, select the Month from the drop down and click on the Submit button. Select a different Year from the drop down if you need to make changes to a different year and click on the Submit button.

Adding a Hyperlink to a Listing

There may be times when you want to provide more information about a particular Listing. If you rent several houses, for example, you may want people to be able to click on one of the houses to see more information.

To create this hyperlink, first you must get the url that you want people to go to when they click on the text. For example, if you want people to go to Google when they click on the Ballroom 1 link, first you need to get the url for Google which is: https://google.com. You can go to the address bar of your browser to find the url.

If you want to link to an internal url (i.e., one in your website), the you can get the url by clicking on the Edit Pages icon and then finding the url in the list of pages.

Once you find the url, highlight copy the full url.

Go back to your Availability & Rental Calendar Management section, find the Listing under the Current Listings section, and click on the Edit link. Click in the box next to Link Listing to Page Url and paste in the url you copied. Click on Update to save your settings.

Note: this hyperlink will only work on the Full List Display option setting. Notice that in the example below, Ballroom 1 is now linked. It appears pink because we set a different color for the link color and the color we selected was a shade of pink. You can change the link color by clicking on the Availability Calendar Colors & Settings link and then changing the color for the Link Color (see step 2 above).

Deleting a Listing

To delete a Current Listing, find the Listing under the Current Listings section in the main Availability & Rental Calendar Management section (the one you see when you click on the Manage Rental or Availability Calendar link under Manage Programs). When you find the listing, look across and click on the Delete link. Confirm that you would like to remove the listing.