Making a Property Bookable

A meeting room, an event hall, a short-stay apartment — some spaces are reserved by the day or the hour rather than leased for a term. In REDA that's booking, and you switch it on with a single checkbox that brings a small set of companion requirements with it. This article shows you how to make a property bookable: the switch and the fields it demands, how to price bookings and raise an invoice per reservation, how to shape the booking screen with slot rules and minimums, and how not to confuse booking with the two neighbouring switches it sits beside. Every requirement is a real check REDA enforces, so we quote the exact message each one raises. No prior REDA experience is assumed.

What "bookable" means

Booking and leasing solve different problems. A lease gives a tenant a property for a term — months or years — and bills rent on a schedule. A booking is a time-boxed reservation: someone takes the space for a day or a few hours, then it's free again for the next booker. Conference rooms, amenity spaces, function halls and short-stay units are the classic candidates.

Making a property bookable doesn't stop it being anything else — it simply adds the ability to take reservations against it. What it does require is that REDA knows how to price a booking and how to slot the calendar, which is why turning the switch on brings companions with it. We'll take them in the order REDA asks for them.

The booking switch and its companions

The switch is Available For Booking. Tick it and REDA runs two checks before it will save.

First, it needs to know what to charge for. Booking prices are anchored to a Leasing Rule — the property's reusable rulebook of charge codes and timing — and specifically to a Booking Charge Code named on that rule. If the property has no leasing rule, or its rule has no booking charge code, REDA stops you:

Attach a leasing rule that carries a booking charge code (see Leasing Rules) and the first check clears.

Second, REDA needs to know how the space is reserved. That's the Booking Type field, which appears once the switch is on and offers two choices you can pick together:

Leave it empty and REDA won't make the property bookable:

Pick one or both — a space can be bookable by the day, by the hour, or either way.

Invoicing bookings

Whether a booking raises money is up to you. The Create Booking Invoice checkbox tells REDA to raise an invoice automatically for each booking taken against the property. Turn it on and the rate fields become mandatory, matched to your booking type:

If your bookings are free, or you price them somewhere else, leave Create Booking Invoice off — the rates aren't required when invoicing is off. When invoicing is on, anything you type into Billing Comments (Booking) is carried onto every booking invoice, so it's the place for standard terms or notes you want the booker to see on their bill.

Slots and minimums

Two more fields shape how the booking calendar behaves. A Booking Slot Rule defines the days, time windows and slot lengths a space can be booked in — 9-to-5, hour-long slots, weekdays only, and so on. It has to be a rule built specifically for booking; hand it a rule meant for another purpose and REDA refuses it:

Showings and maintenance use slot rules of exactly the same kind, each scoped to its own use, so you can't cross-use them here (see Calendar & Slot Rules). The related SYS Minimum Slot Duration sets the shortest booking length, in minutes, and sizes the slots the booking screen offers.

What bookers see

Three text fields decide what shows up when someone is choosing and confirming a booking:

Bundling small units onto leases instead

Booking sits next to a switch it's easy to confuse it with, so it's worth drawing the line clearly. Available for Child Leasing lets a small unit — a parking bay, a store — be added onto a tenant's main lease, so it bills on the same single invoice as their rent. That is not booking, and it's not the same as making a unit available for leasing on its own either. Three independent switches, three different jobs:

They're independent — a space can use one, two, or none of them — so pick by the job, not by proximity on the form.

Worked example: Harbour Tower Conference Room A

Harbour Tower Conference Room A is a meeting room to be opened for both full-day and hourly reservations, billed per booking. Here's the setup, and the errors it walks past on the way:

Error reference

Every check REDA runs when you make a property bookable, and what clears it:

Where to go next

1. Creating a Booking — take a reservation against a bookable property.
2. Calendar & Slot Rules — build the booking, showing and maintenance slot rules and their windows.
3. Making a Property Available for Leasing — the leasing sibling of this switch.
4. Booking Invoices — how a per-booking invoice is raised and priced.

Frequently asked questions