Every vehicle group is sold one of two ways, and you choose which on the group itself.
Vehicle class is how Glovebox has always worked. The customer books the group, any vehicle in it satisfies the booking, and you assign the actual car whenever it suits you. This is what large fleets want: someone books a "Compact automatic" and you give them whichever compact is clean and on the forecourt.
Individual vehicles sells the car itself. The customer sees each vehicle as its own card with its own photo and its own price, picks the one they want, and that is the car they have bought. It is what you want when the cars are genuinely different to a customer: a Porsche 911 and a Mazda MX-5 are both "sports cars", but nobody books one expecting the other.
Groups are set to Vehicle class by default, so nothing changes until you decide otherwise.
Before you start
You need a vehicle group with at least one vehicle in it. Decide which of the two descriptions above fits the group, because the choice changes three things at once: what the customer sees, how the price is worked out, and whether you can move the car afterwards.
If you have been following the old advice of putting every differently-priced vehicle in its own group, you no longer need to. Those one-car groups still work, but you can now put the cars back together in one group and price them separately. There is a report that lists them, covered at the end of this guide.
Where to find it
In the left sidebar, open Vehicle groups (under Assets), then open the group you want to change. The setting is Sell as, in the same section as the daily hire rate.
The Vehicle groups list also shows a Sold as badge, so you can see at a glance which groups sell a named car.
Steps
Turn a group over to individual vehicles
- Open Vehicle groups and click the group.
- Under Sell as, choose Individual vehicles.
- Click Save.
That is the whole change. Every vehicle in the group now appears on your booking page as its own card.
Give one vehicle its own price
- Open Vehicles in the sidebar and click the vehicle.
- Go to the Pricing & hire terms tab.
- In This vehicle's daily hire (incl. GST), enter the rate for this car.
- Click Save.
Leave the field blank and the car uses the group's rate. You only need to fill it in for the cars that differ.
The field only appears when the vehicle's group is set to Individual vehicles. That is deliberate: in class mode the customer is buying any car in the group, so a per-vehicle price would make the same product cost different amounts depending on which car you happened to hand over.
How the price is worked out
The per-vehicle rate replaces the base rate, and nothing else. Every pricing rule you already have still applies on top of it, in the same order and by the same amounts:
- Seasonal rules still move it.
- Length-of-hire discounts still apply.
- Day-of-week rules still apply.
- Demand pricing still applies if you have it on.
- Coupons, extras, insurance, one-way fees and over-mileage all behave exactly as before.
So if the Porsche is $400 a day and you run a 10% peak-season rule, the Porsche prices at $440 in peak season. The override is the starting number, not the final one.
A "from" price shows the cheapest bookable car in the group. If the MX-5 is $180 and the Porsche is $400, a listing showing the group reads from $180. Cars that cannot be booked, for example retired or sold ones, never set that price, so you can never advertise a rate nobody can take.
What the customer sees
On a Vehicle class group, one card for the group, with or similar after the name so it is clear they are booking a class and not the pictured car.
On an Individual vehicles group, one card per available car. Each shows that car's name, its own photo where it has one, and its own price for the dates they searched. Cars that are already booked for those dates are not shown at all, rather than shown greyed out.
If you sell some groups one way and some the other, they appear together in one list in your usual order. Customers do not see any of the mechanics.
What changes after a booking is made
This is the part that matters most, and it is the reason to think before switching.
When a customer books from an Individual vehicles group, the booking is locked to that vehicle. They bought that car, so Glovebox will not quietly move them onto another one.
In practice:
- Automatic reallocation skips the booking. Nothing in the background will reassign the car.
- On the fleet calendar, allocating a different vehicle to that booking is refused, with a warning that the customer booked this specific vehicle. You can still do it by ticking the override.
- On the booking's edit page, changing the vehicle brings up a confirmation naming both cars: the one they chose and the one you are moving them to.
- When you do change it, the booking is repriced at the new car's rate and you are told the difference, and both vehicles are written to the booking's history so there is a record of what happened and who did it.
None of this applies to Vehicle class bookings. Those stay fully reallocatable, exactly as now.
Switching a group back to Vehicle class
You can switch back at any time, and new bookings will sell the class again.
Bookings already taken stay locked to their car. Those customers bought a named vehicle, and changing a setting afterwards does not change what they were sold. When you switch, Glovebox tells you how many existing bookings stay locked, so the behaviour is not a surprise later.
Switching the other way, from class to individual, does not lock anything retrospectively either. A booking sold as a class was sold as a class.
Finding the groups you split up
If you previously made a group per car so each one could have its own price, those groups are worth revisiting: most of them can now be folded back into one group set to Individual vehicles.
Open Vehicle groups and sort by the Vehicles column. Anything showing 1 is a group of one. The Sold as badge beside it tells you whether it is already selling the car by name.
Whether a one-car group should join a larger individual-mode group is your call. A Jimny that sits alongside four other Jimnys probably belongs with them; a camper that is genuinely the only one of its kind is fine on its own.
A group of one that Glovebox creates for you, when you add a vehicle without choosing a group, is set to Individual vehicles automatically, since a group made for one specific car is selling that car.
Showing individual vehicles on your own website
Switching a group to Individual vehicles changes three places at once.
Your Glovebox booking page shows one card per car automatically. Nothing to configure.
The fleet grid you embed on your own site does too. If you have the Glovebox fleet embed on a WordPress, Squarespace or Wix page, each bookable car in an individual-mode group now appears as its own tile, with its own photo and its own price, and its Book button opens the booking page with that car already chosen. Class groups stay as one tile with a "from" price, exactly as before, so a mixed fleet shows both.
A link to one specific car. Every vehicle has its own page on your Glovebox site:
https://yoursite.co.nz/vehicles/the-car-slug
That page shows the car's photos and specs with a Book button that pins that car. It is the link to use in a Facebook post, an email or a "Book this one" button on a page you built yourself. You can find it by opening the vehicle in Glovebox and using its public link.
The embed and the direct link both work whichever mode the group is in. The difference is that in class mode the customer is choosing a class and you assign the car, so a link to one car is a starting point rather than a promise. In individual mode the car they clicked is the car they get.
What you should see when it worked
Open your booking page and search dates the cars are free for. An individual-mode group shows one card per car, each with its own price. A class group shows one card with or similar after the name.
Back in the admin, the Vehicle groups list shows the Sold as badge, and the Vehicles list shows each car's daily rate labelled either this vehicle or from group, so you can see which price is actually being used.
If it did not work
- The per-vehicle price field is not there. It only shows when the vehicle's group is set to Individual vehicles. Check the group first.
- I set a per-vehicle price and the customer was quoted something else. The override is the base rate, not the final price. A seasonal, length-of-hire or day-of-week rule, or demand pricing, will move it. Check Pricing rules for a rule covering those dates.
- I set a per-vehicle price and nothing changed at all. The group is probably still on Vehicle class, where overrides are ignored on purpose. The field can hold a value in class mode so you can set your prices up before you switch the group over.
- Only one card shows for a group I set to individual. Every other car in the group is unavailable for those dates. Cars that cannot be booked are not listed.
- I cannot change the vehicle on a booking. It was sold as a named vehicle. Use the override on the fleet calendar, or confirm the change on the booking's edit page. It will reprice.
- The price changed when I swapped the vehicle. That is intended in individual mode: the new car has its own rate. The difference is shown to you at the time, and both cars are recorded in the booking's history.