Calendar, under Bookings in the sidebar. One row per vehicle, time running across, so you can see what is out, what is free and where the gaps are.
Moving around
- Day, Week, 30 days, 90 days and 180 days change how much you see at once. 30 days is a rolling month from wherever you are, not a calendar month, so it does not jump to the 1st when you switch. 90 and 180 days are for planning a season rather than running a day: the columns are narrow, dates along the top are labelled weekly, and you can see where the whole fleet is quiet.
- Arrows move a period at a time; Today brings you back.
- Each day column shows its weekday, weekends are shaded, and today is circled.
- Your view choice is remembered, so the calendar opens the way you left it.
- The calendar fills the window. On a wide screen that is a lot more fleet; on a laptop, use the toggle beside your workspace name to collapse the sidebar to icons and hand the width to the grid. That choice is remembered too.
Reading a booking bar
A bar reads surname, then the last four digits of the reference, and a route where the hire is one-way (CHC→AKL) or starts and ends somewhere other than the vehicle's usual base (@OAM). A short bar drops parts rather than cutting words, down to the customer's initials. Hover any bar for the full reference, the dates and the customer.
Routes use your locations' short codes. If a location has none, the location settings page suggests one from its name.
How many are free, day by day
Each group heading carries a count per day: how many of that class you could still sell. A red 0 is sold out and an amber 1 is your last one. Days with two or more free show a plain tint with no digit, so the row does not compete with the bookings underneath. Hover a day for the exact count.
The count subtracts hires, holds, maintenance, transfers and unallocated bookings, because an unallocated booking already has a customer and will take a vehicle as soon as someone assigns one. So the number is what you can still sell, not how many rows look empty.
Giving a booking a car
A booking made on your website usually picks a vehicle group, "small SUV", rather than a specific car. Somebody has to say which one. That is this screen.
Bookings with no vehicle sit in a lane above each group's vehicles. If the group sells by class, the lane is your normal working list and reads Needs allocation. If the group sells a specific vehicle, a booking sitting there is a mistake, and it reads No vehicle assigned in red so it stands out.
Click the booking and use the allocation field in the panel that opens, or drag it straight onto a vehicle row.
Two rules apply, and they are enforced rather than advisory:
- the vehicle has to be in the group the customer booked, and
- it has to be actually free for those dates.
A car that fails either is not offered. If nothing is offered at all, every vehicle in that group is committed for the window, and you are looking at a real capacity problem rather than a screen problem.
Moving a booking by dragging it
Pick a booking up and drop it where you want it: sideways to shift its dates, or onto another vehicle in the same group to reallocate it. This is a mouse and trackpad gesture; on a touch screen the same swipe scrolls the calendar.
Dragging never saves on its own. Letting go opens a summary of exactly what would change: old and new dates, old and new vehicle, anything that would stop the move, and what it does to the total. Nothing is written until you press Move booking, and everything is checked again at that moment, so if a colleague took the vehicle while the summary was open the move stops rather than double-booking it.
You choose how the move is priced, with the same three choices and the same default as changing dates on the booking itself:
- Keep the booked price. The total the customer agreed to. Nothing about the money changes.
- Keep their daily rate for the new dates. Their rate times the new number of nights, with no season change or last-minute premium. The right choice when you are moving a booking to suit yourself.
- Reprice at current rates. Quote the new dates as if booked today.
Each option shows the total it would produce. For a bespoke amount, open the booking.
Some moves are refused because the calendar is the wrong place to make them: dropping a booking on a different vehicle group, moving a completed or cancelled booking, and swapping the vehicle on a hire that is already out. A booking where the customer chose that specific vehicle asks you to tick an override before the swap goes through.
Starting a pickup or return from the calendar
Click a booking bar to open its panel. On a confirmed booking it offers Start pickup; on a hire that is out it offers Start return. If the pickup handover was never completed, Start return is shown greyed out with the reason underneath rather than looking available and bouncing you back. Open booking and Call are there for everything else.
See Hand a vehicle over at pickup and Take a vehicle back at return for the flows themselves.
Where each vehicle is
Each vehicle row shows which location it is at. A solid segment is confirmed: somebody recorded a handover there, or marked a transfer completed. A dashed segment is assumed: the booking says the vehicle should be back, but no one has checked it in. A vehicle with no history shows no segment at all; its set-up base is still on the row's location chip. Hover a segment to see which it is. On the 90 and 180-day ranges the segments are hidden because they are too thin to read.
Taking a car off the road
Click the vehicle's row to open the hold panel. This is how you record maintenance, a service, owner use, or a transfer between branches.
Set the window and save. From then on that vehicle is not bookable for those dates, not on your website, and not by you at the counter. Click an existing hold to change or cancel it.
A hold cannot be placed over a booking that already exists. If you try, Glovebox tells you which booking is in the way. Move or cancel the booking first, or narrow the hold around it.
Conflicts and overdue
Two panels open from the calendar:
- Conflicts: vehicles double-booked, or with too little turnaround between hires. Worth clearing before it becomes a phone call from a customer standing in your car park.
- Overdue: cars that should have come back and have not.
Filters
- Location narrows to one branch.
- Show unavailable brings in vehicles that are not currently bookable, so you can see the whole fleet rather than only the working part.
- Show cancelled overlays cancelled bookings, which is how you check whether a gap is genuinely free or something that fell through.
- Density tightens or loosens the rows for a big fleet, and vehicle groups can be collapsed.
If it did not work
- A vehicle is missing. It is filtered out. Check the location filter, and turn on Show unavailable.
- You cannot allocate the car you wanted. It is either not in the booked group, or not free for those dates. Both are deliberate.
- A drag will not drop. The target is a different group, the booking is completed or cancelled, or the hire is already out. The summary names the reason.
- A hold will not save. A booking overlaps the window you asked for. The message names it.
- Transfers are not there. Moving vehicles between branches is a module that has to be switched on first.
- The bars have no route codes. Give your locations a short code on the location settings page.