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How to Create an Online Booking System in 24 Hours (or

Less)
By Kyla Steeves

October 22, 2020

Tips

Not going to lie; probably the biggest frustration with implementing an online booking system

is the configuration process. You have a unique business with specific requirements, and

reservation technology isn’t always a one-size-fits-all solution.

When choosing an online booking system, it’s important to consider whether it can handle

most of your business complexities. Take Checkfront, for instance. Our booking software

supports a wide variety of product types — including tours, activities, rentals, accommodation

or a mixture of everything.

Depending on your business, the set-up process could take time to figure out. But once you’re
over this hump, it gets so much easier. And with a free trial, you have 21 days to explore the

booking platform, familiarize yourself with its capabilities, and see if it’s a good fit before

making the jump.

To give you an idea of how to create an online booking system for your business, we’ll walk

through the steps of a basic configuration in Checkfront using a hypothetical example — The

London Experience:

1. Enter company details

2. Add products and inventory

3. Customize the Booking Page

4. Enable an online payment flow

5. Connect booking system to website

6. Automate booking notifications

7. Create digital waivers and documents

8. Assign users and commissions

9. Initiate reporting and analytics

10. Integrate other business tools

1. Enter company details

First things first, Leah, the business owner, creates an account for The London Experience. In

doing so, she can tailor the booking platform to her company’s time zone, base currency,

language, hours of operation, and more.

Using the Navigation menu, she clicks on Manage, then Setup and sees four tabs where she
can input essential business information:

1. Company: Leah enters her Company Name, Website URL, selects the Primary Industry
as Bus Tours and the Secondary Industry as Bed and Breakfast, and finally, adds

Contact Info, which includes her email address, phone number, and business location
 2. Locale: she selects Europe/London as the Time Zone, UK Pounds as Base Currency,
English as the Language, en_GB for the Locale, and the Date and Time Format that she

prefers
3. Configuration: with default settings already in place, she notices that she can configure
some of these options on a per-item basis and decides to skip this step for now

4. Calendar: after selecting Customize Hours Available, she clicks Open for every day of the
week and sets the hours of operation from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, designating the

timeframe for availability, not when guests can make bookings online (that’s always
24/7)

2. Add products and inventory

The London Experience offers over 20 different types of bookable experiences — ranging from
walking tours to bungee jumping to overnight stays in Manchester.

To keep everything organized in Checkfront, Leah creates four main Categories for all of her

products by going to Inventory, then Categories. Here are the categories she creates:

1. Tours
2. Activities

3. Rentals
4. Accommodation

Since Leah has done her homework and wants to use the Hero Page Booking Layout with the
Grid display for her website, she includes a photo and description for each category that best

represent the experiences that fall within. This makes it easier for guests to narrow their search
by selecting a category first on the Booking Page.
Next, she’s ready to add her products. In Checkfront, products are classified as Items, like a

walking tour, zipline course, kayak rental, deluxe queen room, and even a gift certificate or

merchandise. Leah starts with her most popular tour — a bus tour of London’s top sites.

The bus tour has two ticket types: Individual and Family (2 Adults and 2 Children). Rather than

have separate items on the Booking Page, Leah plans to create a Product Grouping with a

Parent Item called The Must-See Bus Tour of London, and two Child Items, one for each ticket.

That way, when someone goes to book the bus tour, they can either select the Individual or

Family Ticket option to see the appropriate price points — which makes for a more streamlined

booking experience.

(She can also do this if the bus tour has different durations to choose from, like a half-day and

full-day bus tour)

Heading over to Inventory, then Items, she clicks on +New Item to set up the first Child Item in
the Item Builder by following these steps:

Description

1. Category: since Leah created categories already, she simply selects Tours from the drop-

down menu

2. Item Name: the Parent Item will be called The Must-See Bus Tour of London, so she
names this Child Item, Individual Ticket

3. Summary: she leaves this blank because she’ll fill this in for the Parent Item, which will

display on the Booking Page

Media

Leah also skips this section, knowing that she’ll be able to add tour photos when creating the

Parent Item.

Attributes

1. Inventory: Leah sets the Inventory to 20 because there are only 20 seats available on the

bus
2. Parameters: to set different prices for adults and children, Leah creates two new

parameters, also known as guest types. In the pop-up form, Leah checks off all of the
 fields for both, from Guests to Controls Inventory, but only selects Required for the

Adult Parameter considering at least one adult must be present for the bus tour
3. Allocation: Leah clicks on Timeslots and adds two-hour timeslots starting with 9:00 am

to 11:00 pm, and the last as 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm — closing time. Under Timeslot Settings,

she selects Buttons for Booking Display and toggles on Show Unavailable Slots for the
Booking Page

Pricing

Leah charges guests on a per timeslot basis for the bus tour and sets the standard price for

adults at £60 and children at £50. To reward large group bookings with a discount, she also
adds a new group pricing for both the Adult and Child parameters (school field trips) by

entering the quantity of 11 to 20 with a £10 price reduction.

But she’s not done with pricing yet. Although The London Experience operates year-round,
they tend to get fewer bookings during the wettest months in England, October to January, so

Leah decides to offer a low season rate as well.

Under Item Events, she clicks on Create New Item Event and selects Seasonal Item Event

from the drop-down. In the pop-up form, Leah fills out the following:

1. Name: Low Season Rate

2. Price: Dynamic

3. Dynamic Price: she enters -15 and selects Percent

4. Applicable Days: since weekends are usually busy no matter what, she only checks
weekdays for the low season rate, then sets the start date as October 1st and end date,

January 31st

5. Ruleset: she doesn’t have any restrictions to enforce, but in the future, might consider

adding a Cutoff of one day to prevent same day bookings since she only has a skeleton
crew in the low season
6. Apply to: Leah applies the Item Event to the entire Tours Category because every tour

she’ll end up adding will need a low season rate

7. After double-checking the form, she hits Save and sees the new Pricing Table displayed

for reference

Before moving on, Leah turns on the Ecommerce toggle under Additional Options to allow

guests to pay at the time of booking.

Packages

Since the bus tour is the first Item Leah has created so far, she doesn’t have anything for an

Item Add-On but plans on creating an optional Photo Package that guests can include at a
discounted price. This add-an will show up on the Booking Form for the bus tour.
Nearly finished, Leah hits Save, then More and Copy, to work on the second Child Item.

Keeping mostly everything the same, she only:

changes the Item Name to Family Ticket

creates two Family parameters in Attributes, one that controls Inventory with a default

value of 4 (family size) and one that doesn’t with a default value of 1

enters a price of £200 per timeslot / per Family Ticket (2 adults + 2 children)

Parent Item

After completing both Child Items, Leah moves on to the Parent Item by copying the Family

Ticket and making the following changes:

1. Item Name: she gives the bus tour a descriptive name — The Must-See Bus Tour of

London — making sure to include the local target keyword (bus tour of London)

2. Summary: Leah writes a brief description that tells potential guests all about the bus
tour, and again, sprinkles a couple of keywords for SEO purposes because this text will

appear on the website

Leah can continue to the next step, but there are more details she wants to share with guests

for this particular tour, so she clicks Additional options.

1. Details: she adds more information about the bus tour, including a detailed outline of
the itinerary and on board amenities, like free snacks and wifi

2. Email Notification Details: knowing that she’ll want to automate email notifications for

this tour, Leah prepares a specific message which covers what guests need to know and

bring along for the ride. When she sets up a booking reminder email later, she just has to

insert the variable {$BOOKING_EXTRA_DETAILS} somewhere within the message, and

this information will auto-populate

3. More Info URL: Leah links to the FAQ page in case potential guests want to find out

more

4. Sort Order: Leah gives it a high number, ensuring that it will show up first on the

Booking Page because it’s her most popular tour

Since nothing convinces someone that a tour is worth booking than authentic yet professional

images of other guests enjoying the experience, Leah uploads a few different photos of the bus

tour in the Media section and even links to its promo video on YouTube.

As the Product Grouping Parent, this Item takes on the same Attribute and Pricing settings as

the Child Items. That means Leah doesn’t have to do anything else except add an Inventory

Control, which she can quickly do by entering the same quantity as before or toggle on Simple

Item under Additional Options in Attributes.

Once that’s complete, she skips right to Packages, where she selects Parent under Product
Grouping and both tickets, Individual and Family, under Child Items. Before hitting Save, Leah

also turns on Show child prices in dropdown under Product Group Pricing so that guests can

see the difference in pricing for Individual and Family Tickets right away.

3. Customize the Booking Page

Before adding every product, Leah wants to test the The Must-See Bus Tour of London on her

website. In order to do that, she must first set up the Booking Page, so she heads on over to

Manage, then Layout:

Branding

Leah uploads the London Experience logo, adds her company name for the Logo Text (what

appears next to the logo on the Booking Page), and changes the header to her primary brand

colour.

Booking Page

As previously mentioned, Leah likes the look of the Hero Page Booking Layout, so she clicks

Hero Page right away and completes the following:

Uploads a 1920×450 banner image that best represents the types of experiences her

company offers (she could also add a YouTube Background Video here instead)

Sneaking in a keyword for SEO, Leah enters the Hero Text Overlay (Booking Page

heading) as Guided Sightseeing Tours of London

since she plans on integrating a Booking Widget on her website, Leah selects Show hero

image/video on embedded pages

She chooses Tabs for Category Display, Tours for Category Default, Keyword Search for

Search Bar Options, and to create urgency; she also selects Number of items available

to customers under Show so that guests can see how many spots are left
 she completes the rest of the settings, which includes customizing the wording for Sold

Out and Unavailable Items

Booking Form

Leah adds the following form fields for the primary booker to fill out at the time of booking:

Name

Email

Address

How did you hear about us?

Since it’s best practice to keep the number of booking process steps to a minimum, she only

marks Name and Email as required fields so that the primary booker can get to checkout as

soon as possible. Lengthy booking forms only stand in the way.

Guest Form
Just because the Booking Form is short, it doesn’t mean that Leah can’t get all the specific

details she needs from guests. Instead of passing out paper forms at check-in, she can collect

important information ahead of time on a per guest basis with the Guest Form.

All she needs to do is activate the add-on under Manage and Integrations. Then, she can add

as many form fields as she wants, including things like Dietary Restrictions or Accommodation

Preference (for overnight tours).

How does it work?

After checkout, the primary booker lands on the Guest Details Page where they can either

submit each participant’s email address or share the link with members in a group chat. That

way, every guest can access the Guest Form to fill out in their own time (before check-in).

Invoice

Leah sets up the Booking Invoice — what the guest sees at checkout and in the booking

confirmation email — by entering a title, uploading her logo, adding company details
(including the ticket office address as the meeting point), and selecting the Pay Now Link
option.

Here’s where she also copies over the Booking & Cancellation Policy, which covers the
required deposit, refund and cancellation rules, and what happens in case of itinerary changes.

This will display at the bottom of the invoice, as well as the Booking Form where guests must
click to agree to the Terms and Conditions before continuing to checkout.
Statuses

Strictly for back-end administration, Leah customizes the Booking Statuses with labels and
colours that will make the most sense to her staff members.

4. Enable an online payment flow

To take partial payment at the time of booking, Leah must set up an online payment flow using
a supported payment processor like Square, PayPal, or Bambora.

In Checkfront, there are over 32 options available in 230 countries, but since she already uses

Stripe Terminal for her point of sale (POS) system, she integrates Stripe by going to Manage,
then Ecommerce Setup, and following the required steps.

Under Settings and Taxes, Leah also adds a 25% deposit and a value-added tax (VAT) of 7% for
tour products and 10% for accommodation.

5. Connect booking system to website

All looks good to go after a quick test! So, Leah goes ahead and adds the rest of her products in

Item Builder and embeds the Booking Widget on her website by generating a code from the
add-on found on the Integrations page.

6. Automate booking notifications

Rather than call or message each guest individually, Leah sets up automated email and text
notifications in Checkfront. Based on the Booking Status, each notification will trigger for a
different purpose:

Booking Confirmation: once a guest completes a reservation, they’ll get an email

confirmation with their Booking ID for future reference

Booking Receipt: after payment, either partial or full, the guest will receive the invoice in
their inbox

Booking Reminder: one day before check-in, the guest will get a reminder about their
upcoming booking, with everything they need to know about the tour, just in case they

forget
Thank-you: one day after the experience, they’ll receive a message thanking them for
joining the tour, along with a friendly ask to write an online review

Staff Assignment: notifications aren’t just for guests! Leah sets up one more specifically
for her operations manager to let them know of new bookings that need a tour guide

scheduled

Next, we’ll go over how to create automated notifications using the Booking Reminder email

as an example:

1. Leah goes to Manage, then Notifications and clicks + New Notification

2. Using email variables for the Subject line, she writes Reminder: {$BOOKING_ITEMS} on
{$BOOKING_DATE}, which will look like Reminder: The Must-See Bus Tour of London on

Mon Oct 12, 2020

3. She selects the Booking Status as Deposit and schedules the Booking Reminder for one

day before the booking start date

4. Leah adds the front desk’s email, info@thelondonexperience.com, as the From and
Reply-to address

5. She selects Customer as Recipient and applies the notification to all of her Tours,
Activities, Rentals, and Accommodation

6. In the Email Editor, Leah writes a customized message that includes the guest’s name,
booking date and time, an embedded map of the meeting spot, and the
{$BOOKING_EXTRA_DETAILS} she initially created in Item Builder
7. Create digital waivers and documents
The London Experience requires guests to sign liability and damage waivers for select products.
But like the Guest Form, Leah doesn’t like printing and filing paper waivers all the time, so she

activates the Waivers integration and creates Digital Waivers for them to sign online before
check-in:

1. She heads to Booking, then Waivers & Documents, and clicks on Create Template
2. In the pop-up, Leah names the form, Liability Waiver

3. After copying and pasting her current Liability Form, saved in Microsoft Word, she adds
editable fields for the guest to fill out, including Name, Date, Signature, and Minor’s
Section

4. Clicking on Configuration, Leah applies the Liability Waiver to all tours and activities,
writes a brief explanation for the guest, sets the Due Date as one day before the start

date, and schedules a reminder to go out two days before the due day
5. She previews the document, hits Save, and repeats the steps for the Damage Waiver,
except applies it to her rentals and accommodation instead
8. Assign users and commissions
Of course, Leah won’t be the only person using the booking system at her company. The front

desk staff, lead tour guide, and operations manager also need access. Not to mention, she has a
few hotel partnerships that make bookings on her behalf.

In her Checkfront Plan, Leah gets ten Staff Accounts and twenty Partner Accounts. To add
them to the system, she goes to Manage, then User Accounts and starts with the front desk

staff by clicking New Staff.

Staff Accounts

Although three different guest service agents run the front desk, they all share the same email,

info@thelondonexperience.com. That means Leah only needs to create one Staff Account —
named Front Desk. First name: Front. Last name: Desk. Brilliant, we know.

But since she doesn’t want to give them full access, she goes to Permissions, turns off the
Admin toggle, and manually de-selects the views she doesn’t want them to see, like Reports.

Partner Accounts

As for the concierges, she follows the same steps under Partner Accounts but creates a
separate account for each hotel and enables permissions to process payments for any of her

bookable products.

Then, she goes to Manage and Commissions to set up a New Commission Group specifically

for hotel partnerships. She labels the group Concierges, assigns it to the partner accounts she
just created and finally, enters the agreed-upon commission rates for each product in the
table.

Now, one of the vendors wants to sell The London Experience products on their website as well.

So, Leah lets them know that they can log into their account, go to Manage, then Integrations,
and follow the steps for embedding the Booking Widget, the same way she did initially.
9. Initiate reporting and analytics
Since Leah hasn’t launched yet, there are no bookings in the system for reporting and analytics.
But she can still customize the Daily Manifest, which will show all reservations each day,

including guest details, that she can print off for her tour guides and drivers to cross-reference.

Other reports include:

Sales Report

Transaction Report
Revenue Report
Booking Volume

Cashout Report
Occupancy Report

Booking Traffic
Commissions Report

and more!

(See, if Leah still had a spreadsheet booking system, she’d have to export information or bounce

between sheets constantly. Instead, all of her data is centralized in Checkfront).

10. Integrate other business tools
We’re not done yet! Because Checkfront acts as an ecosystem where Leah can house all of her
other business tools, she heads to Manage, then Integrations to start the process of
connecting each, one by one.

Here are the Checkfront Integrations she sets up, to name a few (or several):

Google Analytics: to track bookings in the E-commerce report so that she can better
analyze purchase activity and conversions

GetYourGuide: to sell her products on the online travel agent (OTA) platform in real-time
(she does this for Viator, Booking.com, and Expedia, too)
MyAllocator: to automatically manage inventory and availability across OTA channels

Xero: to sync booking invoices, guest records, and other transactions with her
accounting software

Facebook Advertising: to retarget almost-bookers with Facebook Ads that highlight the
products they showed interest in

MailChimp: to opt-in guests that subscribe to her newsletter mailing list during the
booking process
Zapier: to connect all of her different tour operator apps and automate repetitive

booking tasks
Zoho CRM: to keep guest records updated for every new booking that comes in

Currency Display: to display product prices on the Booking Page in a guest’s local
currency
 Ready to launch!
That’s it! Leah is ready to go live with online bookings for The London Experience. To see the

booking process in action, check out the next chapter.

Want to learn more about what you can do with an online booking
system?

Download the Complete Guide to Online Booking System

And learn all about this software, so you show up prepared for a free trial, already knowing what
business needs most.

Get your free copy

Next Chapter: Booking Process Steps

Previous Chapter: How Does Online Booking Work

Home: Everything you need to know about a Website Booking System

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