Checkfront 3.3.2, our latest update, contains a new feature called product grouping. It can streamline your booking page, making it far more visually appealing and easier to use. Here’s how to set it up and why it can work for you.
Here’s a very common situation for Checkfront users: they run a two-hour tour which leaves four times per day. Due to Checkfront’s setup, users have had to create multiple versions of the same item in order to specify a start time, or to differentiate between a morning and evening tour. With product groupings, all of these iterations of the product will be grouped as ‘Child’ items under one ‘Parent’ item, and that Parent will be the only thing shown on the booking page—a much cleaner interface. When a customer books the tour, they’ll have the opportunity to pick their preferred start time from the booking form.
In order to create product groupings, your first step should be to create your child items. This will likely be very easy to do, as you probably already have them in your inventory—they are the items you’ve been using for bookings. In our example, we’ll look at a scooter rental company which books in two-hour windows, so we’ve created four items for the rentals at 9am, 11am, 1pm, and 3pm. Set the quantity and price of each item according to your availability, as normal. The allocation is ‘Day’ in this case, because the rental periods are concrete two-hour blocks.
Next, you’ll create the parent item. This is the item which will show up on the booking screen, from which your customers will be able to choose their options. Create a new item in the category of your choice, set the Allocation to ‘Day’, leave the Quantity area blank, and do not set any pricing for this parent item (the Pricing tab will disappear once this item is designated as a Parent). This ensures that the information from each child item will show up correctly when selected. Then, in the ‘Package’ tab, select ‘Parent’ in the Product Grouping drop-down menu. A second menu of child items will then show up underneath, and you’ll be able to select the child items that will tie in to this parent.
Product groupings are as easy as that. Once they have been designated, Child items will not show up on your booking page on their own; you don’t have to alter their availability settings, and if you check a Child item you will see that they are automatically labeled in the Package tab. You can still maintain each separate iteration of your product as you did before, which can be very useful for tracking metrics. Adjusting the Parent item does not automatically update the Child items; any changes to your product must be made to every iteration, as before.
With product grouping, you can significantly clean up your booking page by using filter questions and conditional fields and make it far clearer to customers—and that’s always a plus. With just a few changes, you’ll have a more streamlined booking system that will be less cluttered and easier to navigate. When it comes to getting bookings online, that’s exactly the sort of interface you want!
For more information on product groupings, visit our Item Builder.
Take your business to the next level
Online bookings. Flexible pricing. Outstanding support.
