Tell Rentals & Bookings who works for you and what they use (guides, captains, drivers, boats, vehicles, rooms) and what each product needs. Every paid booking then becomes a job, and the staff screens show who is free, who is missing and where there is a clash.
Nothing changes for a store without staff: no new notices and no new required fields, and prices and availability stay as they were. The product’s Staff & resources tab and the Staff schedule appear once you add your first staff member or resource.
Add your staff #
- Open Rentals › Staff & resources. The Staff tab lists your staff.
- Click Add staff and fill in:
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Name | How the team calls them. |
| Email, Phone | An email or a phone number is enough. Give the phone with the country code (+1 555 …). |
| Skills | What they can do (“Captain”, “First aid”). A skill that is a certificate asks for its expiry date: after that day they are no longer suggested for it. Edit the skills opens the skill list. |
| Works at | With Multi Location Inventory: their home location and any other they work at. None: every location. |
| Hours | Our opening hours, or Their own hours per weekday (leave a day empty when they don’t work). A job outside their hours is allowed with a warning. |
| Most hours a day | More is allowed with a warning. Empty: no limit. |
| Color | Their color on the staff schedule. |
| Signs in as | Optional: the WordPress user who is this person, so they can see their own jobs on My Account › My schedule. |
| Status | Active, or Not active: gets no new jobs. |
| Notes | For you. |
- Click Add staff.
On a staff member’s page, Time off and Extra hours add a period (From, Until, an optional Reason), and Jobs this week lists their coming jobs. Archive removes someone from the lists; their past jobs stay on record and Restore brings them back.
Add your resources #
Resources are what a booking holds while it runs: a boat, a vehicle, a room.
- On Rentals › Staff & resources, open Resources and click Add resource.
- Fill in:
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Name | “Boat 1”, “Van with trailer”. |
| Type | A product asks for a type (“a boat”), and any free one of that type is suggested. Choose one or Another type…. A van for deliveries is the type Vehicle. |
| Seats | How many guests it takes. 0: it has no seats (a tool, a room for staff). |
| Also rented as | When customers can also rent it on its own (a boat hired bare). See Limit sales and resources also rented on their own. |
| Location | With Multi Location Inventory. |
| Available | Always, or Only these hours per weekday. |
| Color, Status (In use or Out of use: never suggested), Notes |
- Click Add resource. Blocked time on its page takes it out of use for a period (a repair).
Skills and settings #
- Skills: Add a skill, and tick It has an expiry date (a certificate) for a certificate. A skill can be renamed or archived.
- Settings: Staff confirm their jobs. On: new jobs wait for the staff member to accept or decline them on My schedule. Off (the default): jobs are confirmed when they are assigned, and staff only check in and add notes.
Say what a product needs #
Edit the product and open its Staff & resources tab. Click Add a requirement for each person or thing a booking needs:
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| How many | 1, 2 … |
| Who or what | Any staff member, a skill (“Captain”), Any resource or a resource type (“Boat”). |
| For | each booking, every … guests or every … items booked, with How many guests or items (“1 guide for every 12 guests”). |
| Seats | For a resource: Any size, or A seat for every guest. |
| When nobody is free | Track: sell anyway, the staff screens show what is missing. Limit sales: stops online sales when nobody qualified is free (staff can still book from the admin). See Limit sales. |
Under More options:
- Prep time before: minutes the staff and resources are needed before the booking starts (getting the boat ready). Customers don’t see it.
- Time after: minutes they stay busy after it ends (travel back, cleaning).
- Fill staff: Suggest who is free; nothing is assigned until you apply it, Assign automatically when a booking comes in, or By hand only.
The tab shows what a booking needs, for example “A booking with 14 guests needs: 1 × Captain, 2 × Guide, 1 × Boat with a seat for every guest”.
A tour sold by departure has one job per departure, not one per booking: its seats are the guests booked on it, and it moves or is cancelled with the departure.
