Booking rules - Plugixa Car Rental

The booking rules decide how a rental’s days are counted, how long a car needs between two rentals, how long a car is held for a customer who is still booking, and how soon and how far ahead customers may book.

Open Settings -> Booking rules.

“How rentals are counted, spaced and held. Desk bookings ignore the lead time and the booking horizon.”

The rules

Rule	Unit	Default	Limits
Grace period	minutes	59	0 to 240
Turnaround	minutes	60	0 to 1440 (one day)
Hold time	minutes	15	1 to 240
Minimum notice	minutes	120	0 to 43200 (30 days)
Booking horizon	days	365	1 to 1095 (three years)
Shortest rental	days	1	1 to 365
Longest rental	days	90	1 to 1000
Reference prefix		CR-	Letters, digits and dashes, up to 10 characters

A number outside its limits is not refused: it is saved as the nearest limit. A Shortest rental longer than the Longest rental raises the longest to match, since otherwise no rental could ever be booked.

The rules are saved with the Save button at the top of the screen, together with the other settings.

Grace period

“Lateness forgiven before another day is charged.”

A rental is charged in 24-hour blocks from the pickup time. Time over the last full block is charged as another day only when it is longer than the grace period. With 59 minutes, a car picked up on Monday at 10:00:

Returned	Days charged
Tuesday 10:59	1
Tuesday 11:00	2

Set it to 0 to charge another day for any time over a full block. The full rule, with more examples, is on the Rates page.

The grace period decides the number of days everything per-day is charged for: the rate and per-day extras. It also decides the length checked against Shortest rental, Longest rental, a coupon’s shortest rental and the rate bracket.

Turnaround

“Time a car needs between two rentals.”

Cleaning, refuelling and the walk round. A car is not given to a new rental that starts less than this long after another rental of it ends, or that ends less than this long before another one starts. With 60 minutes, a car returned at 12:00 can go out again from 13:00.

It applies to bookings only. It does not add time around a period a car is blocked.

Hold time

“How long a car is kept for a customer who is still booking.”

When a customer has picked a car on the booking form (and its extras, if you offer any) and moves on to the Details step, a Pending booking is created and a car is held for them. Nobody else can have that car while the hold lasts. The customer then has this long to enter their details and choose how to pay.

If they take longer:

• the car is released straight away and can be booked by somebody else;
• if they finish anyway, the plugin looks for a free car at that moment. If there is one they get it. If not: “The hold on this car ran out and it has been booked by someone else. Choose another car or other dates.”;
• a Pending booking whose hold has run out is marked Expired by a background task that runs every hour.

A customer who goes back with Choose another car releases the hold at once: the Pending booking is marked Expired and the car is free again without waiting for the hold time.

Bookings created by staff in the admin have no hold time. They hold their car until they are confirmed or cancelled.

Minimum notice

“The soonest a customer may book a pickup.”

The time between now and the pickup must be at least this long. With 120 minutes, at 09:00 the earliest pickup a customer can book is 11:00. Refused with “Pickups must be booked at least 2 hours ahead.” At 0, any time not yet passed is allowed: “That pickup time has already passed.”

Booking horizon

“The furthest ahead a customer may book.”

The pickup must be no more than this many days from now. Refused with “Pickups can be booked at most 365 days ahead.”

Shortest rental and longest rental

The number of billable days must be between the two. Refused with “Rentals are at least 3 days.” or “Rentals are at most 90 days.”

Billable days are counted with the grace period, so with a Shortest rental of 2 and the default grace period, Monday 10:00 to Tuesday 10:30 is one day and is refused, while Monday 10:00 to Tuesday 11:30 is two days and is accepted.

Reference prefix

“Letters, digits and dashes, e.g. CR- gives CR-2026-0001.”

Every booking gets a reference made of the prefix, the year the booking was made and the booking’s number, at least four digits long: ADR-2026-0001. The prefix is turned into capitals and anything other than letters, digits and dashes is removed. It can be left empty, which gives references such as 2026-0001.

Changing the prefix applies to bookings made from then on. Existing bookings keep their reference, because it is printed on confirmations and invoices and customers quote it.

The number is the booking’s own number in the database, so it does not restart each year and is not free of gaps: a booking abandoned on the form still uses its number. Invoice numbers are the ones that run without gaps.

Who the rules apply to

Rule	Customers on the booking form	Staff in the admin
Grace period	yes	yes
Turnaround	yes	yes
Hold time	yes	no, staff bookings are not held on a timer
Minimum notice	yes	no
Booking horizon	yes	no
Shortest and longest rental	yes	yes
Opening hours of the locations	yes	yes

In what order a search is checked

When a customer searches, the request is checked in this order and the first failure is shown next to the field it is about: the locations, the dates and times, the return being after the pickup, Minimum notice, Booking horizon, the opening hours of both locations, then Shortest rental and Longest rental. See Locations for the location checks.