Venue Booking & Facility Rentals

While programs and classes organize groups of participants, the Venue Booking & Facility Rentals module manages the physical assets of your organization. This module allows members and staff to reserve specific spaces—ranging from single community rooms and gym courts to multi-space packages like birthday party setups, batting cages, and individual pool lanes.

1. The Facility Hierarchy & Location Model

To ensure accurate scheduling and clean reporting, all rentable assets are anchored in your organization's physical structure:

• The Chain of Command: Rentable spaces roll up through a clean hierarchical model: Branch > Site > Venue > Subvenue.

• Subvenue Precision: Venues are the main physical structures (e.g., the Indoor Pool), while Subvenues represent the specific subdivisions (e.g., Lane 1, Lane 2).

• Combined Availability: For assets with identical spaces—such as a facility with eight batting cages or multiple pool lanes—the system can use Combined Availability logic. This allows multiple users to book individual subvenues concurrently up to the combined physical limit of the parent venue, preventing staff from having to manage each slot manually.

2. Rental Configurations & Scheduling Controls

When setting up a venue for rent, administrators configure a series of operational boundaries to protect the facility and ensure staff are prepared:

• Time Constraints: To maintain control over the calendar, you can customize the timing rules for each venue:

  • Slot Duration: The default interval block available for booking (e.g., 30-minute or 60-minute increments).

  • Booking Durations: The minimum and maximum allowable reservation blocks (e.g., a user must book at least 1 hour, but cannot exceed 3 hours).

  • Notice Requirements: The required lead time (hours, days, or weeks) before a booking can be made. This prevents last-minute, unstaffed bookings from appearing on your calendar.

• Prerequisites & Dynamic Forms: If a space requires safety waivers, liability agreements, or setup questionnaires, you can attach any custom form directly to the checkout flow. The system will block the booking until the forms are completed.

• Rental Add-ons: You can associate optional physical items (such as ball rentals, projectors, or towel service) that users can optionally purchase at checkout to customize their reservation.

3. The Rental Pricing Engine

Memberworks accommodates complex rental fee structures beyond simple flat hourly rates:

• Scheduled Pricing Rules: You can configure variable rates based on high-demand periods. For example, the system can automatically apply premium pricing for evening and weekend slots while offering discounted rates during off-peak morning hours.

• Standard Rental Fees: You can attach standardized administrative or maintenance fees (such as a flat clean-up fee) that are configured globally at the organization level.

4. Booking Workflows & Administrative Approvals

Organizations can choose between two primary operational models for managing reservations:

• Booked Without Approval (Direct Booking): The reservation is instantly confirmed and placed on the calendar as soon as the member completes their payment online.

• Requires Approval (Request-First Model): The booking is placed in a "Pending Request" state. Managers can review the request, check staff availability, and manually approve or reject the booking.

• Administrative Control: From the back-office dashboard, staff have full authority to override bookings. If a facility emergency occurs, staff can manually reschedule bookings, adjust the times, apply manual discounts, or cancel reservations—notifying the affected members automatically.

System Setup Checklist for Chapter 11

• Hierarchy Check: Are your rentable subvenues (like individual batting cages or courts) correctly mapped under their parent venue?

• Notice Safeguards: Have you configured realistic "Notice" windows to ensure your staff has enough lead time to prep rooms for rentals?

• Form Mapping: If a venue requires a safety waiver, is the correct form attached as a prerequisite to the rental asset?

• Scheduled Pricing Audit: Double-check your "Scheduled Pricing Rules" to confirm that off-peak and peak hourly rates apply at the correct times of day.