Price previews for online booking

Price previews can be enabled by users with Director-level permissions or any user with the Edit prices of items, availabilities, and custom fields permission enabled. This permission can be enabled for a permission group under Setup when editing the permission group or creating a new permission group.

If you would like to enable price previews:

1. Navigate to your Dashboard Settings.
2. Click the cog icon in the top right corner of your screen to access your Advanced company settings.
3. Select Pricing from the Advanced company settings menu.
4. Check the Automatic online price previews box.
5. Click Save changes.

Once you enable price previews in your Advanced company settings, you also have the option to:

• Include booking fees in price previews
• Include taxes in price previews
• Show no price as “Free”
• Enable price previews on small calendars
• Enable price previews on availabilities

How prices are determined

The price range and price previews displayed for an item are determined by the next bookable availability for the current price sheet. The lowest customer type price that is not $0 and the highest priced customer type that is not exclusive will be used.

Prices do not include taxes or booking fees unless your Dashboard is set up to include taxes (when taxes are included, prices will include the taxable amount).

In the example below, the lowest price is taken from the Youth customer type ($60) and the highest price is taken from the Adult customer type ($80). There is also a Private Charter option on the item at $200, but because the customer type is exclusive, it is not included in the price range.

How prices are localized

Prices are localized based on the language in which the customer is viewing the book form. Language is auto-detected using the customer’s browser settings, but customers can manually change their preferred language using the menu at the bottom of the book form. Learn more about translation and online booking.

In the example below, the company’s prices are in USD and the customer’s language is set to French:

Price previews with search by date enabled

When search by date is enabled, the price range is shown below each item name when viewing all items for a given date. For items using dynamic pricing rules, the price range reflects the least and most expensive pricing across all availabilities and their active rules for that day.

Price previews on default item pages

On default item pages, price previews (including exclusive customer types, if applicable) are shown above the item description. The prices displayed will be the price for the next bookable availability on the calendar.

Customer types with no price will not show a price preview by default. If you would like to display these customer types as “Free” instead, check the Show no price as “Free” box under Automatic online price previews in the Advanced company settings.

Hiding price previews on items

Additionally, price previews can be hidden per item by any user with Director-level permissions.

To hide price previews on an item:

1. Navigate to Items.
2. Click Listing.
3. Select Basic info.
4. Check the Hide automatic online price previews for this item box.

Price previews on availabilities

Availability level price previews show price ranges for search by date and default item pages when a customer selects a date from the calendar. For availabilities using dynamic pricing rules, price ranges are based on the least and most expensive price based on the current active rule or sheet.

Price previews on the small calendar

When price previews are enabled, you also have the option to enable price previews for the small online calendar that appears in the booking flow. This provides customers with an at-a-glance view of the price for an activity without having to click on a date.

Price previews on the small calendar can be enabled by users with Director-level permissions or any user with the Edit prices of items, availabilities, and custom fields permission enabled.

To enable small calendar price previews:

1. Navigate to your Dashboard Settings.
2. Click the cog icon in the top right corner of your screen to access your Advanced company settings.
3. Select Pricing from the Advanced company settings menu.
4. Check the Price previews on small calendars box.
5. Click Save changes.

The price displayed on the small calendar is determined based on one of the following conditions:

• If no customer types have Use for price preview starting price enabled, the lowest-priced customer type will be used.
• If one customer type has Use for price preview starting price enabled, that price will be used.
• If multiple customer types have Use for price preview starting price enabled, the lowest-priced customer type’s pricing will be used.

• When a customer browses your activities, price previews are based on the current date and the next bookable availability.
  • In the search by date view, price previews are based on the date the customer is viewing and the lowest priced availability on the selected date.
  • For example, a customer looking at activities for July 4th will see prices for the next available time starting on that date (such as July 4th at 11am).
• FareHarbor finds the next bookable availability by searching the next 30 availabilities (starting at midnight on the relevant date) set to a change status of Auto close or Open override. If none of these availabilities are bookable, FareHarbor will not display a price.

• Price previews will not display in some cases. For example, no price preview will show if an item has no future bookable availabilities, or if all of the future bookable availabilities have a change status of Closed & Call to book or Closed & hidden.
• Price previews are not shown on retail items.
• Exclusive customer type prices will display on the item description page. However, their prices will not be included in the item grid or search by date views.

Once price previews are enabled, they will be shown for all priced items by default. To turn off price previews for an item, go to Listing > Basic Info in the item’s settings and select “Hide automatic online price previews for this item”.

• Pricing information often lives in the item description or headline, where it can get outdated easily. Whenever possible, prices in item descriptions and headlines should be avoided, and price previews should be used instead. There are several reasons for this:
  • Descriptions can easily get out of date if pricing is changed in the Dashboard.
  • Prices in descriptions are harder to localize by country/language. If a customer in the US is reading the description of a tour offered by a German company, they will still see prices in Euros, unless the company has added an English translation with currencies localized to USD (which then multiplies the number of descriptions that now need to be kept up to date).
  • Not including prices in descriptions saves time for Onboarding and Quality Control!
• All NEW Dashboards moving forward should be onboarded with “Automatic online price previews” enabled. FH Admins and company users should refrain from adding prices in item descriptions and headlines and use price previews instead.
• If updating any EXISTING LIVE Dashboards, it is critical to remove the pricing from the headlines and descriptions of the items. It will be redundant and could potentially show discrepancies with the pricing.
• Enabling “Show no price as ‘Free’ ” should not be used unless applicable to all items on the Dashboard. This option is set at the company level only, and isn’t controlled per item.

Things to consider

• Items that have pricing on custom fields, not the customer type, would not be good fits for this. Once price previews are enabled, they will be shown for all priced items by default. You can also turn off price previews for an item.
• Dashboards with inconsistent customer types on their availabilities might not be a great fit for price previews. If enabled, display of customers can be inconsistent with what is offered.
  • Example: For a Dashboard that has rental items, different duration customer types on each hourly availability can make it appear like these companies offer only 1 customer type (whichever is attached to the next availability), when in reality they offer many depending on the availability.
• If a Dashboard has over 30 availabilities in one day and the online booking cutoff cannot be shortened to allow more availabilities to be bookable that day it might not be a great fit for price previews.
  • In these cases price previews will not appear and can be turned off at the Dashboard or item level. Once turned off, pricing can be added to item descriptions and headlines as we have historically done before price previews.
• Dashboards or items using price schedules where price changes occur regularly may be ineffective at accurately or transparently communicating pricing using price previews. In many of these cases, price previews will need to be disabled on the Dashboard or specific items.

Please check the FareHarbor Internal Changelog for updated information about Best Practices. For more information about the development and communication of best practices related to any features, please see the Best Practice Communications Cheatsheet.