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Change the rate by day of the week

A multiplier per weekday per vehicle class, the switch on the duration band that turns them on, and why the result is averaged into one daily rate

8 min read

What this page covers

  • A factor per weekday
  • Turning it on per band
  • Days with no factor

Introduction

Some days are worth more than others. A weekend hire fills the car park on a Friday and empties it on a Monday, and a rate that treats every day the same leaves money on the table midweek or prices you out at the weekend. Day-of-week adjustments let you set a multiplier for each weekday, per vehicle class.

They live on a screen headed Day of week adjustments, reached from a vehicle class in your price list. It is a short list: one row per weekday you want to change, with columns Day of week and Adjustment factor. Days you leave off the list are charged normally.

Two things make this feature different from everything else in pricing, and both catch people out:

  • The factors do nothing until you switch them on for a duration band. They are set up per vehicle class here, but applied per band on a different screen.
  • The result is averaged back into one daily rate. The customer does not see a higher Saturday and a lower Tuesday on the contract; they see one rate covering the whole hire.

You come here when:

  • Weekend hires should cost more than midweek ones for the same car.
  • A Sunday pickup is worth discounting because the car would otherwise sit idle.
  • A weekend price looks wrong and you are checking whether a factor is behind it.

Terms used on these screens

The screen saysIt means
Asset group, Asset gr. pricingThe vehicle class
Adjustment factorA multiplier — 1.25 charges 25% more, 0.9 charges 10% less
Global rulesThe duration bands, where the switch that turns all this on lives
Apply day of week adjusmentsThat switch, spelled as it appears on screen

There is no main-menu entry for any of this; you always come in through the price list.

How to use

Configuration

The factors themselves are what you configure here, but they sit behind a switch on a different screen, so setting them up is two jobs on two screens — both covered below.

Before you start: creating and editing factors needs the Company admin role; an ordinary Employee account can read the list but Save will not work. The vehicle class must already have rates entered, because a factor multiplies the rate the app would otherwise have used. See Set rates and mileage prices for a vehicle class.

Using the Day of week adjustments screen

From the main menu, open your settings and administration area, go to the pricing section headed Pricelist overview, double-click your price list, then click Asset gr. pricing. Find the vehicle class in the table and click the percent icon at the end of its row.

1. Add a factor for one weekday. Click New. The editor has two fields:

FieldStarts asWhat it doesWhat it accepts
Day of weekBlankWhich day this factor applies to — Monday through SundayPick one from the list
Adjustment factor1The multiplier for that dayA number, decimals allowed. 1 changes nothing

Click Save. Each weekday can appear only once for a class in a price list; adding a second row for the same day is refused with "DOWA with this day already exists."

Repeat for each day you want to change. You do not need seven rows — only add the days that differ.

2. Switch the factors on for the duration bands you want. This is the step people miss. Go back to the price list and open Global rules. Open each band with the pencil icon and switch Apply day of week adjusments on. The factors are ignored on any band where that switch is off, so a band left alone prices as if the factors did not exist.

3. Change or remove a factor. Back on Day of week adjustments, use the pencil icon on the row; clicking the row itself does nothing. The bin icon deletes without asking you to confirm, and a deleted day simply goes back to being charged normally.

Key details

How a factor reaches the price

The app works out the daily rate first — the base rate, any last-minute discount, then any season — and only then applies the weekday factors. It walks the booking one day at a time from the pickup day onwards, multiplying that rate by the factor for each day, using 1 for any day you have not given a factor. It then divides the total back over the length of the hire to get a single daily rate.

Two consequences follow. A factor compounds with a season rather than replacing it, so a 1.20 season and a 1.25 Saturday give 1.50 on that Saturday. And because the result is averaged, the longer the hire, the less a single expensive day moves the price.

The factors are stored per vehicle class and per price list. A compact car and a van in the same list have separate lists of factors, and a second price list has its own again.

A worked example

A compact car at €80.00 a day, hired for three days from Saturday to Tuesday. You have given this class one factor: Saturday at 1.25. Monday and Tuesday have no rows, so they count as 1.

Saturday is €80.00 × 1.25 = €100.00, Sunday and Monday are €80.00 each. The total is €260.00, which averaged over three days is €86.67 a day. The contract shows €86.67 a day and €260.00 in total — there is no line anywhere showing that Saturday cost more.

Switch Apply day of week adjusments off on the band this booking used and the same hire is €80.00 a day, €240.00 in total, with the Saturday factor still sitting on the screen doing nothing.

What to do next

Do both steps before you test anything: enter the factors, then switch them on for every band a real booking might fall into. Then run a test search across a weekend and one across midweek and compare the daily rates — if they are identical, the switch is still off on the band that matched. To trace exactly which band a booking used, work through Find out how a price was worked out.

Q&A

I set up factors and nothing changed. Why? Almost always because Apply day of week adjusments is still off on the duration band the booking used. The factors and the switch live on two different screens and neither mentions the other. Open Global rules, open each band with the pencil icon, and check that switch. Remember a booking can match several bands and the cheapest wins, so the band you switched on may not be the one being used.

Why is the weekend price lower than the factor I typed? Because the factors are averaged over the whole hire, not applied day by day on the contract. One day at 1.25 in a three-day hire raises the whole booking by about 8%, not 25%. For a bigger effect, either put factors on more of the days or use a shorter duration band so weekend hires are priced separately.

Can I make one weekday cheaper rather than dearer? Yes. Adjustment factor takes any number, so 0.9 charges 10% less on that day and 0.75 charges a quarter less. The same averaging applies, so a single discounted day pulls the whole hire down a little rather than that day a lot.

The app will not let me add a second row for Saturday. Each weekday can have only one factor per vehicle class in a price list. The second attempt is refused with "DOWA with this day already exists." Find the existing Saturday row, open it with the pencil icon, and change the number there instead.

Do these factors apply to every vehicle class? No. The list you are looking at belongs to the one class whose percent icon you clicked. To adjust another class, go back to Asset gr. pricing and click the percent icon on that class's row. There is no way to apply one set of factors to several classes at once.

A weekend booking that crosses into the next week — which days count? Every day of the hire, counted forward from the pickup day and wrapping round from Sunday to Monday. A five-day hire starting Friday counts Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, each with its own factor or 1 if it has none.

Does a factor change what the customer sees on the contract? No. They see one daily rate and one total. The factors are folded into that rate before it is written to the booking, so nothing on the contract or the invoice shows which days were dearer.

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