Introduction
A last-minute deal takes a percentage off the daily rate when someone books a car that is about to sit idle. It aims at the gap between now and this evening, not at a customer planning next month — every deal has a window measured in hours, and outside it the deal does nothing.
Deals live on the Last minute deal tile inside a price list. The screen lists what you have, with columns Name, Active, Online only, Days until booking, After hour, Discount and Asset groups. Each deal is then linked to the vehicle classes it applies to, from a separate popup.
Five conditions must all be true before a deal takes anything off, which is what makes this feature confusing: a deal can look perfectly configured and still never fire.
You come here when:
- Cars are sitting on the forecourt this afternoon and you want to shift them tonight.
- A quiet weekday needs a nudge for walk-in customers.
- A discount is appearing on bookings and you want to find which deal is doing it.
- A deal has never once applied and you want to know which condition is blocking it.
Terms used on these screens
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Asset group | The vehicle class |
| Days until booking | How close to pickup the booking has to be made |
| Max booking days | The longest hire the deal will apply to |
| After hours | The time of day before which the deal is dormant |
The overview and the editor name one setting differently, so look for both:
| The overview column says | The editor says |
|---|---|
| After hour | After hours |
| Discount | Discount percentage |
The Last minute deal tile has no main-menu entry of its own; you always come in through the price list.
How to use
Configuration
Everything is on these screens — there is no separate switch elsewhere that turns deals on or off as a whole.
Before you start: creating and editing deals needs the Company admin role; an ordinary Employee account can read the list but New, Save and the linking popup will not work. The vehicle classes you want to discount must already have rates in this price list, because the deal takes a percentage off the rate the app would otherwise have used.
Using the Last minute deal 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 Last minute deal.
1. Create the deal. Click New. Every field arrives already filled in, and the starting values are narrow — read them before you save:
| Field | Starts as | What it does | What it accepts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Blank | What you call it | Any text up to 200 characters |
| Active | On | Off parks the deal without deleting it | A yes/no switch |
| Online only | On | On means the deal is applied on your website but skipped at the counter | A yes/no switch |
| Discount percentage | 30 | Percent off the daily rate. Here 30 does mean 30% | A number, decimals allowed |
| Days until booking | 0.5 | How close to pickup the booking must be. 0.5 is twelve hours | A number, decimals allowed |
| **Max booking days ** | 2 | Longest hire the deal applies to | Whole days only |
| After hours | On | Whether a time-of-day cut-off applies at all | A yes/no switch |
| After hours | 10 | The hour of the day the deal wakes up, on a 24-hour clock | Whole hours only |
You will see After hours twice: the switch first, and directly below it a number box that only appears once the switch is on. Turn the switch off and the number box disappears along with the cut-off.
2. Link the vehicle classes. Click Link asset groups. A list of your classes opens with a tick box against each, and the screen tells you what happens: "Link the asset groups to the last minute deal. Changes will be auto saved."
Each tick is saved the instant you make it. There is no Save button on this popup, Back only closes it, and pressing Cancel on the deal behind it does not undo a tick you have already made. Untick a box to remove a class again.
3. Save the deal. Click Save on the editor. The linked classes appear in a small list on the deal, with columns Display order and Code. To remove one, click the bin icon on its row — it has no caption and asks "Are you sure?" with Proceed and Cancel.
4. Change or delete a deal. Back on the overview, use the pencil icon on the row; double-clicking the row does nothing. The bin icon on the overview deletes the deal without asking you to confirm.
Key details
The five conditions, in the order the app checks them
All five must pass. The app stops at the first that fails and the customer pays the normal rate, with nothing anywhere saying why.
| # | Condition | What makes it fail |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The class is linked to a deal, and the deal is Active | No link, or Active switched off |
| 2 | Either Online only is off, or the booking is being made online | Online only on, and a member of staff is pricing the booking |
| 3 | The hire is no longer than Max booking days | A three-day hire against the starting value of 2 |
| 4 | Pickup is later than the start of today, and less than Days until booking away | Booking tomorrow's car today, against the starting value of 0.5 |
| 5 | If the After hours switch is on, the current time of day is later than the hour set | Anyone looking before 10:00, against the starting value of 10 |
Condition 5 is about the clock on the wall, not the pickup time, and it resets at midnight. With the hour set to 10, the deal is dormant every morning and wakes up at 10:00.
What the discount does and does not touch
The percentage comes off the daily rate only. Insurance, extras, mileage charges and fuel are untouched, so the saving is smaller than the percentage suggests once extras are added.
A worked example
A compact car at €80.00 a day. A customer calls at 14:00 wanting the car tomorrow morning for one day, and your deal is on its starting values.
| Condition | Result |
|---|---|
| Linked and Active | Passes |
| Online only is on, and you are at the counter | Fails — the customer pays €80.00 |
Switch Online only off and take the same call again. Conditions 1, 2 and 3 pass — one day is within the maximum of 2 — but pickup is about nineteen hours away, and Days until booking of 0.5 allows only twelve. It still fails.
Now the customer asks for the car at 18:00 today instead. Pickup is four hours away, well inside twelve; the time is 14:00, later than the After hours value of 10. All five pass and the rate becomes €80.00 × (1 − 0.30) = €56.00. Add €15.00 insurance and the customer pays €71.00, not €66.50 — the insurance is not discounted.
Take the same call at 09:00 and condition 5 fails, so the price is €80.00 again.
What to do next
Check the starting values before you rely on a new deal: Online only on and Days until booking at 0.5 together mean it never fires at the counter and only fires online within twelve hours of pickup. Then test it by pricing a booking for later today against one for next week. To trace a discount you cannot account for, work through Find out how a price was worked out.
Q&A
My deal never applies. Which condition is blocking it? Work down the five conditions above in order. In practice it is nearly always condition 2 or condition 4: Online only starts switched on, so a new deal is invisible at the counter, and Days until booking starts at 0.5, which is twelve hours. Widen that to 2 and the deal covers bookings made up to two days ahead.
I linked a class to a new deal and an older deal stopped working. That is expected. The link is stored on the vehicle class rather than on the deal, so a class can belong to only one deal at a time, and ticking it on a new one silently moves it across. Open the older deal and look at its list of classes — the one you moved is no longer there. Tick it back on the older deal to move it back, which in turn removes it from the new one. If you want two deals covering different situations for the same class, you cannot: use one deal and adjust its conditions.
I ticked some classes and then pressed Cancel. Are they still linked? Yes. Ticks in the Link asset groups popup are saved the moment you make them, as the screen says. Cancel on the deal only discards changes to the deal's own fields, not the links. Reopen the popup and untick anything you did not mean to add.
The discount is smaller than the percentage I set. The percentage comes off the daily rate only. A 30% deal on a €80.00 rate with €15.00 of insurance saves €24.00 on a total of €95.00, which is about 25% of what the customer actually pays. Nothing is wrong; the extras are simply outside the deal.
Can I set a deal for a whole day rather than only the afternoon? Yes — switch the After hours switch off. The number box disappears with it and the deal is then live around the clock, subject to the other four conditions.
Where do I see that a booking got a last-minute discount? Not on this screen. The deal changes the daily rate before the price is written to the booking, so what you see on the booking is the discounted rate with nothing marking it. If a rate looks low, compare it with the rate on Asset gr. pricing for the same class, period and duration band.
Why won't Max booking days accept 2.5? It takes whole days only. Days until booking and Discount percentage accept decimals, and After hours takes whole hours, so the four number boxes on this screen do not all behave the same way.
Related pages:
- Find out how a price was worked out — where the deal sits in the four pricing steps, and why it can change which rate wins
- Set rates and mileage prices for a vehicle class — the rate the percentage comes off
- Set up a price list — deals belong to one price list, and a second list has its own