Set up your pickup and return locations

Introduction

A location is a place where customers collect or bring back a vehicle: your main office, a second depot, a station car park. Bookings and vehicles are tied to one. The location decides which letterhead the paperwork gets, which address customer emails come from, and which pickup times customers booking online are offered.

You manage them from the screen headed Locations: a table with Name and Branch columns, a search box under each heading, a New button above it, and a pencil icon and a bin icon at the end of every row. Opening a location shows a screen headed Location, with six tabs across the top: Core, Opening hours, Closed, Web, Logo and Other.

You come here when:

• you open a new depot or pickup point and staff need to be able to book from it;
• a location's phone number, email address or street address has changed;
• you want customers booking themselves online to only get times when someone is there;
• a location closes for good and should stop appearing on bookings and on your website;
• you want to check which branch each location belongs to.

Terms used on this screen

Use this screen for any change to a location.

How to use

Configuration

There is no separate switch to turn locations on; you set everything up on the screens below. One thing must exist first: a branch to put the location under. If the branch selector on the Core tab is empty, create the branch first; see Set up your branches.

Before you start: the Locations screen, and every tab and window on it, needs the Company admin role. Other staff cannot open Admin > Product design, although they see and use the locations everywhere else in the app.

Using the Locations screen

From the main menu, open Admin > Product design, then click the Locations tile. The screen is headed Locations.

1. Add a location. Click New above the table. The Location screen opens on the Core tab. To change an existing location instead, click its row or the pencil icon.

2. Fill in the Core tab. Your details on the left, the address on the right. Save refuses until every "required" box is filled:

3. Add the opening hours. On the Opening hours tab, click New Opening hours. A window headed Edit Opening Hours opens, set to Monday, 08:00 to 18:00. Pick the Day (Day of week fills in its number: Monday is 1, Sunday is 7), set Start time and End time, and click Save. Add one row per day you are open; leave out closed days. The pencil icon changes a row; the bin icon deletes it without asking.

4. Record closures. On the Closed tab, click New. The window headed Edit Closed asks for Location (already filled), Closed from, Closed to and Reason. Click Save.

5. Fill in the Web tab:

6. Add the review and maps links. On the Other tab, put your review page (for example your Google review link) in Review url and a route-planner link in Maps url. Emails show them through ${locationReviewUrl} and ${locationMapsUrl}; left empty, those placeholders point to the RentVisie website instead. Leave the rest of the Other tab and the Logo tab empty unless your administrator has set up location-specific documents; normal documents take these details from the branch.

7. Click Save. If something required is missing, the screen stays open with a message such as Branch is empty or Street is empty. Cancel throws away your changes on the Core, Web and Other tabs.

8. Delete a location with the bin icon on its row. The app asks "Are you sure? Note: this cannot be undone. We recommend only to use this for unused locations. Otherwise we recommend t change the location to inactve." Proceed deletes; see the first Q&A entry first.

Key details

Opening hours and closures are saved as soon as you click Save in their window. Cancel on the Location screen does not undo them.

When opening hours are checked. Only when a customer searches for a vehicle online through self-service; bookings made by staff are never stopped. The check uses the location the vehicle is standing at, for both pickup and return, and a vehicle that fails is left out of the customer's results:

A pickup at exactly opening or closing time counts as outside. An inactive location never offers its vehicles online.

An example: your Utrecht depot is on PickupAndReturn, open Monday to Friday 08:00 to 18:00 and Saturday 09:00 to 12:00, with no Sunday row.

Closures on the Closed tab do not block anything. Bookings and your website carry on as normal; the tab is a record for your team.

The location email address. Automatic emails about bookings picked up here are sent from it under the branch's name, and replies come back to it. A hand-written email about such a booking starts with it as the sender, and emailed documents use it as the reply address.

Saving a location adds it to every security profile, so every employee can work in it straight away; see Add an employee and set their permissions.

What to do next: put vehicles at the new location, then check its branch's letterhead in Put your logo, company details and terms on your documents.

Q&A

Why have bookings and vehicles lost their pickup location after a location was deleted? Deleting a location empties it from every booking and vehicle that used it, and there is no undo. Put the location back with New, then set each booking's location again from the booking itself. For a location that is no longer used, switch Active off instead of deleting it: it disappears from the lists but old bookings keep it.

Why can a colleague work in a location again after it was taken off their profile? Every time anyone saves a location, it is added back to every security profile. After changing a location, check the profiles again under Add an employee and set their permissions.

Why are vehicles at one location missing from online search results? Check three things on that location: Active is on, the day and time asked for have a row on Opening hours, and Opening hours restriction (self service) on the Web tab is what you meant. A location set to PickupAndReturn with no Sunday row turns away every rental that ends on a Sunday.

Why can customers still book online on a day we are closed? A closure on the Closed tab has no effect on bookings. For the period, delete that day's row on Opening hours (with OnlyPickup or PickupAndReturn set), or switch Active off. Put them back afterwards.

Why does a location have lunch-break hours that are ignored? Only one row per day is used. If you entered 08:00-12:00 and 13:00-18:00 as two Monday rows, only one of them counts. Use one row per day, from opening to closing.

Why is the new location missing from the location list on a booking? Either Active is off, or your security profile does not include the location. Check the location here, then ask your administrator to check your profile.

Why do emails for one location come from the wrong address? The sender is the email of the booking's pickup location. Correct it on the Core tab and click Save; emails already sent are not changed.

Related pages:

• Set up your branches — create the branch a location belongs to
• Check your company record, plan and limits — your company's own details and time zone
• Sign in to RentVisie — which locations you may work in
• Set up the booking widget on your website — its own Use opening hours location setting limits the times the widget offers
• Handle bookings that come from other systems — where Code and External identification are matched