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15.3. Dynamic Pricing
Using Dynamic Pricing, you can define conditions to specify when a certain Pricing Level is valid based on Rental Start and End times. This feature can be used to set up weekday versus weekend rates, standard versuses holiday rates, etc. Once Dynamic Pricing is set up, Arctic will automatically know what to charge your guests for their rental, regardless whether you are making the rental via the backend or whether they are making the rental online. This feature can be extremely helpful when doing lodging rentals as well, because it can also handle rentals that span multiple periods (e.g., a week rental will automatically reflect different weekday and weekend pricing when calculating the total).
To get the most out of Dyanmic Pricing, this guide will give you step-by-step instructions on how to correctly set up the conditions used by this feature.
To get started, you can either create a new rental item for which you want to use Dynamic Pricing, or you can edit an existing item. On either the "Create Rental" or "Edit Rental" forms, go to the "Pricing" tab. For a new rental item, on the "Pricing" tab, you must enter a name for the "Pricing Level" that you are creating and tell Arctic whether this pricing level is available online (if applicable). Then select "Dynamic Pricing" from the "Pricing Type" drop down menu as shown below. If you are editing an existing rental item, make sure to double check your "Online" setting (if applicable) and then select "Dynamic Pricing" from the "Pricing Type" drop down menu as shown here:
Note: If you are editing an existing rental item to use Dynamic Pricing, it will be simpler and less confusing for you to delete the existing price set before you proceed. To delete the existing price set, click the little "x" to remove the price as shown here:
Now we are ready to add the prices and their associated start and end date conditions. First, notice after you have selected "Dynamic Pricing" from the "Pricing Type" drop down menu, Arctic displays the following tips:
- The first tip is "Define prices in the order you want them tested. The first price that matches will be used". Basically, this means that you should list your most rare pricing level conditions first. For example, let's say that you create a Holiday Rate that includes July 4th and a Weekend Rate for any rentals that start on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and July 4th falls on a weekend this year. If your Weekend Rate, is listed before your Holiday Rate, Arctic will assign the price for the Weekend Rate because it is the first rate condition that matches the start/end date conditions set up in your Dynamic pricing rather than assigning it to your Holiday Rate. To get Arctic to correctly assign the pricing, you should always list the pricing by the least likely price first.
- The second tip is "All prices should have the same time increment". This is telling you to make sure that you pick the same per time increment for each price set you create. For instance, if you created a Holiday Rate and chose a per time increment of "One Hour Increments", then you created a Weekend Rate and chose "Daily Increments", Arctic would give you an error because the time increments of the two price sets do not match. You will need to change the time increment for either the Holiday Rate or Weekend Rate to make sure that they are the same.
- The third tip, "Be sure to have one price with no conditions, as it will be used if none of the other prices match.", means that you need to create a price set that can be used if Arctic searches through all of the price sets you created and can not find a match in the start/end date conditions that you set up. This will ensure that Arctic has a price it can use as a "default" price if the rental you or your customers are trying to create falls outside of the price set conditions you created. For example, if you only created a Holiday Rate for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day and a Weekend Rate for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, if your guest wants to create a rental starting on a non-holiday Wednesday, Arctic would not know what to charge the guest for the rental. To avoid this dilemma, Arctic will require you to set up a price set that doesn't have any conditions so that your rental item will always have a price. Note that this price should always come last (see the first tip about the order of prices).
Now that you understand some of the basic tips for setting up Dynamic Pricing, let's add our first pricing set. Remember you want to create your most rare pricing conditions first. To add a price set click "Add Prices" as shown here:
This will open the price set form shown here:
First you will enter the price, then choose the per time increment and enter a name for the price set, i.e. Holiday Rate, Weekend Rate, Weekday Rate, etc. Next you will choose how you wish Arctic to evaluate the start/end date conditions you are going to set up for this price set. You can choose to match "Any" or "All" of the conditions you create. For example, if you are creating a Holiday Rate, you will want to tell Arctic to use that price if "Any" of the conditions match so Arctic will know to look through each set of conditions to make sure it will charge for Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. If you choose "All" for a Holiday Rate, Arctic will never apply the Holiday Rate because it is not possible for your guest to create a rental reservation that matches all three conditions set up Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. You can't have a rental that starts on May 31, July 4th and September 2nd.
Once you have chosen "Any" or "All" you are ready to enter the start/end date conditons for your price set. To do this click the green "+Add Conditions" button as shown here:
There are several options to choose from when creating your conditions. You can choose conditions based on when the rental starts or ends such as a specific date (match date), a specific date and time (match date/time), date relative to today, or a specific day of the week. You can also choose to group conditions together. You would use this if you have a specific start and specific end conditions that must be evaluated to know whether the price applies. For this example we will set up a Holiday Rate price set for Memorial Day and Independence Day.
The first set of conditions we will set up will be for Memorial Day. Since this is a weekend holiday, our holiday rate will be effective for the entire weekend so we want to choose "Group of Conditions" so we can tell Arctic when the price starts and when it ends.
Notice, that after we selected "Group Of Conditions", Arctic has added a blue box that includes another "Match If" field and an additional "+Add Conidtions" button. The "Match If" field in the blue box will only govern the conditions that we create for this "Group Of Conditions" not all of the conditions for the price set. For our example, for the Holiday Rate, we selected "Any" for the first "Match IF" field but for the "Memorial Day" conditions we will select "All" for the second "Match If" field. This is because all of the "Memorial Day" conditions must be met in order to qualify as a "Memorial Day" rental.
Now, we are going to click the second "+Add Conditions" button and choose our start conditions for Memorial Day as shown here:
Since, Memorial Day Weekend has a specific start date, we will use the "Match Date" option shown above. This will add the following fields to our price set form:
The first Start field allows us to tell Arctic whether the Start "is", "is on or after" or "is on or before" the date we want to specify as the start of Memorial Day Weekend. For this example choose "is on or after".
Next select the date when you want the Holiday Rate to start applying for Memorial Day weekend by clicking the "Calendar" field. For this example choose Friday May 23 2014 as shown here:
Now, the first part of the "Memorial Day" condition is set and we are ready to add the "End" condition to our "Condition Group". Click the second "+Add Conditions" button on the price set form again and this time choose End->Match Date and complete the following fields as shown here:
Now we have completed the Memorial Day Weekend Condtions. We have told Arctic that the Holiday Rate will apply if the rental starts on or after Friday May 23 and it ends on or before Monday May 26th.
Next, we will add another condition to our Holiday Rate price set to include Independence Day. For this example, we will tell Arctic that the Holiday Rate for Independence Day only applies to reservations that specifically start on July 4th. To add this new condition to the Holiday Rate price set click the first "+Add Conditions" button as shown here:
Make sure you click the first "+Add Conditions" button and not the second. If you click the second "+Add Conditions" button you will be adding another conditon to the Memorial Day Weekend "Group of Conditions" rather than a seperate condition for Independence Day.
Since we only want to charge the Holiday Rate for those rentals that start specifically on July 4th, choose Start->Match Date. This will be the only condition we set up for Independence Day and will mean that Arctic will charge the Holiday Rate for any rental that Starts on July 4th no matter how long it is. Your conditions for the Holiday Rate price set should look like this after you create the Independence Day condition:
Notice that each "Condition" or "Group of Conditions" that we created for the Holiday Rate price set is contained within its own light blue box. This will help you keep track of the conditions you are creating, editing or removing.
You can create as many price sets as you need to manage the different rental rates for the rental item you are creating or editing but you must remember to always create one price set that doesn't have any conditons. To add another price set for your rental item click "+Add Price" as shown at the beginning of this guide. Again you will enter the price, the per time increment (make sure this matches the per time increment of the other price sets you have already created for the item), and the price name. Create any conditions that you need to govern the price set.
To complete our example, we must create a price set that doesn't have any conditions as mentioned in tip 3. If we do not create a price set without any conditions, Arctic will not allow us to finish the rental item creation or edit. To do this click "+Add Price" and complete the price set form. Don't forget to double check the per time increment to be sure it matches the other price sets you have already created. Since this is our last price set, we will not designate any conditions as Arctic will use this as our "default" price when none of the other price set conditions match the start and end information for the rental being created. The final price set will look like this:
Once you have entered all of your price sets, don't forget to choose an account for the rental item and to add any fees or taxes that are applicable to the rental item then click "Submit" to save the Dynamic Pricing. Below is an example of what a fully completed pricing tab using dynamic pricing looks like:
It is recommended after setting up Dyanmic Pricing that you click "Submit" even if this is a new rental item that you are creating and you have not completed all of the other information just in case something happens with your internet connection or computer prior to completing the entire "Create Rental Item" process. You do not want to risk loosing all of the Dynamic Pricing conditions. As long as you have completed the "General" tab you will be able to save your changes for the new rental item. Once the item is saved go back to the "Manage Rental Items" page and click the "Edit" button next to the new rental item to complete the remaining tabs.