Bundles allow you to group multiple products and services into a single offer / bundle. In the planyo vocabulary, this means that a bundle can include resources (including packages) and coupons. Please note that the resources can come from all sites of your metasite (if you are the administrator of a metasite). The resources can be each reservable for a different time period. For other resources which have no fixed rental period, you should include coupons which will allow the customer to make a free reservation at a later time for the desired time period.
Bundles are somewhat similar to packages but there are lots of differences (see
the differences in this FAQ question). Mostly, bundles allow tourist regions (metasites) to group products from different owners / providers (planyo sites) plus with bundles you can program each resource for a different duration, or for products which the customer should schedule themselves, you can include a coupon (for given amount, for given number of entries, for given number of hours, or for the entire duration of the stay).
A bundle is a regular resource, and you define all the settings just like for any other resource (including the price, seasonal settings etc.) The only exception is that the duration must be fixed. A typical bundle will either start on any day (leave default settings), only on a specific weekday such as a weekend bundle or weekly stay (you need to select the start weekday in the seasonal settings), or it can be an event which starts on specific date (e.g. New Year bundle starting on Dec 31). Once you have the bundle created and configured, you must define its contents. For each such bundle item you must specify:
- The resource to be used -- all resources from the current planyo site including packages will be listed. In case the current site belongs to a meta site and you administer that meta site, all meta site resources will be listed
- Start time -- you must set the exact date and/or time (for hour-based resources) when the rental should start. This is done in form of an offset from the beginning of the bundle duration. The bundle is assumed to start at midnight of the first date. For example, if a bundle starts on a Friday, then a bundled item starting on Friday at 10pm should have the offset of +22 hours. To help you with this, sample dates are listed so when you make the choice you will see something like : Friday, May 2, 2014 10pm. Of course it doesn't mean the bundle will only work for that particular Friday but it's meant to help you choose the correct offset.
- Duration -- expressed in days or hours
- Quantity used -- each bundle purchase will use this many units of the included resource
- Item price -- this is an internal price which can be used in reports and which is visible in the reservation details. The end customer will always see zero as the price of a bundled item. This value can be useful to calculate income from bundled items for a provider. You can leave this empty if you wish.
In case of coupons, you must first define the coupon in
site settings / coupons and then add it to the bundle. Most likely the coupon's price should be set to zero. This means the coupon will NOT be visible (available for purchase) by normal customers and only the admins will be able to create such coupon OR it can be also included in the bundles. The coupon will always be private and will have no code. This means that the customer can simply go to the provider's website (or click the link in their confirmation email) and reserve the resource for which they have received the coupon using the same email address as the one used to reserve the bundle. Please note that the coupon be activated only when the bundle reservation is confirmed.
Reserving a bundle will be only possible when all the included resources are available. Please note that the calendar preview will NOT reflect this, it will only check the number of bundles already reserved when displaying the availability. The bundles are not meant to be used with a calendar preview.
A typical example of a bundle would be an all-inclusive weekend bundle:
- Accommodation (hotel room): Friday until Sunday
- Saturday morning at 10am: group bike tour
- Coupon for 2 persons for a free massage -- the customer could make the reservation for the massage before or after arrival. The system would issue their coupon automatically.
Other examples could be a route where you reserve a different hotel for each night of the tour, or you can use the bundle to make reservations for the same resource but at different times, e.g. 1 hour of activity, then 30min break, then 1 more hour. Another possibility is to make a resource both a bundle and an event-type resource which allows you to create bundles for specific dates, e.g. New Year's eve special.