Setting custom rental fees ensures pricing consistency across events and simplifies your workflow.
This feature dynamically calculates and applies rental fees to event details, guest-facing forms, and documents in Direct Book. Fees can be customized based on location, event style, room, time, and day of the week. You can also apply room rental fees toward the food and beverage minimum, providing more flexibility while automating the process.
Note: You must have the appropriate access in Settings to manage rental fees.
1. Configure your rental fee amounts
Set up rental fees as a Customer Admin
To configure rental fees, go to Settings > Advanced Location Settings.
- Click the Rental Fees tab.
- Select a location, either the Large Party Reservation or On-Premise event style, and a room.
- You will only see locations you have access to and event styles enabled for those locations.
- Select a rate type: Hourly or Flat.
- Only one rate type can be used per room.
Once your selections are made, the Rental Fees grid will appear. This page is similar to how Hours are configured in Direct Book settings.
Best Practice: Any rental fees previously configured in your Direct Book settings will appear in the Rental Fees grid. The Rental Fees tab in Direct Book settings may still be visible, but selecting it will redirect you to Advanced Location Settings.
- To begin adding rental fees, click Add next to any day of the week.
- To save a rental fee, enter a rental fee amount, start time, and end time.
- If multiple rental fees are created for the same day, they cannot overlap.
- For example, if a rental fee is set between 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM, another rental fee can be created before 12:00 PM or after 5:00 PM. The hours between 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM cannot be selected.
If you have days with similar rental fees, such as the weekend, create the rental fees for the first day. Then go to the day where you want to add the same rental fees, click Copy from, and select the day with the existing rental fees.
For example, create rental fees for Saturday. Go to Friday, select Copy from, and choose Saturday. The rental fees from Saturday will copy to Friday.
Fill in the remaining rental fees for the week and click Save Changes. Repeat these steps for any other locations, rooms, or event styles that will use rental fees.
2. Use rental fees with Direct Book
Configure billing details and rental fee settings
After setting up rental fees for your locations, go to Settings > Direct Book > Configuration to enable rental fees and identify which billing details should contribute toward the room rental.
On the Configure tab, scroll down to Billing Details. This section is separated by event style, with each event style having its own tab. The Billing Details section will only appear when All Locations is selected from the location dropdown menu.
Include or exclude room rental from the food and beverage minimum
The Exclude Room Rental from F&B Minimum checkbox controls whether the room rental fee counts toward the food and beverage minimum for events.
- When the checkbox is not selected, rental fees will apply toward the event’s food and beverage minimum.
- When the checkbox is selected, rental fees will not apply toward the event’s food and beverage minimum.
The guest experience
After configuring your rental fees, test your Direct Book form by opening the live form and submitting a test event. This allows you to see how the rental fees will appear to your guests.
Note: If Skip Room Selection is enabled for the Large Party Reservation or On-Premise event style in the Direct Book Form settings, a room rental fee will not appear for the guest.
Adjust rental fees on documents
After a Direct Book event is submitted, the event documents are created automatically. As a result, the Rental Fee field and other financial fields are locked when editing event details.
If needed, you can adjust the rental fee amount using the document template:
- Go to the Docs tab in the Direct Book event.
- Open the Direct Book Template.
- Scroll to the Billing Widget.
- Locate the Room Rental field.
- Adjust the amount as needed.
You can change the rental fee on an individual event without affecting your configured rental fee settings.
View configured rental fees
Whenever you see the Calculated button, you can select it to open a read-only pop-up displaying the rental fees configured in Advanced Location Settings.
Use the dropdown menus to select different locations, event styles, and rooms and view the corresponding rental fees.
Note: You cannot edit rental fees from this pop-up. To adjust rental fees, go to Settings > Advanced Location Settings > Rental Fees.