Each group's booking, online

Switch it on under Before they arrive and every provisional or confirmed booking gets a private page of its own, for the group that made it. It shows their dates and fields, how many are coming, what the booking costs, what’s been paid, what’s left, each invoice with a button to pay it online, any credit notes, and their activities day by day. It’s off until you switch it on.

The link is in the confirmation and invoice emails as “See your booking online”. Anybody with the link can see that one booking, the same way anybody with an invoice’s pay link can pay it, so groups are told to share it only with the people running the camp with them.

A group that’s lost the email can go to the Find your booking page, enter the email address they booked with and their booking number, and the link is emailed to the address you have for them. Nothing is ever shown on that page, and it gives the same answer whether or not they match, so a booking number on its own gets nobody into somebody else’s booking.

Near the time, it helps them arrive. From when the welcome email would go, the page shows the gate code, under the same rules as the welcome email: only if you put gate codes in it, only for a confirmed booking, and both codes if it changes during their stay. From the day before they arrive it also shows a check-in code. Your staff scan it at the gate with their own signed-in phone and land straight on the booking to check them in. The code is no use to anybody who isn’t signed in to your campsite.

Add to calendar. The page has a link that downloads their stay, and their activities if they have any, as a calendar file to open once. It carries no gate code and no money, because calendar files get passed around.

Answering your questions late. Tick Let groups answer your questions there and the page lists any of your enquiry form’s questions the booking has no answer to yet, including for a booking you took over the phone, up to the day they arrive. They can fill in a blank but not change an answer; to change one they email you. You’re emailed at your reply-to address with what they said, it shows under Their answers on the booking marked as added online, and it’s in the activity log. Answers already given are never shown on the page, but anybody with the link can answer, so keep health and dietary questions off your form.

Changing numbers. Tick Let groups change their numbers there, choose how many days before arrival they can do it until, and whether numbers can go up, down or both. A group can never go beyond what the fields and buildings they’re on take, or past your limit on people a night; they’re told only that it won’t fit, never how full you are. Where you haven’t recorded a capacity for where they’re staying, they can add up to half as many again as they booked (at least ten), so a slip of the finger can’t book 2000. The agreed price doesn’t change. You’re emailed, and the booking shows Numbers changed online until somebody who can see money clicks Price checked or agrees a new total. Their activity numbers stay as they were. It isn’t offered on a booking where you’ve set a separate number camping.

Asking to change dates. Tick Let groups ask to change their dates there and a group can ask to move, up to the day they arrive, for the same fields and buildings. Your booking rules apply as on your enquiry form. A request holds nothing and moves nothing. You’re emailed, the Enquiries badge counts it, and it shows on the booking with whether the same fields are free on the new dates and any activities that would fall outside them. Accept moves the booking, keeps its reference, and flags the price to check; Decline lets you say why. Either way they’re emailed. Activities aren’t moved for you, and a course or event place can’t be moved this way.

On each booking, if you can see money, Their booking page lets you open it, copy the link, email it to the group, or make a new link, which stops the old one working. The welcome, payment reminder, deposit reminder and feedback emails carry the link too.

What it never shows: your notes, your staff or instructors, anything about other bookings or customers, and the schedule’s own warnings. Enquiries and cancelled bookings don’t have a page; cancel a booking, or switch the portal off, and its link shows nothing straight away.