Your First Week

A working order for a new account. Each step unblocks the next, so going straight down the list means you never hit a screen that asks for something you have not set up yet.

You do not need to finish all of it before you take a booking. Steps 1–5 get you to a booking on the calendar; steps 6–9 get you to a signed contract with money attached.

1. Account identity

Settings → General

• Name, address, phone, and email — these merge into contracts, invoices, and emails.
• Logo — appears on invoices, agreements, portal pages, and emails.
• Timezone — set this before anything else. Every date in the product displays in it.
• Default view mode — Rentals or Fairground, whichever side you live in.
• Invoice prefix and next number — if you are moving from another system, set the next number above your last one so numbering continues rather than restarts.

Set the timezone first

Bookings, invoice due dates, and reminder schedules are all computed in the account timezone. Changing it later does not re-interpret anything already entered.

2. Invite your team

Settings → Team

Invite by email and set each person's per-side access as you go. The bookkeeper probably needs full Rentals and no Fairground; a fair superintendent is the reverse.

Invitations are emailed and stay pending until accepted, so you can set the whole team up in one sitting.

3. Connect Stripe

Settings → Payments & Stripe

Connect the Stripe account the money should land in, then assign it to a side. If the rental operation and the fair board bank separately, connect both and assign one to each.

While you are on this screen, set:

• Credit card surcharge, if you pass card fees on
• ACH (bank transfer) on or off, and the message renters see
• Mail-a-check on or off, with the address to mail to
• Card and ACH service fees
• Default booking deposit percentage (25% unless you change it)
• Default security deposit amount
• Default tax rate

Test first

Everything money-related works in Stripe test mode. Run one booking end to end — send, sign, pay the deposit — before you point a real renter at it.

4. Build your inventory

Spaces then Add-ons

Spaces are what people rent; add-ons are what they rent alongside it.

For each space set the hourly and daily rate, the capacities, and a calendar color — the calendar is colored by space, and picking distinct colors now is what makes it readable in August.

For each add-on set the price and rate type (per item or per hour), and a quantity if you only own 200 chairs. Leave quantity blank for anything unlimited, like a service.

5. Take a test booking

Bookings → New

Build one against a dummy renter to see the shape of it: dates, spaces, add-ons, totals, conflict detection. Delete it afterwards, or keep it as a template to copy from.

At this point you have a working calendar. Everything below adds contracts, money, and automation on top of it.

6. Write your contract template

Settings → Contract Templates

Paste your existing rental agreement into the editor and replace the blanks with merge tags — the renter's name, the event dates, the space list, the total, the deposit amount. The merge tags resolve when the agreement is rendered onto a booking, so one template covers every rental.

Set the default number of signatures the template expects. If your agreement needs the renter and a facility manager, that is two.

7. Build your task checklist

Settings → Task Templates

The things that must happen before every event: certificate of insurance received, final headcount confirmed, balance paid, keys issued. Each item can be due on a fixed date or so many days before the event, and can be flagged as requires a document — which turns it into an upload request the renter can satisfy from their portal.

Apply the template to a booking and the whole checklist lands with the dates already calculated.

8. Turn on the portal and set your reminders

Settings → Portal and Settings → Reminders

The portal is where renters sign, pay, and upload without calling you. Enable it, decide whether SMS login codes are on, and check the branding.

Then set the reminder cadences: how many days before an invoice is due to nudge, how often to chase after it goes overdue, the same for tasks, and when to warn about a security deposit that is due back.

9. Review your notification templates

Settings → Notifications

Every automated email has a template with a subject and body you can edit. The defaults are reasonable; read them once in your own voice and change what sounds wrong. Merge tags work the same way as in contracts.

Optional: fill the funnel

• Booking Widget — a one-line script that puts an inquiry form on your public website. Submissions land in Leads as a kanban board, and a lead converts to a renter in one click.
• Service Fees — named, reusable fees (a cleaning fee, a staffing charge) you can attach to invoices instead of typing them each time.
• Card Readers — if you take cards in person at the office or the gate.

If you are moving from another system

Bring things over in this order, because each depends on the one above it:

1. Spaces and add-ons — everything else references them.
2. Renters — with their contact details and any tags you filter by.
3. Open bookings — the ones not yet finished. Historical bookings are usually not worth re-entering; keep the old system read-only for lookups.
4. Open invoices — anything still owed. Paid history rarely needs to move.
5. Documents — current certificates of insurance and permits, attached to the renter.

Talk to us before a large migration — see Support. Moving a full production database is something we do for you, not something you should re-type.

Fairground side

If your first job is the fair rather than the rentals, the order is different — start with the event, then the forms, then the catalog. See the Fairground overview.