Each order within Booqable is a separate customer experience. Therefore each order should be kept up to date with the stage which it is in.
Thankfully, Booqable has a built in order workflow to help you keep track of who has what, and when!
How it works
Order statuses
Orders can have the following status:
1. New
2. Draft
3. Reserved
4. Picked up
5. Returned
6. Archived
1. New
The initial status of a newly created order. The order doesn’t have a number yet, and isn’t saved (and therefore not visible in the orders page).
2. Draft
By saving the order as a draft, Booqable assigns a number and saves the order in the orders page. The products on draft orders aren’t reserved for the selected rental period. Maybe you’re waiting for confirmation from the customer, or want to continue later.
3. Reserved
Reserving the order makes the added products (either the quantities or specified stock items) unavailable for the rental period of that order. This ensures you can’t overbook or double book your products.
💡 Note: By default, webshop orders will be reserved as availability is enabled. Disable availability if you want to receive webshop orders as drafts.
4. Picked up
(Replacing items on an existing order could be mentioned as a note here, as most rentals will be already picked up if a change is requested)
Picked up indicates that the products on the order are out with the customer, whether they’re picked up in-store or delivered.
When marking the order as picked up, you will need to select the items that are going out, either by scanning the product barcode or manually selecting the product or stock item. You don’t necessarily have to mark all items as picked up at once (resulting in a Mixed status).
💡 Note: We recommend specifying the stock items of trackable products as late as possible, preferably right before pickup. This will help you optimize your planning and therefore maximize products usage.
5. Returned
Returned means the products of the order are back in stock and available again to be picked up on another order. To prevent availability issues, products need to be marked as returned before they can be picked up on future orders.
As with the Picked up status, you don’t necessarily have to mark all items as returned at once (resulting in a Mixed status).
6. Archived
Once there’s no further action required and you want to clean up your orders page, you can archive an order. The order will still be accessible and won’t be deleted.
7. More actions
Reverting an order status: You can revert the order status at any time in case you’ve made a mistake. This option can be limited for team members in the user permission settings.
Duplicating an order: This will copy all products of the order to a new draft order. Additionally, you can include specified stock items, custom lines, and more.
Note: Delivery rate will not be copied over and you will need to reselect it manually.Canceling an order: When the customer cancels an order or you want to start fresh, you can cancel an order at any time. Canceled orders can’t be restored.
Replace items on an order. If a customer rents products from you, but during the rental period decides that they would like to change the products on an order, you will need to remove the existing products from the order, and add new ones using the search bar. Once products are replaced, you will need to either charge the customer more, or refund the difference depending on the prices of your products.
How to create and manage rental orders
Now that you understand the order statuses in Booqable, let's go through the generally recommended order workflow. This is a guide to help you get started, but Booqable is flexible so you can always develop your own workflows that best suit your day-to-day operations.
Order process
Draft / Reserved
Go to the Orders section.
Click on Add order.
Enter all order information such as customer, pickup/delivery, rental period, products, discounts, coupons, pricing adjustments, and custom fields.
Once you have finished entering all the information correctly, click to save as a Draft or Reserve the order to block availability.
At this stage, you could send a quote and/or contract to your customer by clicking the New quote and New contract buttons to generate a PDF of the document.
Send the quote or contract to your customer by email or use the Request signature option to send them to a signature page where your customer can sign digitally. If your customer is in store, you can ask them to sign in person by clicking the Sign now button.
With all the details of the rental confirmed, accept payment for the rental and the deposit. Click the New payment button and initiate a card payment, send a payment link, or record a manual payment.
Pickup
If your customer is in store or when the day of the rental comes around, click the Pickup button to start the pickup process.
If you have trackable products in the order and haven't assigned stock items, you will be prompted to assign them. We do recommend assigning specific stock at the latest stage to allow the most flexibility.
Once you've assigned stock, click Pick up items to confirm the pickup.
Return
When the rental is returned, it's time to initiate the return process:
Click Return.
You are asked if you want to keep a portion or all of the deposit and provide a reason. If you find damages or missing items for example, fill in the amount of the deposit that you would like to keep and the reason.
Click Return items to complete the return.
Archive
Now that the rental process is complete, it is recommended to archive the order to keep your orders view clean:
Click Archive order. It will no longer appear in your active orders list.
Archived orders are not deleted and are still accessible by going to the orders list, using the Status filter and selecting the Archived option.
You have now completed the order process from start to finish!
Managing orders
Extending orders
To extend an order, open the order in your Booqable admin and change the order’s rental period.
When you change the order dates, Booqable automatically checks whether the products are available for the new rental period. If there is not enough availability, Booqable may show an availability warning or shortage.
After updating the order dates, review the order total, payment status, and any documents or invoices that may need to be updated.