Whether you just got onboarded or have been with FareHarbor since the beginning, you’ve probably noticed there are many Dashboard features to take advantage of.

From Dashboard basics like availabilities and manifests to more advanced areas like seating arrangements and booking flows, every part of our software is designed to help you manage your bookings.

To make the most of the Dashboard, you need to know how to navigate it like a pro, and that starts with understanding the terminology. It’s easy once you get the hang of it, but if you ever get stuck, refer to this guide to quickly find what you’re looking for and get back to operating your awesome activities.

General Dashboard Terminology

Dashboard: The “backend” of FareHarbor, which requires a FareHarbor account and login to access. The Dashboard is an all-in-one system for your company to manage bookings, calendars, customer communication, and more.

Shortname: Your company’s unique identifier in the Dashboard (e.g. bestbrooklyntours).

Availability: An availability is a specific date and time when an item can be booked. Once availabilities have been added to your Dashboard and made bookable online, your customers can start making reservations directly from your website. Most availabilities will have a specific start and end time, but you can also create “all day” or “day range” availabilities that span one or more days.

Viewing Availabilities in the Dashboard

• Bookings: The Bookings section of your Dashboard is a central place to view a summary of your current availabilities.
• Item Calendars: Each item you offer also has its own calendar of availabilities. This is where you’d go if you wanted to create new availabilities for your customers to book.
  

• Manifest: The manifest provides a detailed look at one or more availabilities taking place on a specific day. For each availability, you can view related booking information, check in guests, make changes to existing bookings, and add new bookings. Read more about the Manifest below.

Availability Online Booking Status

• Auto Close: Automatically stops online customers from booking when the availability is full or you’ve reached the time cutoff set at the item level. This is the default setting.
• Open Override: Allows online customers to book past your online cutoff times until the capacity is full. This is useful when you know a trip will be taking place and want to allow customers to book online until the last minute.
• Closed & Call to Book: Online customers are not allowed to book and see a “Call to book” message.

Bookings

Direct Bookings: Bookings made through your Dashboard by logged-in users with a FareHarbor account. For example, when a customer calls your office to make a reservation for an activity and one of your employees makes the booking directly.

Online Bookings: Bookings made online by customers using the Lightframe on a website.

Book Form: The form used to collect customer information and create a booking. Book forms can be used by both online users and logged-in Dashboard users.

Important differences between Dashboard users and online customers:

Contact Information

• Dashboard user: Only name is required.
• Online customer: The primary contact’s name, phone number, and email are required.

Payment Methods

• Dashboard user: Users will have the option to defer payment to a later date, process partial payments, or pay for the booking in full.
• Online customer: Customers will only have one option, to pay in full with a credit or debit card.

Bookings Overview: Overview of customer information for completed bookings. Information includes customer itinerary, customer contact information, customer payment information, and any reseller information (if applicable).

Booking Actions

• Add or Remove Customers: Direct users back to the book form to make adjustments to the amount of customers booked on the reservation.
• Rebook: Transfer a customer’s reservation information to a different calendar availability.
• Cancel Booking: Removes a customer’s reservation from the calendar. This will not delete reservation information from the system.
• Set Check-In for All Customers: Set a check-in status for the entire reservation.
• Add Payment: This action will only appear if a customer has an outstanding balance on their reservation. After a booking has been created, this is the only way to charge a customer’s card.
• Save or Hold Card: This action will retain a customer’s card information in the system but will not charge it. Users can also use this action to place a hold on a customer’s card. Holds will not charge a customer but will confirm the customer has available funds to cover the hold and prevent use of the hold funds until it is manually or automatically released or captured.
• Refund: Send funds back to a customer’s credit card.
• Send Email or Text: Send additional notifications to customers.
• Print: Print all customer information as well as the receipts for the booking or each payment.

Availability Overview: The availability overview contains everything you need to know about a specific date and time on your calendar. You can view information such as booked customers and crew assignments, and you can change settings like capacity or online bookings status.

Availability Updater: The Availability Updater allows you to edit large segments of the calendar at once. This tool can be used to edit availability settings such as Booking Status, Start Time, Length, Crew Members, etc. It can also be used to update availabilities across multiple items at once.

Manifest: The Manifest shows detailed booking information for any given calendar date, including Contact Information, Booking Notes, Check-in Status, Custom Field information, and Availability Information. This page is customizable and can be automatically sent to the email address of your choosing through User Notifications. It also provides shortcuts to each customer’s overview page and availability overview page.

Online Booking

Booking Flows: These allow you to organize your items into categories or groups, which can be used to help customers navigate through your online booking process. Flows are completely customizable and can contain as many different items or pages as you’d like.

Lightframe: The Lightframe is the portal through which customers make online bookings. After a customer clicks a book button or generated embed, the Lightframe will overlay on your webpage without redirecting to a new URL. Customers will be able to browse your offerings and complete their reservation without leaving your website.

Now you’re ready to tackle more advanced parts of the Dashboard, like item settings, customer types, and reporting options. Visit FH Terminology Part 2: Items, Settings & Reports.