Rack Tab View  (Reservation Grid)

Most of your operations will probably be done directly from the Rack view.  This is the primary display, which shows the status of each site on any given date, typically showing the next 2 weeks.  Reservations and open sites are color-coded to indicate their status, and each day of the week on open sites can be colored differently as desired (by default the weekends are slightly darker).  Each cell in the grid represents one day of one site.  There are several options available to customize the look of the Rack (see Rack Options for explanations), and there are controls at the top to filter the view.

Starting Date and the Red Yesterday/Today Divider Line

You will normally see a red line on the Rack between yesterday's cells and today's cells on the Rack.  Normally this is a vertical line, but may be horizontal if the orientation is flipped.  The purpose of this line is simply to indicate the start of current day, and is a very helpful indicator.

Note that by default the first column shown on the rack will be yesterday.  This is so that you can see reservations that ended last night, since those customers are likely to still be on site in the morning.  You can also tell (by color coding) whether they have been checked out yet, so you can tell that they might still be there.  When scheduling new reservations, you may want to avoid placing someone in the same site as a reservation that "ended" yesterday unless they have checked out, in case they plan to extend their stay (or just haven't left yet, in the case of early walk-in customers).

Also note that the normal Rack starting date can be changed to a specific date through the Program Options.  This is primarily useful if your park opens for the season at some time in the future, and you're taking reservations now.  You can start the Rack on the first day of the season, so you can skip the "closed" period and don't have to scroll over every time.

Reservation Cells

Reservations are shown as cells filled with the last name of the customer (or the special reservation Label, if there is one).  If the name is too long to fit, it will be truncated with an ellipsis (…) to indicate that it's not completely visible.  One cell for each night of the reservation will contain the name.  The program deals in "nights" of the stay, so although most customers will actually leave the morning after their last night, the cell for the departure morning will not show that customer -- it must be available to show the customer staying the following night.  Thus if a customer stays for one night, one cell will be filled with that customer's name.  Of course if your business is a something like a flea market which operates only in "days" and doesn't have overnight stays, just treat "nights" as days and it works fine.

Moving the mouse cursor over any reservation (without clicking) will show the full last name as well as the first name(s) in a pop-up tip, and also the full Label if there is one.  Double-clicking on a reservation will pop up a Quick-Info window with all of the major details of the reservation, including the dates, status, and customer information, plus linked sites, notes, site preference requests and more.  Finally, right-clicking on a reservation will present a menu with all major functions available so that most operations can be done from this view.  These functions are covered in the Common Controls section.

Reservation Label note: The "Label" is mentioned a couple times above.  This is a special field, normally disabled, that allows you to change what shows on the Rack instead of the customer's last name.  See the Reservation Label section of the Working with Reservations chapter for more details.

Pay special attention to conflicting reservations -- these are cells that are bright red with yellow text (these are the default colors, but this can be changed through the Color Key).  Although it's very difficult to make a reservation that conflicts with another one through the normal procedures (the program will warn you and not allow it), it may be possible to cause conflicts by manually changing a reservation's data (for instance through the Maintenance functions).  If you see a conflicting reservation, double-click on the cell to see a Quick-Info window showing the information for both of them.  You can edit the first one with the normal right-click commands, but to edit the second one you may have to find it through one of the other views (for instance, Arrivals for that date).

Advanced users: the coloring of each heading row and column, as well as the reservations and open sites, can be changed by defining custom Color Schemes and selecting them as default Global Colors.  See the Maintenance section for details.

Open Site Cells

Cells with no customer name are "open" sites.  The color may vary depending on whether the day is a weekday or weekend, and whether the site is available on that date (according to season dates or special available/unavailable dates set for the site).  Hovering over an empty site won't show anything, but you can see the site's description (and double-click to get a Quick-Info window) by hovering over the site name in the row or column header (the gray button-like cells).  Double-clicking on an open site will open the New Reservation dialog (the quickest way to make a reservation for a known site and date that's visible).  Right-clicking will pop up a menu with functions for the site, including options to extend or advance preceding/following reservations to this date.

"No Site" Cells

You may see "No Site:1" (or some other number) in a cell that should otherwise be open. (If the number won't fit in the cell, you will see the "..." ellipsis and can place the mouse over the cell to see the full number.)  This indicates that there are reservations for this date which have not been assigned sites, and this will appear in every open site cell for each date that has unassigned reservations. This is essentially a warning that you should not fill the open sites for that date until the unassigned reservations have been assigned sites, or that you should at least leave enough sites open to satisfy the unassigned reservations.  

To assign sites to the reservations or to cancel accidental unassigned reservations, you can go to the Unassigned Tab View where they will be listed for the date range selected.  Alternatively you can right-click on a "No Site" cell on the Rack and select "View Unassigned reservations for this date".  From there you can view the Reservation Details for any unassigned reservations and use "Assign or Change Site" to assign it to the proper site, or if it's an accidental duplicate you can Cancel or Delete the reservation.

A reminder about double-clicking to make a reservation (or the equivalent New Reservation function from the menu or toolbar) -- be aware that this will make a new reservation, even if you select an existing customer from the database.  This is not the way to assign sites to reservations that have already been made without site assignments, since the original reservation without a site assigned would still be in the system.

Availability Summary Display

You can optionally include a row below the date header that shows the number of sites available for each day or period.  If you prefer, this can be shown as a percentage.  Note that the availability number shown will depend on the site types selected -- if All Site Types are shown, then the number includes all types.  If you select only one type, then the number includes available sites of only that type.

If adding the row for this is too distracting, you can set it to only show the availability as a pop-up tip when you put the mouse cursor over the date.  If the availability by site type is more appropriate, you can also show the availability as a pop-up tip in the site type column.  When you hold the mouse cursor over a particular site type, the availability will be shown for the date range selected.

Note that if any of these availability options are selected, it can cause the Rack display to refresh much more slowly when you have a large database.

Rack Controls

Date range selection was covered in the Common Controls and Settings section above, but the dates on the rack have some special meanings since it's not a normal table-type report.

You'll notice that the program starts with both the start and end date set to the current date, but obviously the Rack is showing more than one day.  The date range is of primarily importance when the Available Only option or the Show Range option is selected, but the controls can also be used to change the Rack dates shown.  

The default date range available in the Rack is determined by the past and future minimum days and maximum days settings (see Rack Options).  You can use the date controls to see dates further in the past or future -- just change the date in the control to extend the range of the Rack.  This won't necessarily scroll the Rack to the dates selected, especially when selecting the End date -- you will still need to scroll the Rack view after selecting a new end date.

If the Available Only option is selected, then the Rack will only show those sites that are available continuously from the Start date to the End date selected.  (Options for what is considered "available" are covered in the Program Options and Settings section.)  So by default, if you check the Available Only box, it will show all sites that are available today.  This is a quick way to see what's available for a given date range before starting a reservation.  Once you know the available sites, you could double-click on one of them to start the reservation process.  

Note that if Available Only is selected, the From and To dates selected for the rack can automatically be used as the First and Last nights for a new reservation (when you double-click on an open site).  This option can be enabled or disabled through Program Options.  If Available Only is not selected, the date of the cell you double-clicked on will be used as the First night, but it will only assume one night.

If the Show Range option is selected, then the Rack does only show dates in the range selected.  This is primarily used when you want to print a Rack view, so that you only print the dates you want.  Otherwise it would print all of the rack currently available for scrolling, which is probably a lot more than you want.

The Site Types drop-down will filter the Rack to show only the selected type or class, or All Site Types.  Note that this also affects the Available Only option, in which case only the available sites of the selected type will be shown.  Also note that if a Default filter is defined, this will also be used for the New Reservations dialog.

The Reset/Today button is handy for resetting the Rack to its default state after scrolling it or checking availability.  This sets the date range back to the default, makes sure that the current day (or previous day depending on the settings) is the first row or column shown, clears the Available Only and Show Range options, and resets the Site Types selection to All Site Types.

The Options button opens a dialog with various settings for customizing the appearance of the Rack.  These settings are saved and will remain the way you set them every time the program runs.