Proper Rates order for Auto-Rates

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One of common issues in getting Auto-Rates to work is the order of the Rates. While it's natural to want to put Daily first, then Weekly, etc, when entering the rates, that's actually the opposite of what the program needs and will result in Auto-rates wanting to charge the daily rate for all reservations.

The program looks top-down for the first/best matching rate, and will use the first one it finds that can "apply to" the reservation. So the "cheapest per day" rate is usually first, as well as any "special case" rates you need to override a normal rate like holidays or higher season rates.

Here is a typical order for proper operation, given a common situation of 2 different seasons, a daily discount rate and a special holiday daily rate:

Monthly high season

Monthly low season

Weekly high season

Weekly low season

Holiday daily

Discount daily high season

Discount daily high season

Normal daily high season

Normal daily low season

Note that they are essentially in order of priority, so you can "read" them like an "if.... then... otherwise..." structure. For instance:

If it's a month or more in high season, then use the Monthly high rate....otherwise,
If it's a month or more in low season, then use the Monthly low rate....otherwise,
(... skipping high/low from here on for simplicity ...)
if it's a week or more, then use the Weekly rate.... otherwise,
if it's a on holiday, then use the Holiday rate... otherwise,
If they have a discount, then use the discount rate.... otherwise,
Use the normal daily rate.

This is basically what the program does, so once you understand this then it should make a lot more sense.


Other notes:

If there are "leftover" dates after the first pass through, then it repeats again for the remainder. For instance if it's 1 month plus 17 days, then it will use the Monthly rate, then go through again for the other 17days... it will find that the Weekly rate can be used twice, then go through again for the remaining 3 days and use the appropriate Daily rate.

Of course all of this would need to be replicated for each Site Type, etc.

It doesn't matter if you group them with all Cabins together and then all RV's together, etc, or whether you put Monthly for all site types first, then Weekly for all site types, etc. -- as long as the rates themselves are properly qualified with the Site Type selection , etc.

Note that the high vs low season order doesn't matter, as long as both are properly qualified with Season Dates Applicable.

Likewise, the Discount rates, Holiday rate, etc need to be properly qualified so that they only apply when they're applicable (see Rate Setup Examples).

A lot of other situations can be handled similarly, for instance weekend vs weekdays in place of the "Normal" daily rates, etc.


The specific rules are detailed here:
http://campgroundmaster.com/help/auto_ratessetup.html

The Rate Setup Examples also explain the proper positioning of various rates like weekly and holiday:
http://campgroundmaster.com/help/ratesetupexamples.html

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