Seasonal/Event pricing has been available in the system for a while now, but the process was cumbersome and required users to edit each vehicle individually.  We’re super excited to announce that you can now manage all of your seasonal pricing from one place in the dashboard.

When you open up the seasons page, you’ll notice that you can now edit all of your base pricing in one place. These are the same price settings you’ve always had in each rental, just a bit easier to get to now.

How Seasons Work

Seasons are created with a percentage price increase or decrease from your base pricing.  For example, if an RV is listed for $100/day, and you’ve set your season to 120%, the new rate during that season will be $120/day.  You can override the season pricing at any time for each vehicle, allowing you to set them to anything you’d like.

On the main seasons page, you’ll see the price adjustment for each season, as well as a count of any custom overrides you’ve created.

Editing & Creating Seasons

To edit a season, click on the “Edit” button next to its description.  Once there, you’ll see the following options for each season:

• Season Name – Visible to renters on shopping pages, so make it memorable
• Dates – The dates that the season prices should be in effect for
• Repeat Options – Indicate if this season is just the once or should repeat each year
• Minimum Rental Length – The minimum rental allowed during this period.  As always, shorter rentals ARE allowed, but they’ll be charged the minimum length with a note telling the renter why the rate is higher than expected.
• Price Change – A percentage-based change to each of your rental prices.  For example, if the RV is $100/day, and you enter 80%, the rental will be $80/day during that season.  You can override prices at any time for each vehicle below.  If you don’t want any automatic price changes, just set the price adjustment to 100%.

Below the basic options, you’ll find a section to override the season pricing for each vehicle specifically.  We’ve included some useful information on utilization rates for the season as well as for each vehicle, allowing you to more easily adjust prices based on remaining availability.

In addition to the overview pages, you can also edit seasonal pricing on vehicle pages as well.  It’s a pretty similar interface, just a bit streamlined.

Improved Quoting

Seasons are pretty awesome, but we also managed to squeeze in some great changes to the quoting interface as well.   We’ve added the ability to customize quotes and view final pricing BEFORE you need any contact information from your potential renters.  This was a pretty big pain point for some of you, and we’re sorry it took so long to get this knocked out.  We’ve also added the ability to search for renters instead of having to remember all of their information each time.

Small Changes & Fixes

• [Improved] We improved the way we handle failed payments, allowing renters to fix the issue before they arrive in your office!
• [Improved] Messages are now sorted by most recently received, like they always shoulda been.  Sorry about that!
• [Improved] We no longer merge users automatically based on email address.  Instead, we’ll let you know that user already exists and encourage you to search for them using the new search feature on quotes
• [Improved] We improved the way we collect information on transactions. You’ll see the benefit of this soon in newer reporting features
• [Change] We’ve removed the ability to edit renter contact info directly on a reservation.  It was a bit confusing because many users didn’t realize you were actually editing the renters info on all of their reservations.  Instead, now you have the option of changing the renter directly.  If you want to edit info, you’ll need to click “View Profile” and then “Edit”
• [Fix] Some reports were having issues with the first page load not using dates correctly.  All fixed!
• [Fix] Inbox zero is great, Inbox -1 not so much.  No more negative numbers for messages.
• [Fix] “Invalid” isn’t a real birthday, so we’ve stopped pretending it is…
• [Fix] Fixed a rare issue where driver check upload links weren’t working correctly.
• [Fix] On first filter we wouldn’t always show unavailable RVs on the quote page.  Now we do!

We’ve been focused on improving the usability and stability of the platform over the last few weeks, but that didn’t stop us from sneaking in a few features for you.

Improved Reservation Lists

Long time users will recall when we used to have a massive list of reservations here with already returned ones at the top.  It was pretty useless, so we fixed it.  The main screen now shows upcoming and current reservations, with tabs to jump to cancelled or returned ones.  Using the filters on the right will automatically search all reservations for you.

Automated Rental Contracts & Insurance Binder Request Forms

This was a frequently requested feature.  We’ve rolled out insurance binder request forms directly into the booking pages.  You can now send your renters a request form pre-filled with all of your vehicle and reservation information.

Other Changes & Fixes

• [New] Huge changes to the renter checkout process.  We now allow renters to fix failed payment issues, apply for insurance at any time, add additional drivers and more.
• [New] Renters are now given the opportunity to pay for their trips and/or security deposits before they arrive at your office
• [New] Automated international drivers checks are now available.  We’ll contact your renter requesting a copy of their passport/drivers license to process.  You also have the option of uploading these on your own
• [Improved] You can now change the renter on a reservation at any time. Previously you could only edit existing renter’s contact information.  This lead to some confusion and data problems.
• [Improved] Quote page is cleaner and only shows relevant quotes now
• [Improved] Improved our license matching abilities to get your renters approved for insurance more quickly
• [Improved] Reservations initiated on the dealer side no longer are registered as “new” in the sidebar
• [Improved] You can now jump to any date you want on the reservation calendar
• [Improved] Email notifications for dealers have been changed.  You’ll now only get emails from us for new reservation requests or when a payment has been received
• [Improved] We had some annoying cacheing issues reported where revised reservtions wouldn’t be updated until a reload.  We’ve tracked as many of these down as we could and squashed them.  Please let us know if you encounter any more issues
• [Improved] Printed quotes now include the reservation number and more rental information
• [Fixed] Some screens/emails would show the security deposit as due 2 days before pickup when it wasn’t
• [Fixed] The help chat bubble would sometimes block reservations on your calendar.  No more!
• [Fixed] Saving notes on a reservation would sometimes error out – no more
• [Fixed] Resolved an issue where the security deposit status would sometimes get stuck on “Waived”
• [Fixed] Resolved an issue where reports would load all transactions regardless of dates selected
• [Fixed] You can now enter partial miles/hours for mileage and generator tracking

Here’s a quick overview of some of the changes we pushed this week. We push updates every day, largely thanks to the awesome feedback & support we get from all of you. Keep it coming!

Improved Quoting System

We’ve been working on an improved quoting system based on your feedback. We’re pretty happy with what we came up with, and we hope you will too. This is very much a work in progress, so please send all your feedback and comments to the chat icon in the lower right — we’d love to chat with you! Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect to see:

• Vehicle Summaries — Know important details like vehicle type, weight, amperage and length without having to leave the quote screen.
• Automatic price quotes — All vehicles now include a quick price breakdown. You’ll see a subtotal, taxes, insurance fee and total for the dates selected. That means no more having to collect contact information just to give a quick quote.
• Same Day Pickup/Drop off Warning — We’ll let you know if the selected dates have any existing reservations scheduled before or after. Red means it’s within 1–2 days, yellow means within 4 days, Green means plenty of time.
• Utilization Stats — We’ll let you know the utilization of each vehicle for the selected month as well as year. This is a great way to optimize your fleet usage and maximize income for your consigned owners.
• Smart Sorting — Quotes are automatically sorted by the best available options. We’ll prioritize vehicles with lower utilization rates during the requested time frame to maximize fleet utilization and help avoid maintenance issues from overbooked vehicles. We’ll also help you avoid overbooking by pushing down vehicles with other reservations within close proximity to your dates. You also have the option to sort by price as well.
• Vehicle Filtering — Select vehicle type, desired lengths and price range to help narrow down the options for your renters.

The first thing you’ll notice is that all quotes now include automatic pricing for all your vehicles up front. That means you won’t have to collect any renter information to give a quick quote. Next, you’ll notice some helpful indicators along the bottom of each vehicle. We’ll let you know if there are any other reservations before or after your selected dates for that rental.

Employee Drivers

One of the great aspects of the Outdoorsy insurance policy is that it authorized employees to deliver vehicles during qualifying reservations as well. The only requirement is that delivery drivers pass the same quick DMV check your renters take when completing a reservation. Unfortunately, that wasn’t super easy to get done previously. We’ve added a section to your account settings to let you qualify employee drivers for delivery coverage. To get to it, click the gear icon on your sidebar and then click “Verified Delivery Drivers”

Unread Quotes and Messages Indicators

We’re working on improving the accessibility of quotes and messages in the dashboard. As a first step in that direction, we’ve added unread indicators to the sidebar to let you know you’ve got new quotes to review. Lots of changes coming here in the next week or so that we’re excited to share.

Other Improvements & Fixes

• IMPROVED — Added color labels and improved printing styles on morning report
• IMPROVED — Morning report now shows the next departure date so you can prioritize rental checkins
• IMPROVED — Mobile formatting on all tables. Still not 100% mobile, still working on it 😀
• IMPROVED — Global search now lets you search by reservation and vehicle IDs
• IMPROVED — Updated the driving check date formatting to mitigate data entry issues, failures have dropped as a result meaning we can approve your renters more quickly!
• IMPROVED — We now include your website on all outgoing quotes
• IMPROVED — Security deposit text has been updated to explain the charge as well as let renters know when it’ll take place.
• FIX — Emails weren’t always being delivered on imported reservations. Thanks to those of you who helped us track this one down.
• FIX — Changing the vehicle on a reservation wasn’t updating the insurance status to match. Now it does, which is great!
• FIX — 100% payment up front wasn’t calculating correctly on the quote breakdown.
• FIX — Reservation security deposit and remainder payments were being scheduled in UTC time, which worked well for the 0 customers who live in UTC time…sorry about that.
• FIX — Low season dates weren’t always changeable on new vehicles. All fixed.
• FIX — Expired quotes wouldn’t always update immediately in our search cache. Now they do (lots more changes/improvements coming here based on your awesome feedback)
• FIX — If you change the security deposit to “Pay on pickup” after a reservation is confirmed, we’ll now cancel the scheduled security deposit transaction automatically
• FIX — Check in/out mileage wouldn’t always record correctly. This has been resolved. Apologies to those of you who were impacted by this.

Improved Quoting, Employee Drivers & More was originally published in Outdoorsy Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Read the responses to this story on Medium.