Additional information is available to FareHarbor employees.
The process of setting up a new customer type involves three main steps:
- Create the new customer type in your Dashboard settings.
- Add the customer type to one or more items, where you’ll determine its pricing and visibility per item.
- Add the customer type to availabilities to make it bookable to online customers and your staff.
All three steps must be completed for the new customer type to appear on your book form. For detailed information, click into the sections below.
Creating a new customer type
Customer types are created and managed in your Dashboard settings.
To create a customer type:
- Go to the Settings section of your Dashboard.
- From the Settings menu, select Customer Types.
- Click New customer type and fill out the following information:
- Enter a singular and plural name for your customer type. This is what will be displayed to the public.
- Optional: Enter an internal name. This will only be displayed to logged-in users on your Dashboard.
- Optional: Add a note. Notes are displayed below the customer type when making a booking, and are visible to online customers, affiliates, and your staff. Learn more.
- Click Create customer type.
Once these steps are completed, you will be taken to the settings page for your new customer type. Although you can update overall settings like pricing and visibility here, we usually recommend doing this in item settings instead. We’ll go over these options in the next section.
To return to your list of customer types, click Customer Types at the top of the page.
Tip: The order of your customer types determines the order that they appear in your book form. To change the order of your customer types, see Reordering customer types.
Adding a customer type to one or more items
In this step, you’ll add your customer type to one or more items, and determine its pricing and visibility.
Adding a customer type to a single item:
- Go to the Items section of your Dashboard and select the item you want to update.
- Go to the item’s Options & Prices.
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Click Add customer type and choose your customer type from the dropdown menu.
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Optional: If needed, make the customer type exclusive.
When a customer type is exclusive, this means that once one of that customer type has been booked on an availability, you’ll only be able to accept bookings for that same customer type. Learn more.
- Click Add.
- Repeat these steps for any additional customer types you’d like to add.
Duplicating customer types
You can also add a customer type to an item by duplicating an existing one, which will
Adding a customer type to multiple items at once
You can add a customer type to multiple items at once using the Price Sheets Overview in your main Dashboard settings.
How to use the Price Sheets Overview.
Setting price and visibility
After a customer type has been added to an item, you’ll see a pricing table next to it, which should look something like this:
To update these settings, you’ll want to focus on the first two columns: Visibility and Price.
- Visibility: By default, the customer type will be visible to anyone making a booking. Click on the visibility status to change it. Learn more.
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Price: To set a price for your customer type, click None, then select Change from the dropdown menu. Enter a price for the customer type, determine whether to apply tax or not, then click Save.
Other options
To update additional settings, click the pencil icon next to the customer type name. These settings are optional and item-specific, meaning they will only apply to the particular item you’re updating.
- Internal name: An abbreviated or informal name that will be displayed to your staff only. If you want to use an internal name for the customer type when it appears on this item only, you can change it here.
- Note: Displayed below the customer type name and price when making a booking. If you want to display a note for the customer type when it appears on this item only, you can add it here.
- Make exclusive: When exclusive, once one of the customer type has been booked on an availability, you’ll only be able to accept bookings for that same customer type. Learn more.
- Per-booking minimum/maximum: Minimum and/or maximum number of the customer type that can be included on a booking (for example, if you need to specify a specific group size).
- Per-availability capacity: Maximum number of the customer type that can be booked on an availability. Once the capacity is reached, the book form will no longer allow that customer type to be booked online (Dashboard users can still book the customer type, but will be notified that they are overbooking).
Viewing customer types on items
You can view a list of the customer types that have been assigned to an item, including whether they have been assigned to any availabilities, by navigating to the item’s Options & Prices section. For customer types with no availabilities, an “inactive” label shows next to the name of the customer type. This makes it easy to see at a glance which customer types need to be assigned to availabilities or which can be archived due to disuse.
Adding a customer type to an availability
By adding a customer type to one or more availabilities, you are making it available for online customers and staff members to book.
New availabilities
When creating new availabilities, you will be required to select one or more customer types to add to your book form. During this step, you also have the option to set the per-booking minimum and maximum and the per-availability capacity for each customer type, if needed.
Customer type settings at the availability level will override any settings made at the item level.
If you’ve never created an availability before, follow the steps outlined here.
Existing availabilities
To add a new customer type to existing availabilities, follow the steps outlined here.
Once you’ve created your availabilities with the appropriate customer types, it’s always a good idea to test out your book form and double check that your pricing and customer types are correct.
Managing customer types
You can view and manage your customer types by navigating to your Dashboard’s Settings, then selecting Customer Types. Here, you can see all your customer types at a glance.
You can further customize this view by using the Display options menu, where you can choose to show a variety of information, such as Columns for customer type IDs, SKUs, or Notes, whether a customer type is archived or has usage on an item, and whether to show plural names for your customer types.
Tip: You can sort this table by column when the “Drag to reorder” checkbox in the Display options is unchecked.
Frequently asked questions
What do customer type notes look like?
Notes are displayed below the customer type name when making a booking. In the example below, the customer type note is “17 and under”:
Notes are visible to everyone (online customers, affiliates, and your staff) when making a booking, but are not shown in reports.
Tip: Notes are meant to differentiate certain customer types from others. If you find yourself using the same note for multiple customer types, we recommend putting the information in your item description instead.
Updating customer type notes
Notes can be set in the customer type’s overall settings, but can also be overridden for specific items.
- To add a customer type note, go to Settings > Customer Types and click Edit next to the customer type you want to update.
- To add a customer type note for a specific item, go to the Items section of your Dashboard and select the item you want to update. Next, go to Options and Prices and click “Edit »” next to the customer type name.
When should I create a new customer type and when should I duplicate the customer type that I already have?
Deciding whether or not to create a new customer type or duplicate an old one to edit will help you keep your Dashboard clean and organized. Use the examples below to help you decide which is best for your Dashboard. If you ever need help with customer types, feel free to reach out to FareHarbor Support.
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If you need different pricing options for a customer type on different availabilities, it’s best to duplicate the customer type you already have.
For example, ticket prices for your walking tour are different for the morning tour versus the sunset tour. By duplicating your preexisting customer type, “Person”, you can add the customer type to the item twice, with SKUs used to label them accordingly (“Person – Morning” and “Person – Sunset”). Then, you can price both customer types and add them to the relevant availabilities.
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If you need different pricing options for customer types on the same availability, it’s best to create a new customer.
For example, ticket prices for your walking tour are different depending on if the customer gets a boxed lunch. In this case, two unique customer types should be created, named “Person without lunch” and “Person with boxed lunch”. These customer types should be priced so that customers can see the difference between them when they are seen on the same availabilities.
Tip: If your company works with seasonal pricing, if the pricing changes at the end of the year, or if the pricing changes based on the date of the booking or the date of the activity, you should use Price Schedules to manage pricing instead of customer types. If you’d like to set up Price Schedules, contact FareHarbor Support (https://fareharbor.com/submit/).
I’ve added a customer type to the item and set a SKU name, but the name my customers are seeing on my site is still the original name. Why is that?
SKUs are never displayed to your customers. They’re simply a way to label the customer types to help you to differentiate them when logged into your Dashboard. You should always make sure that the name of your customer type is one that you’re comfortable with your customers seeing. Read more about SKUs.