Every castle you own can be at one party, and every party has a garden you have never seen. Put each unit on its own date, take the deposit as the date is taken rather than hoping on the morning, and let a hirer move or cancel from the confirmation. Getting the disclaimer signed and the site questions answered as part of booking is on the paid plans.
Blu CastlesBook online
Castle12ft · full day$120.00
Slide comboFull day$160.00
Soft-play setFull dayBook
Next freeSat 12Sun 13Sat 19
Disclaimer
Signed
Before the van is loaded
Deposit
$30.00
25% held the Saturday
The garden
Grass, 20m
Surface and socket, asked at booking
Four things that decide whether a weekend of hires runs itself, written for the trade where the paperwork genuinely has to happen before the van moves.
The twelve-foot castle, the slide combo and the soft-play set are three different things people ask for by name. Each one keeps its own diary, so a Saturday that is gone is gone.
Take a deposit as the booking is made and the summer Saturday stops being something somebody might change their mind about. The date comes off the page once the payment has gone through.
On the paid plans the terms you need agreed (supervision, age and height limits, what happens if it is too windy) are put in front of the hirer while they book, not read out at the gate on Saturday.
Surface, slope, gate width, how far the nearest socket is, whether there is a step. Ask it on the booking form and Saturday stops being the morning you find out.
A two-hour party is not a two-hour hire. The unit is out from the morning until you collect it, and the page has to hold that whole block or the same castle gets promised twice on one day. Set the hire length you actually work to, how far ahead people may book, the minimum notice you will take and how late a booking may be cancelled. All of it applies on the page rather than being explained on every call, and different units can run to different lengths.
Half the problems on a hire morning are things the customer could have done and was never asked to. On the paid plans a reminder goes out on its own the day before, in your own wording: clear the garden, unlock the side gate, keep the dog in, have somebody there to sign. It carries the date and the unit, so a hirer who booked six weeks ago knows what is coming, and anybody who needs to cancel does it the night before rather than when you are outside.
Twenty to seven on a Friday, loading for the morning. There are three jobs on the sheet and the twelve-foot castle appears against two of them: one booked through Facebook Messenger in April, one taken by phone last week by somebody who was driving.
Neither entry has a signed disclaimer against it. Neither says what the ground is. One of them has paid a deposit by bank transfer and you are fairly sure it was the other one.
Picktime holds each unit once and takes the deposit as the date is taken rather than as an afterthought on a Friday night. On the paid plans it also gets the disclaimer signed and the garden described as part of the booking.
The castle, the slide combo, the soft-play set, the disco dome: one entry each, with its price and the hire length you work to. People ask for them by name, so they should be bookable by name.
The paid plans put the terms you need agreed into the booking, and the questions about the surface, the gate, the slope and the nearest socket with them. Both are answered before anything is loaded.
Put the booking link on your site, in your Facebook page’s button and in your Instagram bio. Most of this trade is booked from a phone in the evening, which is exactly when nobody is reading messages.
The free plan has no end date and no card, which is what you want in a trade where the season is four months long and the winter is quiet.
A hire lands in the calendar already on your phone, and on the paid plans a change there comes back here. Put a Book Now button on the Facebook page where your photographs already are, so the parent who saw last weekend’s castle books the same evening.
Picktime runs in a phone browser, which is what you have while a blower is running. There are iOS and Android apps if you want one, and a hirer can see their own booking and their signed terms from theirs.
The two things that matter are that a unit can only be booked once for a date and that the disclaimer is signed before it goes out. Picktime holds the date free for one van, and puts the disclaimer on the booking form on the paid plans. The specialist inflatable suites add stock counting and route planning; Picktime books the date and takes the money, and does not plan a round.
Yes. A page carrying every unit by name, customers booking and cancelling their own dates, a deposit taken at booking and email notifications are all on the free plan, which has no end date and no card. The disclaimer, the site questions and reminders are on the paid plans.
Put each unit in by name and let it hold its own date. Once a castle is booked for Saturday it is not offered again for Saturday, not on the page, and not by whoever picks up the phone.
Yes, on the paid plans. Put the terms in front of the hirer as part of booking (supervision, age and height limits, what happens in high wind), and they agree to them then. It stays against the booking rather than in a folder in the van.
Yes, on the paid plans, and it is the difference between a smooth morning and an hour on a pavement. Ask about the surface, the slope, the gate width, the step and how far the nearest socket is, and it arrives with the booking.
Yes. Connect PayPal on the free plan, or Stripe or Square on a paid one, and take a deposit or the full hire as the date is booked. The date is only held once the payment has gone through, which is what stops a summer Saturday being held by a maybe.
Yes, on the paid plans. A reminder goes out on its own the day before with your own wording on it: clear the garden, unlock the gate, somebody there to sign. Anybody who needs to cancel then does it the night before rather than while you are outside.
Nobody should put a margin figure on that for you, ours included, because the numbers circulating online belong to somebody else’s fleet in somebody else’s weather. What decides it is smaller and countable: how many summer Saturdays each unit is out, how many of those were paid for before the van moved, and how many turned into an hour on a pavement because the gate was too narrow. The first two are booking questions. The third is a question you can ask on the form, on the paid plans, before you agree to the date.
Picktime starts at nothing and stays there: the free plan has no end date and no card, and the paid plans are priced on the pricing page. Across the rest of the category the headline number matters less than its shape, because some tools charge for every person who takes bookings and others charge per location, and a one-van operation and a three-van one land in very different places on the same price list. Work out which of those you are buying before you compare figures.
It depends which end of the event you are selling. If you are selling seats or tickets to the thing itself, you want a ticketing product with a seat map, and that is not Picktime. If you are the supplier the event books, a castle for a fourth birthday or a marquee for a fete, you need each unit holding its own date and a deposit taken as the date is taken, which is the job this page describes.
Marquees and kit Every item on its own date, with the access questions asked up front.
See party rental scheduling
Sets and dates Dates held against a deposit, with the set times agreed when it is booked.
See magician booking software
Hire by the event One booth, one event, and the details taken while the date is booked.
See photo booth schedulingFree forever for one van. No card, no trial clock, and every unit can be bookable by name before the weekend.
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