Bike hire at Llyn Brenig with an eola front desk booking showing a member discount and card reader payment

Book walk-ins from your dashboard, see member prices before taking payment, take cash or card reader payments and settle unpaid items at the desk.

Front desk bookings and payments in eola

Not every booking happens online. Walk-ins, phone calls and customers who never finished paying all end up at your front desk. The New booking flow in your dashboard handles all of them, and recent updates make member prices and unpaid items easier to deal with when there’s a queue.

Select New booking at the top of your dashboard to book activities, rentals or accommodation for a customer. Add as many items as you need to the basket, then go to checkout. Start typing a name and existing customers are suggested, so regulars don’t have to give their details again.

At checkout you choose how the customer pays:

Cash, so your reports still show how the booking was paid

Payment link, sent by email, and by SMS too if you tick Send via sms too

Since 28 September, when you pick a member at checkout you see their member price before taking payment. The basket shows the membership discount and the balance due, and the card reader screen shows the amount being charged, so the customer knows what they’re paying before they tap.

Payment link emails now show members their price too, so a member booking over the phone sees the same discount they’d get online.

Members-only activities, rentals and accommodation are labelled Members only in the booking flow. If the customer can’t normally book one, staff see a Not a current member warning that explains why, for example:

their membership doesn’t include that product

their membership only covers a set number of adults or children

Staff can cancel or continue. It’s a prompt rather than a block, so you can still help someone who’s renewing at the desk, while making sure nobody books a non-member by accident.

Customers sometimes turn up without having paid a payment link. Go to Sales > Unpaid items to see unpaid bookings, part-paid deposit bookings, unpaid additional payments and unpaid store items. On each one you can copy the payment link, or select Checkout to open it in the booking flow and take payment by cash or card reader. Unpaid items also show on the customer’s record.

Our guide to payment links and unpaid items goes into more detail.

When a booking is complete you can choose what to do next. Back to calendar is the main option. Alongside it you can view the invoice, go to post checkout to add attendees and sort out disclaimers and question packs, or manage each booking you’ve just made. You can also take another booking straight away.

To take card payments in person, add the Card readers app from Toolset > Apps, then set up your reader under Toolset > Card readers.

Select New booking and add what the customer wants to the basket.

At checkout, enter or pick the customer, check the price and choose a payment method.

Select Complete. For a card reader payment, select your reader and ask the customer to pay.

Onsite point of sale and cash, card and invoice payments are included on every plan, including Starter.

Your card reader needs to be online and on the same network as the device you’re using.

Card reader payments need a basket total above zero.

Members can show their membership QR code or wallet pass at the desk. See wallet passes and membership pages.

Want to see how this could work for your business? Book a demo or get in touch with our team.

How to book walk-ins and phone customers from your dashboard, apply member prices, take cash or card payments and clear unpaid items at the desk.

Taking bookings and payments at the front desk with eola

The eola dashboard noticeboard and Chat with support

Get help without leaving your eola dashboard, and see product news and reminders on your new noticeboard. Here’s how both work.

Chat with support and the dashboard noticeboard | eola

When something isn’t working on a busy Saturday, you shouldn’t have to dig out an email address. Since September, you can chat with support without leaving your eola dashboard. A new noticeboard on your dashboard also keeps you up to date with what’s changed and what’s coming up.

Chat with support in the dashboard sidebar opens a chat window inside eola. eola’s assistant answers straight away. If it can’t help, your conversation is handed to our team.

The same chat opens from the contact links on app and report pages. So if you’re reading about an app in Toolset > Apps and have a question about it, you can ask there and then.

In the sidebar, select your centre’s name to open your account menu.

Type your question in your own words. The assistant replies straight away, and passes the conversation to our team if it can’t answer.

Chat with support appears once the chat has loaded. If you don’t see it, you can still email help@eola.co, or browse the Help Centre from the same menu.

Your dashboard now has a Noticeboard. It’s where eola tells you about things in the product, such as:

an app worth considering for your business

a reminder, like booking your pre-season check-in

New messages wait on your dashboard when you sign in, with a count of how many are unread. Select one to read it in full. Opening a message marks it as read.

Choose View all to see everything we’ve sent you, newest first, read and unread. Nothing disappears, so you can look back at a message any time.

Emails about product changes are easy to miss in a busy inbox, especially in peak season. The noticeboard keeps them in the place you already check every day, alongside your bookings and revenue. And when you have a question, chat means you can ask it without leaving the page you’re stuck on.

Noticeboard messages are sent to people, not centres, so everyone on your team has their own read and unread messages.

If you work across several centres, you’ll see the same messages on each, and reading one anywhere marks it as read everywhere.

The dashboard shows your five most recent unread messages. View all shows the rest.

New team members see messages from the month before they joined onwards, so they start with recent news rather than a long backlog.

Chat with support from the dashboard sidebar, answered straight away by eola’s assistant and handed to our team when needed, plus a noticeboard for product news and reminders.

Chat with support and the noticeboard: help inside your dashboard

Chat with support

How to start a chat

The noticeboard

Why we added it

Good to know

See eola in action

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