Special Events

Created by Paul Sherry, Modified on Tue, Jun 18, 2024 at 11:29 PM by Paul Sherry

The Special Event package option in RKd is designed to handle a variety of specific situations and Special Event packages have some major differences from standard packages. Special Events allow customers to register for a pre-scheduled event and pay for one or more of a limited number of spots/occupancy in the package.

Common Use Cases

Leagues (Typically recurring weekly on the same day each week)
Single day, multiple day and recurring tournaments
Classes (Paint night, Mixology Classes, Group Training, Wine Tasting, Yoga)
Fund Raisers (In specific use cases)

What do the use cases above have in common that makes them a Special Event?

Special Events have a set maximum occupancy/capacity for the event that can be larger or smaller than the typical maximum occupancy of the venue.

When using the Special Event option, RKd ignores the default occupancy of your resources and instead relies on the maximum capacity that you set for the Special Event.
- For example, if your venue has 6 golf simulator bays that typically allow for up to 6 guests per bay, your venue has a default maximum occupancy of 36 guests at a time. But let's say that you want to schedule a new weekly golf league and only have room for 6 foursomes. You would set the Special Event Capacity setting to 24 which is less than your typical capacity. You might also decide that you have room for 12 foursomes in the league so you would set the Special Event Capacity to 48 which is more than you typical capacity.
In the example above, the venue might want to only sell 4 person registrations to the league (rather than allow single individuals). To accomplish this, the venue would create a single Group Size of 4 to 4 golfers so that when customers book/register for the league online or in person, they are, by default, signing up for a full team of 4 rather than as individuals. If this venue wants to allow the 4 team members to pay separately, they might set the deposit amount to 25% or 50% so that 1 or 2 people are paid in-full through the deposit and the unpaid guests can pay for themselves in-person on the first night of league. However, it is far more common for venues to require full payment upfront for league registration.

Special Events allow for many, individual reservations/registrations (up to the maximum capacity) but all guests SHARE the assigned resources rather than being assigned to a specific, private resource like a typical reservation.

When a Special Event package is created, RKd creates a Parent Reservation on the calendar at the selected Date, Time and Duration and in the case of recurring special events like Leagues, multiple Parent Reservations are created (one for each instance of the event). These Parent Reservation Cards appear slightly different on the calendar (screenshot below) and when selected, they display the Child Reservations that have registered for the Special Event including some helpful information about the event (Screenshot below). In order to view the details of an individual Child Reservation, you will select the “View” button for that reservation which will then open the drawer and allow for payments or edits to be made for the selected reservation.
Sharing the assigned resources as a group rather than assigning each participant or Child Reservation to a specific resource means that League and Tournament style events can allow individuals to move between different resources throughout the facility during the event.
It is important to note that the Parent Reservation is holding the assigned resources on the calendar and will not allow other reservations to be double booked on top of it.

Special Event settings allow for only a single Start Time and a single Duration selection.

In all of the use cases above for Special Events, all of the registered participants are participating together as a single group. This means that Special Events can only have one Start Time and one Duration selection. All Child Reservation begin and end at the same time of day as a part of the Parent Reservation. While this one large group will almost certainly be broken up in to smaller groups on the day of the event (ex. individual competitions), they have all registered for the same Special Event.
For example, in the screenshot above, all 3 Child Reservations and their participants will start the Special Event at Noon and end at 1pm together.

When making new reservations for a Special Event, the Duration, Date, and Start Time are preselected for online customers and staff users (There is only one of each allowed for Special Events).

Simply as a matter of ease of use for both your staff and your online customers, these options are preselected for the user as there can only ever be one of each (except in the case of recurring events). In the online booking modal on your website, these steps are actually skipped entirely making the booking process very quick and easy.

Special Event names in the Reservation Drawer have special badges to help users identify them quickly.

Recurring Special Events can require that customers re-register for each instance of the event or require only a single registration for the first instance of the recurring event (League Style Scheduling).

When creating a recurring special event there is an option called Use League Scheduling?. Enabling this option will force customers and staff to use the first day of league as the only registration date. With this option turned on, League registrants will not be required to re-register each week and will only need to make a single League payment for the full duration of the League. At the end of each week, when the current Parent Reservation is completed, all participants and waivers will be moved into the next week automatically.
When this option is turned off, RKd will still create a Parent Reservation for each week BUT they are considered independent of each other. For example, you might want to create a mini-tournament series each week on Thursday nights but you want your customers to pay for each week they enter the tournament. This can be a real time saver when you know exactly how long the mini-tournament series is going to last and have a good plan for your Special Event setup.

Special Events have unique buttons in the packages table and unique editing options.

Each Special Event will have an Event Schedule button on the right hand side of the page. When opened, each of the instances (Parent Reservations) of the event are listed and are expandable to show a list of the current Child Reservations. This is a very handy tool for quickly checking on the status of your future event without having to navigat to it on the reservation calendar. From here, you can also select the Parent Reservations or any of the Child Reservations and be redirected to it on the calendar in a new browser window.

Special Events in the packages Table DO NOT have a Duplicate option. Due to the unique nature of special events, each one must created fresh and independently of the others.
Selecting the Special Event option must happen during the initial“Save and Close”.
- Once created, Special Events can not be turned back into a standard package and standard packages can not be edited to become a Special Event.

Special Events can be edited after they are saved but ONLY if there are no Child Reservations associated with the Parent Reservation. Customers who have registered for a Special Event have done so under the assumption that the Date, Start Time, Duration, Price, etc… are locked in and and will not change. If you do need to make changes to a Special Event after Child Reservations have been added, ALL Child Reservations will need to be cancelled in order to allow for editing.
- We realize that sometimes changes/edits to a Special Event will be minor but when the need arises, we encourage you to communicate those changes to each customer to ensure that they are okay with the change. When cancelling and re-registering a customer for the newly updated Special Event you may often have to refund a customers payment in order to apply it to the new Child Reservation. In these situations it is easiest to refund the payment to a Gift Card and then apply the Gift Card balance to the new Child Reservation for that customer, thus avoiding a credit card or cash refund.