Availability Engine Utilisation Rules
Purpose
For Availability Engine users, there are ways to control how availability is determined according to how heavily utilised your fleet is. This is done through the Availability Engine Utilisation Rules page. This page can set up Utilization Rules for a large range of circumstances, for example:
- If you want more control over accepting bookings when things are looking tight, return bookings as "On Request" once a category is 90% utilised
- If you know you can service a popular category with upgrades to another vehicle, allow overbooking of that category by up to 110%
- If you are approaching a busy period where you know you can fill bookings via your website, allow your website to book up to 100%, but restrict other booking sources to a different level.
When a new booking request is received, the AE will first seek for any matching Utilisation Rule (it will choose the most-specific, where more than one applies). It will then calculate the utilisation percentage per category and location. So for a particular booking request, the AE will determine number of vehicles available out of that location in that category vs number of those vehicles which are already booked for those dates, and derive the Utilised Percentage. We use this against the chosen rule to determine which availability status should be returned for that request.
More detailed information about the Availability Engine can be found here Availability Engine Overview.
Accessing The Availability Engine Utilisation Rules Page
System Setup >> Availability Engine Settings >> Availability Engine Utilisation Rules
No Rules Set Up
If you have not set up any Utilisation Rules then your Availability Engine will return "available" for all bookings up until 100% utilisation, at which point it will return "not available". To make any variation on this default, you will need to set up a new Utilisation Rule.
Add a new Utilisation Rule
To add a new Utilisation Rule, click on the button indicated below:
This will open up the following screen. Once you have entered all the required information, click 'Save'. This new rule will now be displayed in the list on the Availability Engine Utilisation Rules page.
Utilisation Rule Field Descriptions
AE Client Type | By Selecting an AE Client Type, you can assign a Utilisation Rule to particular types of requests. For example, these could include:
By default, there are no Client Types set up, so any rules will apply to all requests. Please contact RCM Support to add a particular client type, to be used to assign to your rules. |
Pickup Location | This field can be left empty, or you can select a specific location. This rule will be restricted to bookings made with this particular pickup location. |
Category Type | This field can be left empty, or you can select a specific Category Type. This rule will be restricted to bookings made against this particular Category type. |
Category | This field can be left empty, or you can select a specific Category. This rule will be restricted to bookings made against this particular category. |
Pickup Date From | This field can be left empty, or you can a date. This rule will only apply to bookings with a Pick Up after this date. |
Pickup Date To | This field can be left empty, or you can a date. This rule will only apply to bookings made with a Pick Up before this date. |
Minimum Booking Days | Any bookings that have a rental length of less that this number of days will be returned as "not available". Leave as 0 to ignore. |
Unavailable Percentage | The Availability engine will return "not available" if utilisation percentage is equal to or greater than this value. |
On Request Percentage | The Availability Engine will return "on request" if utilisation percentage is between this value and the Unavailable Percentage value. Set this to the same value as Unavailable Percentage to never return "on request" status. |
Update and Delete Availability Engine Utilisation Rules
The below article is just a generic guide how to update or delete a record:
Updating and Deleting a RecordImportant Articles
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