Package Deals Process

Package Deals Process

Overview

Rental Car Manager (RCM) allows for the setup of Packages which can be used as the basis to create a new booking. 
You are able to use the Web API to obtain information about available packages and also make a booking based on a package deal.

Booking Flow

You will need to integrate package deals that have been set up within RCM into your website using the Web API.  The package deals functionality can be developed separately from your normal web booking module that you have running on your website or you can integrate it into the current web booking module.

Please note the package deal methods are only available in v3.2 and above of the API.

There will be 4 steps to the package deals process when using the Web API to integrate it into your website:
  1. Listing the available package deals.
    There are two ways to obtain a listing of the available package deals. One is to make a call to the packages method and the other is to use the information coming back from a call to the step2 method.
  2. Once a package deal has been chosen, listing all of the mandatory, optional and insurance options available for the booking.
  3. Making the booking
  4. Saving the payment/credit card

Booking Steps

More detailed information about the API methods can be found in the Developer's Sandbox in the API test area. If you require access to the Sandbox, contact RCM Support (support@rentalcarmanager.com). 

Listing the available package deals.
There are two ways that you can obtain a listing of the available package deals. They are the new discreet packages method and the existing step2 methods.  Which approach you would choose is discussed below in the "Listing the available package deals" section.

Select a package deal and vehicle type to get rates and insurances
The user or agent then selects a particular package deal, and receives back the appropriate insurance options, mandatory fees and optional extras as setup by the rental car company.

Booking
The selected package deal, category and optional extras are then sent to the server along with customer details via an API call to make a booking.

Saving the Payment
The next stage of the process is the payment. If you are collecting payment for the booking, then you can save the payment information through the API so that the payment will be recorded against the reservation in Rental Car Manager. 

Listing the available package deals (packages method or exiting step2 method)

There are two ways in which you can obtain a listing of the available package deals.
  1. Using the packages method will return a listing of all of the available package deals. This would enable you to have a page on your website dedicated solely to listing package deals.
  2. A call to Step2 will also return any package deals that are available based on the information passed into Step2. This will allow you to integrate package deals into your current web booking module.
    It is important to note that any existing web booking modules will not be affected by the changes made to the Step2 method to include package deals.  New dataset elements has been added to return the package information. This will allow you to make the decision to either include or exclude package deals from the vehicle listing for this step. 
Packages method
The packages method will return all of the available package deals for the parameters that have been passed in. This information can be used to display a listing of available packages to customers on your website.
If the customer chooses one of the packages, the relevant 'packageid' can be used in the call to Step3.  The 'packageid' will also need to be used in any call to the booking method.
A full listing of the returning datasets for this method can be found in the API Test Area in the Developer's Sandbox.

Step2  method
The step2 method will return any package deals that match the parameters that were passed in. 

There are dataset elements from the Step2 method which contain just the information for the available package deals. They can be found in the API Test Area in the Developer's Sandbox.

Below is an diagram which shows the logic of Step2. You can see that the normal Step2 results are always returned, the information about the package deals is only returned if there are available ones that meet the search criteria entered.

Selection of package deal and vehicle category (step3)

Step3 returns information for the selected package deal, vehicle category, pickup and drop off locations and dates. 
The rental rates and any mandatory fee information is also returned along with any optional extra fees, insurance options, and Kms options.

If a package deal has been selected, then the 'packageid' will need to be passed into this method. If any of the information passed in does not match the criteria for the package deal, then this will not return any information about a package deal.

Make a booking (booking)

When a booking is made using the API, it is saved as a quote by default until either payment has been confirmed by calling the 'confirmpayment' method, or a credit card has been entered into the payment method. The rental car company can override this default behaviour by changing a system setting that forces all bookings made through the API to be saved as an unallocated booking even if payment has not been submitted.

If a package deal has been selected, then the 'packageid' will need to be passed into this method. If any of the information passed in does not match the criteria for the package deal, then this will be saved as a normal booking.

Submit Payment Information

If you are processing a payment at the time of booking, then you can save the payment information against the booking by calling the 'confirmpayment' method.



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