1A calendar, where today there is a form
Booking a room now means filling in an Office Form and waiting — “we will be in touch as soon as possible” — during office hours. This page answers the question immediately, at 9pm on a Sunday, which is when people actually plan things.
2The price is on screen before anyone emails anyone
Your real rate card, all four cells of it: standard and charity, one-off and 10+ sessions. Big Duncan is £35/hr standard, £26 for an OSCR-registered charity, dropping to £28 and £19 at ten or more sessions. Pick a slot and the total appears in the panel — no quote request, no waiting.
3Your October price rise is already in it
Book a Tuesday now and a charity pays £52 for two hours. Move the same booking past 1 October and it says £56 — the new rates, applied by date, not by someone remembering to change a page. The rise is in the system before it has happened.
4Booking the combined space blocks both rooms — automatically
This is the one that protects the money. Big + Wee is one hire but two rooms, so the moment it is held, both children disappear from the calendar and cannot be booked by anybody, through any route. It is enforced by the database, not by the form — so it holds even when two people book at the same instant. Today that clash is prevented by a person noticing.
5Weekends, alcohol and combined rooms become a request — not a refusal
Nine routing rules, and every one of them is quoted from your own Terms of Let: alcohol is a Trustee exemption (cl. 34/6), the combined spaces have no published price, weekends are “by arrangement”, the Hirers’ insurance extension “is not guaranteed” (cl. 42). Those bookings still get made here — they just land in your queue with the details already filled in, instead of starting an email thread.
6One hour minimum, and the block grows as you pick
Your published minimum, enforced properly: choose the hours first and the selection paints itself onto the calendar, so what someone sees is exactly what they are booking — including their setting-up and packing-away time, which is where hire disputes usually start.
7The calendar and the diary can never disagree
Right now enquiries live in an Office Form and the diary lives in the WordPress calendar — two lists, reconciled by eye. Here, room hire and the events programme sit on one grid. A choir night in Big Links blocks Big Links for hire, with nobody copying anything across.
8Clause 28 runs itself
Cancel inside a month and your terms say no automatic refund — unless the slot re-lets, in which case the hirer gets it back minus the £10 admin fee. The system reopens the slot instantly, and the moment somebody else takes it, that refund fires on its own. It is a promise you already make; this is the first version of it that doesn’t depend on someone remembering.
9The charity rate is a discount you can finally evidence
Because every booking records which rate applied, the gap between standard and charity becomes a number: subsidy delivered to community groups, exportable for trustees and funders instead of reconstructed the week a report is due.
10Everything you can see here is invented
Fictional hirers, fictional bookings, and a demonstration checkout that charges nothing — deliberately, because a proof of concept holding real names and real cards before the paperwork is signed is exactly the thing we would be telling you not to do.
