Enabling & Configuring Reservations

Items on the myTurn platform can be reserved or booked in advance to help ensure they are available when customers need them. When they pick up items (or you delivery/send them to them) you will still need to check those items out to them which tells myTurn who actually has the item and when it is due back (the due date will default to the reservation end date when using the Build Order process).

You can enable Reservations at:

Settings > Loans & Reservations  > Reservations

You will also want to make sure that one or more of your Membership Types allow users to reserve items at:

Settings > Customers > Membership Types

and then edit the membership types you want to allow to reserve items. 

Reservation Settings

• Enable reservations: this is the main setting to turn on/off reservations
• Automatically approve non-conflicting reservations: enable this if you want reservations to be approved automagically if there is not another conflicting reservation. 99% of myTurn customers want to enabled this option
  • If you don't enable this, items on a reservation will not be blocked off from being reserved by others until an administrator approves the reservation
  • You can still customize the email template that goes out to them if you do not want them to think they are 100% guaranteed to get the item
• Display user names for reservations to other non-admin users: this allows your users to see who has items reserved and checked out.
  • Use with caution, this will let your users see what other users have items reserved
  • Very useful for internal usage to facilitate person to person transfers of items (still requires an admin to check items in from one person and back out to the other)
• Allow users to edit their own reservations: admins can always edit reservations, but you can specify if your users should be able to submit edits to their reservation. After each submitted change, the reservation will need to be re-approved (if automatic approval is not enabled)
• Default Reservation Email Address: the email address reservation notifications are sent to
• Require note for reservations: this makes the note when submitting a reservation required rather than optional
  • You can combine this setting with language "translations" Settings -> Organization -> Language -> Translation Mode) to customize the "reservation notes" message. For example, you can require a note and ask for things like pick up time or other info.
• Require a project for reservations: If your plan includes "projects" this option will require a project to be selected for every reservation.
• Require users have a card on file to make reservations: when using our payments processor, this option will require that a user have their credit/debit card on file to place a reservation.
  • They will not be charged for the reservation when the reservation is placed
• Calculate reservation buffers based on days your organization is open
  
  • If set, the "Now" and "Between" reservation buffers will be based on the days your organization is open, rather than based on calendar days
• Shipping vs Pickup Option: This option will require users to specify if they will pick up reserved items or if they need them shipped when submitting a reservation.
• Location Rules for organizations that support multiple locations have been replaced with a new system that allows specifying which items or types of items can be picked up at other locations. This provides much more flexibility. Please see:
  • Reservation Pickup Rules and mixing Fixed vs Floating items
• Transfer Buffer: number of days in advance used to assist with transferring items to the needed pickup location
• Last Reservation Date: A fixed date after which reservations can neither start nor end.
• Show items as reserved past the reservation start date: Shows items as being reserved if they are part of a current unfulfilled reservation where the reservation start date has passed
• Hide All Day time slots: When checked, if a single time slot spans your open hours, only the reservation date will be shown.
• Maximum Days in Advance: The maximum number of days from the current date that any reservation can start. This is a rolling date from "today." So if you want all reservations to start in the next 2 weeks, you would set this to 14 days. This means no reservation can start more than two weeks after the date it is placed.
• Use the default loan length to automatically set the due date when starting a reservation: Preselect the end date for the reservation using the loan length for the item. If the end date is a closed day or otherwise invalid the user will need to pick an end date. Users will also be be able to edit the end date. This option defaults to off to encourage users to only reserve items for how long they actually need them.

• Maximum reservation length: NOTE: this option has been moved to Settings > Inventory > Item Default Values. You can now set a maximum reservation length for "All Items" (upper right corner on the Item Type Defaults page) or set different values for different types of items by selecting the Item Type then continue at the bottom of the page. See:
  • Navigate to: Settings > Inventory -> Item Type Defaults
  • Click on the Item Type (or "All Types") in the upper right corner of the page
  • Scroll to the Maximum Reservation Length field and enter the maximum number of days an item can be reserved.
  • Save

Things that may impact if an item can be reserved

• Open Days/Hours: Settings > Organization > Edit Organization allows you to set the days or the week and hours you are open. Reservations can only start or end on day your organization is open.  You can also set Closed Days & Holidays at Settings -> Organization -> Closed Days & Holidays
• Item Statuses: Settings > Inventory > Edit Statuses lets you setup statuses for items that allow you to specify if they can be reserved. This can be useful if you have some items that should not be resettable.
• Location: if you are using multiple location support, make sure the "Home Location" for the item allows reservations
  • Also make sure the user's Membership Type is allowed to see/reserve items from that Location
  • Also make sure you have set the Location's open hours
• Overdue: You cannot set up a new reservation for items that are Overdue (in case they do not come back)
• Last Reservation Date and Maximum Days in Advance: make sure Settings > Loans & Reservation > Last Reservation Date is unset (meaning there is no set date in the future after which reservations can not be started or ended) or set in the future, and that the Max Days in Advance is not too short (this limits the further in the future reservations can start) 
• Membership: You can now control if users can reserve items based on Membership Type
• Settings > Inventory > Item Default Values > Maximum number that may be reserved and Maximum percentage of inventory that may be reserved: if you set this to 0 or a low number, non-admins may not be able to reserve enough or any copies.