Understanding the spreadsheet columns
Understanding the spreadsheet columnsThe spreadsheet is the way you get new bikes into your BRM. It also where you archive off old bikes when you're done with them.
As such the spreadsheet is sort of the master copy of your fleet data.
Each row represents one bike (or asset if you use it for other rentable items)
However BRM doesn't *work* from the spreadsheet, that would be too slow, instead we IMPORT your bikes into BRM and all the work is done when they are inside the BRM database. As such we keep the two things (spreadsheet and database) in sync at all times.
So what do all the columns mean?:
- ID - BRM use only (which is why the col is grey) the ID column is BRMs internal identifier for your bikes. It must not be modified!!! ie look at C20-1 above. C20-1 is your name for the bike, but BRM knows it as ID31. This must not change. All reservations containing this bike are held against ID31. Same for service histories. If bike 31 is sold, ID31 dies with that bike. When you add new bikes, you don't need to add an ID - BRM will automatically allocate the next available ID.
- ID2 - this is your name for the bike. You can even change it if you need to - though we wouldn't advise doing that.
- MODEL - what is the model of the bike. exmamples Trek Domane 4.3T, Bianchi Kuma etc.
- SIZE - what is the size of the bike - can be anything that makes sense for the type of bike: 57cm, L, M, S, XS, 17" etc.
- CATEGORY - how do you ORGANISE your fleet? Categories lets you chop up your fleet into groups of bikes so you (and your online bookers) can find them easily. It relates to 'type of bike' on the first page of the online booking wizard (OBW). It also is used in the first panel of the admin console (ie back-end) when booking bikes.
- ultraGeneric - this is how we further organise your fleet for your online booking wizard (OBW), ie on page 2 of the wizard.. Online bookers don't care about specific bikes, they just want to know about 'product lines'. By product line, we mean a set of interchangeable bikes. ie how many Male Medium Mountain bikes do you have available for their requested period? ultraGeneric is your way of organising them into groups (or buckets) of interchangeable bikes. It's very flexible, but if you're not sure what you want we'd recommending using MODEL as your ultraGeneric name. See below for a fuller explanation of how we use ultraGeneric
- genericId - BRM use only (which is why the col is grey) BRM actually takes the ultrageneric name you assign for each asset, and puts it into a bucket (of interchangeable bikes) by also using size and frame type. This is because its only with bucketName, frame type and size does a bike become truly interchangeable. Think about it, if someone books a 17" Male Mountain bike, they are not going to be happy if you put them on a 17" Female Mountain bike.
- priceGroup - for each bike that has the same pricing profile give them the same priceGroup.
- frame - the type of frame. Choices are:
There are other optional columns such as barcode and order.
- M for Male
- F for Female
- U for Unisex
You can also add any other columns that you want for your own personal use - like serial number and colour etc. BRM will simply ignore these columns.
Now back to the nitty gritty of how we use ultraGeneric.....
How does the above example actually look in the OBW (online booking wizard)?
you can see from the above example:
- There are 5 bikes which share the same ultraGeneric name: TrekBR (ultrageneric bucket - ie just name )
- These same 5 bikes all share the same Frame Type: M which means they all belong to the same superGeneric bucket ie name & frame type. (depicted by the blue box in the above diagram) N.B. they also must therefor share the same price.
- of these 5 bikes; 2 are of size 17" and 3 are of size 19". This give us our generic buckets ie name & frame type & size. It's the generic rows, depected by the red and purple boxes, that your customers actually book online. ie 17" Male TrekBR bikes. You just happen to have 2 of them in your inventory.
BRM does all the clever stuff of taking ultraGenerics and working out the superGenerics and Generics according to the Frame Type and Sizes that you have already listed in your spreadsheet. So in other words, just think of ultrageneric as a way of grouping your interchangeable bikes so it looks intuitive on the Online Booking Wizard.