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Dealers must be invited to use Boatopia. Boatopia App Admins can add, activate, and deactivate dealers.
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When you are invited to join Boatopia as a dealer, you will receive an email from Boatopia with the subject line “Join Boatopia as a dealer”. When opening the email you will find a link to reset your password.
You will then add in your email on the reset password page and it will send another email to reset your password.
By clicking the link to reset your password you will be able to reset it. You will need a password strength of at least medium to confirm. Once clicking Confirm and Login, you will be taken to the login in page where you can add your login information and click Login.
Once logged in, you will be taken to your Dealer Portal.
You will then be asked to set up your Stripe account which is how you will receive your payouts for your rentals.
Once you have set up your Stripe account you can continue setting up the rest of your profile. Your profile will be what customer’s see when they are booking a rental with you and to get more information on you as a rental provider. It is similar to a social media page or profile. When in the profile tab, you can go to the General tab and Add in a logo and a cover image. The cover image should be a photo of your dealership or marina.
Update your Dealership name, a short description of your business, your phone number, website, location address (if you have multiple locations, each location will need a separate dealer page and account), contact and and email (for who will be running the rental division and need access to the dealer portal).
You can then add in your Host Policies. These are any policies that are specific to your rental business that you want customers to know prior to booking. You can have more policies in your rental agreements or paperwork that the customer can read and sign after they have booked, but these policies would be any policies you want to highlight that would impact who, when, how, and where customers can book and use your rental boats. For example: watersports policies, age limits, PCOC requirements, experience, weather or mechanical cancellation policies, pets, smoking, parties, pick-up and dropoff hours. These will show up on all of your listings. Click Save once you are finished updating your dealer profile. You can always go back to this page by clicking the profile tab on the left-hand side of your screen in the dealer portal. Always remember to save once you have changed any information.
Still in the profile tab, there is another tab within this page called Listing Presets.
In the Listing presets tab, you can edit items that will be the same on all listings for your dealership, such as Fees & Deposits, Delivery or Pickup Information, and any documents or paperwork that need to be completed post booking and prior to the rental period.
You can add in any additional fees or deposits you would like to be automatically added or charged to your listing when booked.
Booking deposit: percentage of the total rental fee due at booking to confirm the booking. This can be any percentage you desire. We recommend using at least a small percentage and not 0 deposit as the Boatopia Cancellation Policy is a full refund of the deposit until 48 hours prior to the booking start time and if after 48 hours the customer loses their deposit but is not charged for the rest of the booking.
Default Security Deposit: You may require your renters to pay a security deposit in order to protect yourselves against any damage or theft. This can be any amount you wish. This will be charged at the rental start time. This is essentially a hold on their credit card. If needed, you can charge the security deposit after the rental period once the boat is returned. This function will be explained in the booking process document.
Default Cleaning Fee: If you would like to charge any of other fees on top of the listing price, you can do so using the cleaning fee feature. The fee will come up as Cleaning fee on the booking. If you wish not to add this fee you can have it at $0. This fee is included in the Boatopia commissions. This fee must be inclusive of all taxes.
Click save when you are finished updating your fees. You can always edit these fees at a later date and it will update in real time on your listings.
In this section you can add in when your boats can be picked up or delivered. This information will be visible on each listing and can be as detailed as required.
If your boats can be picked-up and trailered by the customer, choose yes when to the “Can your boats be picked up?” question. If yes you can add in your pickup address (linked to google maps and will auto populate your address).
If your boats can be delivered or if your boats are already in the water at a marina, you can click Yes on the “Can your boats be delivered?” question. This will populate the delivery locations settings.
You can go ahead and any delivery location you wish. It will auto populate using google maps. Add in the flat rate delivery fee associated with each location (both ways) inclusive of all taxes. If your boats are already in the water at the marina, you can choose to charge a $0 delivery fee for the marina location. Having flat rate delivery locations takes many of the logistics questions out of the picture and makes for a more seamless rental experience.
When creating your listings at a later date, you can customize which delivery locations or pick-up locations you want per boat, so if one boat can only be delivered and not picked up, this can be customized on the listing, but you need to ensure to have these listing presets set up.
The booking documents section gives dealers the ability to upload any documents they would like the customer to read or sign, and the customer can then download, print, e-sign and then upload them again once completed.
To do this start typing the name of the first document and the document section will populate. Give your Document a title, some instructions (example: download, watch the video, sign, and re-upload this document before your rental period). Then you can upload the files. You can do multiple files per document title.
Once you upload the document, you have the option of uploading a video to go with the document or inserting a document video link (do a separate website like youtube or your own website). This is for dealers that would like to have any orientation videos, how-to’s, or safety briefings to go along with their documents.
Click Add document when finished and save. You can add more documents by repeating the same process and delete documents you no longer need.
You can customize which listings get which documents so upload all your documents here and on the individual listings you can choose which documents the customers need to sign. For example, you rent a fishing boat and a pontoon but have separate rental safety checklists for each. Upload them both here separately labeled “pontoon safety checklist” and “fishing boat safety checklist”. When creating the pontoon listing, you can choose only to include the “pontoon safety Checklist” and not the fishing boat.
Always click Save when you are finished updating any documents.
When offering boat rentals, some dealers may decide they would like to have some additional packages or accessories they would like to offer as extras to their rental customers. These could be waterski packages, coolers, a bbq, water toys, sand toys, upgraded fish finders or trolling motors, whatever you feel will add more value to your rental offerings.
You can add these packages right from your dealer portal and your customers will be able to easily add them on to any booking they are making.
To add some extra, go to the extras tab on the left hand side of the dealer portal. Click Add New. It will open a pop up window to add a new extra. Give your extras package a title, a description of the package and maybe a list of the items included and what they are used for if there are more than one item in the package, add an image of the extras, and the price to rent per day inclusive of taxes. Click save when complete.
Once clicking save, the items will populate in your Extras list. You can then Activate or Deactivate the extras or you can edit the information by clicking edit. When Activating an extra, it will be available to add to a listing when you create that listing. You can personalize the listing to include or not include any extras. When deactivated, the item will stay in you extras list but will not be available to add to the listings. Deactivated extras won't apply to bookings who already have that extra meaning they will still stay active for existing bookings but won't be shown for new bookings. If an Extra is not available but has been booked, the dealer will have to process a refund internally (using their own systems) or find a replacement extra.
You can add as many extras as you would like, remember to click Activate when you want the extra to appear in the listings. An Extra is activated when this button says Deactivate.
Once you have completed all the Listing Presets, Extras, and your dealer Profile, you are ready to start listing your rentals!