booking system for order pickups

Bakers, confectioners, tailors, and small repair shop operators all share one daily challenge—customers come to pick up their orders at different times, sometimes all at once, and other times just when the staff are too busy. Yet the handover itself is the most important moment in the entire process for the customer—they want it to happen without waiting or unnecessary back-and-forth. An online booking system brings order to the pickup process, benefiting both the operator and the customer, whether they are collecting a new suit, an Easter lamb cake, Christmas cookies, or a repaired mobile phone.

What needs to be addressed ...
  • Organizing customer arrivals so they do not have to wait.
  • Notifying customers when their order is complete and ready for pickup.
  • Keeping order records and customer information in one place—who is picking up what and when.
  • Collecting order details directly when the pickup time is booked.
  • Collecting a deposit or advance payment to protect the operator against unclaimed orders.
  • Flexibility to reschedule a pickup in the event of a delay.

Managing customer flow is often underestimated by businesses offering order pickup—yet this is precisely where there is great potential to improve both the customer experience and operational efficiency. If customers can book a specific pickup time slot online, you can avoid having five people arrive at once just when you have your hands full preparing other orders. Each customer arrives at their scheduled time, and you know what they are collecting, how many people to expect, and when—making it easier to plan the working day and prepare completed orders for collection. This is particularly valuable for seasonal goods, such as Christmas cookies or specialty butcher products: instead of making a series of phone calls to arrange pickup times, customers choose when they will come, while you get a clear overview of pickups spread throughout the day or week, which can also affect product quality or freshness. Automated communication takes care of confirmations, reminders, and notifications that an order is ready—saving you dozens of minutes every day that can be spent making products.

For specific types of businesses, a booking system offers even more targeted benefits. Bakeries and confectioneries can collect a deposit or the full payment in advance when the pickup time is booked—a customer who has paid for an order will actually collect it, so you do not have to work out what to do with unsold goods. Small repair businesses—cobblers, tailors, watch repair shops, or computer repair services—will appreciate a custom form for order details, where customers can describe the fault, provide measurements, or specify special requirements when booking a time to drop off the faulty item. This eliminates some of the questions during handover and ensures that the order is documented from the outset. The customer database also makes it possible to track booking history and status, identify regular customers, and tailor communication. An SMS letting customers know that their order is waiting goes straight into their pocket—it will not get lost in their inbox and significantly reduces the number of “is it ready yet?” queries that staff would otherwise have to answer repeatedly throughout the day.

Key features for order pickups

The system covers the entire order process, from acceptance to handover—the customer selects a pickup time, enters the necessary details, pays a deposit, and receives a message at the right time to let them know they can come. The operator has a complete overview of all orders without paper notes or unnecessary phone calls.

Customer database

An overview of your customers, their details, and history is key to any business. The customer database not only records this data but also provides tools for communication, data export, and meeting GDPR requirements.

Customer database

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Keep a clear customer database with a reservation history and a whole range of related tools. The reenio system automatically builds the customer database based on reservations made or direct registration. A registered customer gains the ability to log in and manage their reservations directly within the reservation page. If customer credit is used, they can see their balance within their account and top it up online.

Depending on your settings, a reservation can also be allowed without registration, simply by entering an e-mail address or phone number, which is especially suitable where you don't expect one specific customer to use the reservation system regularly and often.

A well-maintained, extensive customer database is an important marketing tool. The system offers the option of bulk sending e-mail or SMS messages, which is useful for reaching customers with a new offer, a discount campaign, but also operational information or as part of crisis management.

The customer database naturally contains personal data, which today requires a certain approach to how it's handled and protected. The reservation system allows you to set up automatic deletion of personal data after a chosen period, and also keeps track of customer requests to have their data deleted. This makes it easier to meet GDPR requirements in line with the rules defined for your particular business.

If you need to import a customer database from another system or a manually maintained spreadsheet, that's no problem – an existing customer list can be easily and smartly imported into the reenio system.

Event: Interval

This event type allows opening hours to be split into regular time slots. Customers book one or more consecutive time slots according to their own needs. One of the most widely used and most efficient event types.

Interval event type

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If you offer services in regular time slots (60 minutes, 90 minutes, etc.), this is the ideal event type, offering a simple and clear booking process.

The Interval event type lets you define a time range within a single day and split it into smaller, regular chunks. On the reservation page, a customer chooses these specific time slots, which can also follow on from one another, extending their reservation according to the defined rules.

This event type is typically suitable for sports facilities and sports complexes, consulting and advisory services, wellness, or a sauna.

Custom booking forms

When the standard details collected from a customer during booking aren't enough, the solution is simple. Booking forms can be extended with custom fields that a customer may or must fill in while booking.

Custom booking forms

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Find out everything you need about customers right at the time of booking – extend the standard form with your own fields and tailor the form to a specific event and type of service.

Custom booking forms let you extend the standard reservation form (name, e-mail, phone) with any additional fields your business needs – from checkboxes, through selecting from options, entering text, all the way to uploading a file (e.g. a photo of the customer or a scanned confirmation). It's also possible to collect specialized data, where the system takes care of validating the correct format.

Individual custom fields can be required, or only shown based on the reserved capacity or a previously selected value. A special group is formed by form fields that affect the reservation price – which makes it easy to handle, for example, a surcharge for renting equipment, a discount for members, or a price adjustment for an above-standard scope of service.

A form can be assigned to a single event, or set globally so it automatically applies to all events on the reservation page. Working with custom forms is therefore very simple while also offering very broad possibilities for use.

Data entered in a custom booking form is saved as part of the specific reservation and can also be included in an export to Excel, and worked with further as needed.

SMS messages

A communication channel that, compared to standard e-mail messages, offers a greater guarantee of delivery and allows information to be sent quickly directly to a specific customer.

Deliver important information straight to a customer's phone, even in cases where an e-mail message isn't enough for various reasons – reservation confirmation, a reminder before an event, or instructions on how to use the service.

SMS messages are available in the system both as system notifications and as custom messages with any text you like. These can then be automatic, sent in connection with some event, or sent manually directly from a specific customer's detail page, or in bulk to multiple customers at once. SMS messages are limited by their length and what can be communicated, but even so play an important role in keeping customers informed.

An interesting option is using SMS messages for further functionality. This includes verifying a customer's phone number during registration or when creating a new reservation, or as a technical communication channel – for controlling a device using a predefined SMS text, e.g. turning on the sauna heater before the start of a reservation.

Reservation approval

The standard model assumes that as soon as a reservation is created, it's fully valid. The reservation approval feature brings the option where a customer is clearly informed that they must wait for their reservation to be approved.

Reservation approval

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Don't let customers create reservations online without your say – decide for yourself which reservation to approve. This is useful anywhere a booking request needs to be reviewed first, before you actually assign the customer an event.

The reservation approval feature changes the standard process so that a reservation created by a customer isn't approved right away, but first waits for your approval in the administration. After creating a reservation, the customer is informed that their reservation is awaiting approval, and receives final confirmation (and, if applicable, a prompt for online payment) only once you approve, or alternatively reject, the reservation.

This is useful anywhere you want full control over how events are filled – for example for individual consultations, where you first need to check whether a time slot is suitable, for services that require related preparations to be arranged, or anywhere you want to prevent random or unsuitable reservations.

Online payments

Being able to pay for a reserved service through an online payment gateway is now the standard. Customers today are used to paying quickly and securely in online shops and expect the same comfort when booking or ordering services online.

Online payments

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Let customers pay for their reservation or tickets online right away, before the service is provided – faster, more convenient, and with the certainty that the reservation will be paid, and therefore used.

The reenio system allows you to require prepayment as part of the booking process, so a customer's reservation only becomes valid once paid. You decide yourself whether online payment is mandatory, or whether you leave it up to the customer to pay on site. With mandatory payment, you can set a deadline by which a new reservation must be paid, otherwise it is automatically cancelled and the slot is released for another customer.

For online payments you can choose from several supported payment gateways. The reservation system then handles the technical connection and communication with the chosen gateway, but all business and formal matters are handled directly with the payment gateway provider – you keep the money you receive under your own control, in your own merchant account.

  • GoPay

    An online payment gateway offering a wide range of payment methods, from card payments to fast bank transfers, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.

  • Comgate

    Another Czech payment gateway that also operates in other European countries. Its payment methods vary and cover common needs.

  • Stripe

    A global payment gateway that is becoming increasingly popular. It offers fast integration and approval, so you can start accepting payments within minutes.

  • Bank transfer

    A special type of payment method where the reservation system itself can generate a QR code for payment and then automatically verify and match received payments.

After a successful payment, the system automatically marks the reservation as paid and generates and sends the customer a payment document. The reenio system offers a wide range of options and features for working with payments, including exports, refunds, and more. However, it should be noted that reenio itself is not an accounting system.

Exports

Data is the foundation – but a universal system doesn't always provide data in the form needed for a specific situation, which is why exporting data is such a useful feature. Once exported, you can work with the data directly.

Exports

Easily get data about reservations and customers out of the reenio system, and then work with it in Excel, using AI, or use it for importing into other systems, for example for e-mail marketing.

Overviews of reservations and customers can be easily exported to Excel at any time, including data from your own custom booking and registration forms.

Besides a simple data export, the reservation system can also be connected to other systems using the API or webhooks, letting you pass data programmatically and in real time, as well as work with it at the level of its data structure.

Custom messages

Automating communication with customers based on specific requirements and events brings a powerful tool that supports and improves how well informed your customers are, simplifies processes, and also improves your marketing work and how you gather feedback.

Custom messages

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Automate communication with customers exactly to your needs – from reminders, through satisfaction surveys, to marketing offers, in the form of e-mails or SMS messages. The possibilities of custom messages are, however, far broader. Custom messages can also be used to notify an external system or device, or to inform administrators or employees.

Custom messages allow you to set up sending of messages tied to a specific event in the reservation process and a corresponding moment in time. The event can be automatic (creation of a reservation, end of an event, etc.) or tied to a manual change of a reservation's status in the administration or mobile app.

  • E-mail

    The basic type of custom message, where a text e-mail message with your own content is sent.

  • SMS

    A popular message type which, although limited in size and format, offers greater delivery certainty.

  • Webhook

    A technical solution for notifying an external system that some event has occurred. Typically used for various automations.

  • Mobile app

    A quick way to send a notification directly into a specific reenio mobile app.

  • Smartemailing

    If simple text content for an e-mail isn't enough, you can use templates and sending via the Smartemailing tool.

Unlike system notifications, which have a fixed structure and content, with custom messages you decide the content and purpose yourself – typically these are used for a thank-you or a request for feedback after an event ends, a reminder before an upcoming event, a marketing offer, booking instructions, birthday or name-day wishes (even with a gift coupon), or a reminder to a customer who hasn't booked for a while.

The content of custom messages can also contain so-called placeholder variables, which are replaced with the corresponding value when the message is actually sent, e.g. the customer's name or the reservation's start time. Custom messages are assigned to events via message groups, so there's no need to set up rules for every event separately, while still keeping flexibility for different situations and needs.

A special feature of certain message types and specific events is the ability to add dynamic elements to a custom message – a satisfaction survey or a generated coupon code. It's entirely up to you how you integrate these options into your marketing activities.

Cash register and payment terminal

When online payments aren't enough and you need to accept payments on the spot, the cash register feature comes in handy – issuing and printing a receipt, processing a card payment through a terminal, and so on.

Cash register and payment terminal

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Handle payments received in person on the spot too – mark a reservation as paid, generate an accounting document, and print it directly on a POS printer, or accept a card payment right away through a connected payment terminal.

The cash register feature lets you mark a reservation as paid directly in the administration, even when the payment took place outside the online payment gateway, for example in cash at reception. The system can then issue a corresponding accounting document for the payment received this way, respecting the configured document numbering, and so on.

For card payments, the system can also be connected to a payment terminal (SumUp, GP Tom, Comgate), which means a payment request can be sent to the terminal directly with a button in the reservation detail, and after a successful payment the system automatically marks the reservation as paid, creates the payment and document, and sends the customer a confirmation by e-mail, just like with payment via the online gateway.