Audience: Riding school owners and organisation admins
▶ Watch: Setting up a facility (1:44)
Overview
Facility hire lets you rent out your arenas, round yards and other facilities by the hour, half day or full day — to your own clients from the appointment book, or to the public through your club site. This guide covers the three places you'll work with:
| Task | Where |
|---|---|
| Set when each facility is available and what it costs | Organiser → Riding School → Facilities |
| Book a facility for a client yourself | Organiser → Riding School → Bookings → New Booking → Facility Hire |
| Let the public book online | The Facility hire option on your club site's Book Now page (or the Facility hire category on Book Now) |
Requires: a Riding School, Instructor or Club Site Premium subscription (the $10 Club Site plan doesn't include facility hire), a venue you administer, and at least one facility on that venue marked Bookable.
Public facility hire has a master switch. In Organiser → Settings → Riding School, the tick box "Let clients hire your facilities online" adds the Facility hire option to your Book now page and your club site's booking widgets. Turn it off if your facilities are for lessons only. With it off, no facility of yours is publicly bookable no matter how it's set up — you can still book facilities for clients yourself.
Before you start: your venue needs bookable facilities
Facilities belong to a venue, not directly to your organisation. If you open the Facilities page and see No Venue Access, you are not yet an administrator of a venue — use Search for Venue to request management of an existing venue (a Horsify administrator approves the request) or Create New Venue.
If you see No bookable facilities, your venue has no facilities with the Bookable box ticked. Follow the Edit this venue link, add or edit each facility (type, name, description) and tick Bookable. Only active, bookable facilities appear on the Facilities page and in online booking. See Venue Facilities for the full facility fields.
The Facilities page
Organiser → Riding School → Facilities. If you administer more than one organisation, pick it from Select Organisation; if the organisation manages more than one venue, pick the venue from Select Venue.
Each bookable facility gets its own panel with three tabs.
Availability Settings
This is the facility's own timetable — separate from your organisation's Booking Hours and from any instructor's availability. A facility with no availability rules offers no online slots at all.
- Weekly Hours — adds a recurring window for one day of the week (Day of Week, Start Time, End Time; the form starts at 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM). Add one row per day you hire the facility out; add a second row on the same day for split hours.
- Block Out — blocks a specific Date between a Start Time and End Time, with an optional Reason for Block (for example Maintenance, Private Event). Blocked periods show as unavailable in the hourly booking grid, with the reason.
- Saved rules are listed under Weekly Schedule and Blocked Dates; use the bin icon to remove one. Rules can't be edited in place — delete and re-add.
A Block Out closes only the hours you block — in the hourly grid, in the half-day and full-day slots, and again at checkout. The rest of that day stays bookable. To close a facility for a whole day, block it from opening time to closing time.
Rate Cards
Rate cards set the price. A facility with no active rate card is not offered online at all — it is left off the public list of bookable facilities entirely, rather than appearing and then showing no availability. This is deliberate: it's better for a visitor never to see a facility than to pick one and be told it can't be booked.
Add a rate card and the facility appears publicly straight away.
Click Add Rate Card:
- Name — e.g. Standard Rates, Peak Season, Off-Peak.
- Pricing — Hourly Rate, Half Day (4hrs) and Full Day (8hrs). Each one is optional, but a card needs at least one. A duration no active card gives a rate for isn't offered for that facility, so an arena you only let by the day needs no hourly rate.
- Member rates (optional) — what a current member of your club pays when they book online: Member hourly, Member half day and Member full day. Leave one blank and members pay the standard rate for that duration. Enter $0 to let members hire free — each hire is still booked and shows in your book. A member rate never makes a duration available by itself: the card needs a standard rate for it too. Bookings you make from the office are priced at the standard rate.
- Priority — when more than one card could apply, the higher priority wins.
- Applicable Conditions (Optional) — restrict the card to particular Days of Week ("Leave unselected for all days"), a Start Time / End Time window, or a Season Start Date / Season End Date.
Cards can be edited or deleted from the list; inactive cards are labelled Inactive.
Booking Calendar
A day/week/month calendar of this facility's bookings, colour-coded Confirmed, Pending, Completed and Cancelled, with a refresh button. It is read-only — open a booking from Organiser → Riding School → Bookings to change it.
Facility hire settings elsewhere
A few more settings shape what hirers are offered, charged and told. They live outside the Facilities page.
Hire durations and who can book
Two settings on each facility, in the venue editor (Edit venue → the facility):
- Hire durations offered — Hourly, Half day (4 hours) and Full day (8 hours), all ticked to start with. A duration is offered only when it is ticked here and an active rate card gives it a rate. A half day is always exactly 4 hours and a full day exactly 8; hourly hire covers up to 4 hours.
- Who can book it online — Anyone with an account (the default) or Current members of the club only. With members only, a hirer needs a current membership of your club to book the facility online: the booking page says so before they pick a time, and a hirer without one is refused when they add it to their cart. You can still book anyone in from the office.
Deposits
By default a hirer pays the whole price at booking. To take part of it up front instead, go to Organiser → Settings → Riding School → Facility Hire and, under Deposit on facility hire (shown once Let clients hire your facilities online is ticked), choose:
- Deposit — No deposit — pay in full at booking, Percentage of the hire fee or Fixed amount, and the percentage or amount.
- Balance due, days before the hire — 0 means on the day of the hire.
- The deposit is non-refundable if the hirer cancels — tick if you keep it.
The hirer pays the deposit at checkout and sees the terms on the booking page and their receipt. The balance is charged to the same card automatically when it falls due. Two things to know:
- A deposit needs online card payments. If your club doesn't take payment online, hirers pay the full price at booking whatever the setting says.
- A hire booked after its balance would already be due is paid in full at booking.
A payment link from the organiser's own facility hire form (below) is always for the full price.
Telling your insurer about hires
If your insurer (or anyone else) needs to know who is using your grounds, add their address under Organiser → Communication Settings → Facility hire notifications. They get a short email when a hire is booked, moved or cancelled: the hirer's name and membership number, the facility, date and time — never the price or contact details. Hirers are told their name is passed on before they book. The same card can also send the club's own copy of each hire to a different address from your other booking notifications.
Booking a facility for a client (organiser)
- Go to Organiser → Riding School → Bookings and click New Booking, then choose Facility Hire ("Book arena or facilities").
- Client — pick an existing client, or use the + beside the field to add a new one (Name required; Email and Phone optional — an email lets Horsify send booking notifications, and a new client with an email is invited to create a Horsify account).
- Choose the Venue, then the Facility (each shows its type and hourly rate).
- Hire Duration — Hourly, Half Day or Full Day. A duration is greyed out unless the facility offers it and its rate card has a rate for it.
- Pick a date, then click the Available Time Slots you want (30-minute blocks; slots must be adjacent), and press Confirm Selection. Booked slots show the client's name; blocked slots show the reason.
- Add any Booking Notes (Optional).
- Tick Generate Payment Link to email the client a secure Stripe payment link so they can pay by card online. Leave it unticked to collect payment yourself.
- Save. The price is worked out from the facility's rate card and the hire duration.
Horsify checks the duration against the rate you chose: hourly hires must be under 4 hours, half day 4 to just under 8 hours, and full day 8 hours or more. Adjust the slots or the duration if you see a message about this.
The booking then appears in the appointment book and on the facility's Booking Calendar. To move it to another time, drag it on the appointment book, or open it and choose Edit. Its length and its arena can't be changed once it's booked, because the hire was priced on them: book any extra time as another hire, or cancel this one and book the length or arena the client needs. Dragging a hire onto another facility's column, or onto an instructor's, puts it back where it was.
Moving a hire never changes its price. If the new time falls under a different rate card (a weekday hire moved onto the weekend rate, say), Horsify shows you both figures and asks before moving it; the hire keeps the price it was booked at, and nothing is charged or refunded for the difference. Hirers moving their own booking online can't move it onto a different rate — they're asked to contact you.
Public online facility booking
▶ Watch: Hiring a club facility (1:00)
Clients reach facility booking from your club site's Book Now page under Facility hire ("Choose a facility to hire"), or directly from the Book Our Facilities page, which lists every bookable facility with a View Availability button. Facilities are shown for every venue your organisation owns. A facility is only listed if your organisation has facility hire switched on, the facility is active and bookable, and it has an active rate card; it only shows times once it also has availability rules.
The booking page for a facility (Book [facility name]) is a three-step wizard: Duration → Date & time → Your details.
Step 1 · Choose a hire duration
Hourly, Half Day or Full Day — only the durations the facility offers — each showing the price from the rate card.
Step 2 · Select date & time
Hourly — the page opens on the first date that can be booked, with its times already showing. That is today, or a later day if your organisation sets a minimum booking notice. Pick another Date if you like, then click one or more 30-minute slots. The legend shows Available (green), Selected (blue) and Booked (red); blocked-out periods are also shown as unavailable. Hourly bookings can total up to 4 hours; for longer, choose Half Day or Full Day.
Half Day / Full Day — Horsify searches ahead and shows the next 6 available slots, so the client can see at a glance when the facility is free:
- A full day slot is 8 hours starting at the facility's opening time for that day, and is only offered on days the facility is open for at least 8 hours.
- Half day slots are 4 hours: a Morning slot from opening time and, if the facility is open 8 hours or more, an Afternoon slot straight after it. Slots are labelled by date, e.g. Sat, 21 Mar - Morning.
- Only free slots are shown — anything overlapping an existing booking or a Block Out is skipped.
- Use Search from Date (optional) and Search to look further ahead: Horsify shows the next 6 available slots from that date. Leave the date blank to search from today. The search looks up to 90 days ahead of the chosen date, so try a later start date to see beyond that.
The client selects one slot.
Step 3 · Your details
Contact Information — First Name, Last Name, Email and Phone. Bookings are made with a Horsify account, so signed-in clients see their verified details pre-filled and locked ("To update your contact details, visit your profile page"). A visitor who isn't signed in is asked to Sign in or Create an account at this step, and comes straight back to the facility, duration and time they chose. Then Notes (Optional), and Add to Cart.
This step also shows what the hire will cost: the Member price for a signed-in current member of your club where the rate card has one (anyone else is shown what members pay), and, if you take a deposit, the Deposit due now, the Balance and the date it's due.
Cart and confirmation
Facility hire goes through your club site's cart and checkout like any other booking. If the client pays online, the booking is created as Pending and confirms once payment is complete; a facility-only hire paid by another method you accept (for example bank transfer) is confirmed straight away. Either way the client receives a confirmation email, and the booking appears in your appointment book and the facility's Booking Calendar. If someone else takes the same slot while the client is choosing, they'll see "This time slot was just booked by another user" and the available times refresh.
Troubleshooting
"The facility doesn't appear on the public booking page." Work through these in order:
- "Let clients hire your facilities online" is ticked in your riding school's landing settings.
- The facility is Active and Bookable on the venue (see Venue Facilities).
- The facility has an active Rate Card. Without one it is not listed publicly at all — this is the most common cause.
- The facility has at least one Weekly Hours rule, or it will be listed with no times available.
"Half Day / Full Day is greyed out." (or a duration is missing from the public page) Either the facility doesn't offer that duration (check Hire durations offered in the venue editor), or none of its active rate cards has a rate for it. Tick the duration, or add the missing rate.
"No half-day or full-day slots come up, but hourly works." A full-day slot needs the facility open for 8 continuous hours from its opening time; a half-day slot needs 4. Check the Weekly Hours windows for those days.
"A member says they can't book a members-only facility." They need a current membership of your club on the account they're signed in with. Check their membership status in Member Management; if it has lapsed, they can renew and then book. You can also book them in yourself from the office.
"The client can't find a date a couple of months away." Half-day and full-day searches show 6 slots at a time and look up to 90 days ahead of the chosen start date. Ask them to enter a later Search from Date and press Search.
Related Features
- Riding School Management — the full Riding School feature set
- Venue Facilities — adding facilities to a venue and marking them bookable
- Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours — why facility hours, instructor availability and booking hours are three separate schedules\n\n---\n\nSource:
wiki/features/FACILITIES_AND_HIRE.md\nLast synced: 2026-10-06 06:11:31 UTC