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Party hire & hire rates

Everything about hiring party packs out — the three rates, hiring to people who aren't members, and the rules the desk has to follow. Written as walkthroughs: find your job in the headings and follow it top to bottom.

The three rates, in one paragraph

Every party item carries a member hire fee (and optionally a bond) set on the toy itself. That is the member rate, and on its own it is all a member-only library needs. Two extra rates can be switched on, each on its own: public (non-member) hire for people who aren't members, and commercial hire for businesses — childcare centres, event companies, schools. The rate is picked per booking, not per toy and not per household, so a member booking the jumping castle for their business pays the commercial rate.

While public (non-member) hire is on, the public toy page shows the non-member price and a request a callback form — those requests land in the Enquiries queue at the top of the Party hire page for staff to ring back. Nothing is booked or held until staff take the booking.

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1. Switching the extra rates on

Settings → Party hire. Party hire itself must be on first (the toggle at the top, with the hire length and cancellation window). Below it are two independent sections — turning one on does not turn the other on, and both start off:

• Public (non-member) hire
• Commercial hire

Each section has exactly two numbers:

• Fee uplift (%) — added to each toy's member hire fee, then rounded up to the nearest 10c. One number prices your whole party range at that rate.
• Default bond ($) — the refundable deposit for hires at that rate, unless the toy has its own deposit override for the rate (a per-toy override always wins — §2). Leave it blank to fall back to whatever bond the toy itself charges members (blank is the only way to say "same bond as members pay").

The values ToyHive ships with (50% and 100% uplifts, $50 and $100 bonds) are starting guesses, not advice. Set them to whatever your library actually charges.

Switching a rate off later doesn't touch bookings already taken — their prices were captured at booking time (see §3). It only removes the rate from the booking form.

2. How a price is worked out

Fee and bond are resolved separately, each down its own ladder. First match wins:

Fee

1. The toy's own price for that rate (a per-toy override — §4), if you've set one.
2. Otherwise the toy's member fee + the rate's uplift %, rounded up to the nearest 10c.

Bond

1. The toy's own bond for that rate, if you've set one.
2. Otherwise the rate's default bond from settings, if that box has a number in it.
3. Otherwise the toy's own member bond — which may itself be nothing, in which case no bond is taken.

Worked example

A pass-the-parcel pack hires to members for $25.00 with a $10.00 bond. Non-member hire is on, with a 50% uplift and a $50.00 default bond:

Change the default bond box to blank and the non-member bond becomes $10.00 (the toy's own). Change the toy's member fee to $12.34 and the non-member fee becomes $18.60 — $12.34 + 50% = $18.51, rounded up to the next 10c.

The rounding always applies — including at 0%. A 0% uplift means "charge non-members the member price", but the answer is still rounded up to a 10c boundary: a $12.34 member fee becomes $12.40, not $12.34. If you need a rate to match the member price to the cent, set the toy's own price for that rate (§4) rather than relying on a 0% uplift.

3. Prices are captured at booking time

The fee and bond are written onto the booking the moment it is made. Editing a toy's price or a settings number afterwards never changes an existing booking — what the hirer was quoted is what they owe. The same is true of switching a rate off.

4. Setting a per-toy price

Inventory → the toy → Edit. Under Available for party hire you'll see the member hire fee and bond, and then a small block for each rate you've switched on — "Non-member price" and "Commercial price".

Leave a box empty and that rate uses the library default. The placeholder text shows the number that default works out to for this toy (e.g. 37.50 (default)), so you can see exactly what you'd be overriding before you type. Type a number and this toy uses yours for that rate.

Fee and bond are independent here too: override the fee and leave the bond blank, and the bond still comes from your settings default.

Two details worth knowing:

• Every rate is derived from the member fee, so a toy with no member fee can't be hired at any rate. The placeholder says "Set a member fee first" when that's the case.
• Unticking Available for party hire clears the member price and every rate override.

5. Booking a guest at the desk

Non-member and commercial bookings are staff-booked only — at the desk or over the phone. The member portal never offers them, and there is no public booking form.

Party hire → Book on behalf.

1. Pick the item. Dates come next, using the same open-day picker members see.
2. Pick the rate. The Rate dropdown appears as soon as you've switched a guest rate on, and lists only the rates that are on.
3. Read the price line. As soon as an item and rate are chosen, ToyHive shows the resolved fee and bond and where each number came from — "your library default for this rate", "this toy's own price for this rate", or "the toy's own price" for members. If the figure looks wrong, that line tells you which screen to go fix (see §9).
4. Choose who is hiring. On a guest rate you get a Hirer dropdown:
   • New hirer (enter details) — type their details in (below).
   • Existing household — pick anyone already on file, members and hirers alike. This is how a member books at the commercial rate for their business.
5. Create booking. The fee and bond are charged immediately, and a confirmation email goes to the hirer.

New hirer details

• Hirer type — Individual (a private hirer) or Business / organisation.
• Business name — required for a business; it becomes the name you'll see everywhere, with the contact person shown alongside it as "c/- Jo Smith".
• First / last name — for a business, the contact person.
• Email — required. It's how the confirmation reaches them, and it's the key ToyHive uses to recognise them next time.
• Phone — optional.

That creates a hirer record: a household marked Casual hirer or Business hirer, holding their contact details, their bookings and their money, exactly like a member's account. They are verified on creation, so the nightly clean-up of abandoned signups never touches them.

The repeat hirer

Book the same email at the same hirer type again and ToyHive reuses the existing record instead of making a second one — capitalisation doesn't matter. One hirer, one history, one balance. (An individual and a business that share an email are two records, on purpose: they're two different customers.)

When the email belongs to a member

If the email you typed belongs to a member household, ToyHive stops and tells you which household — e.g. "This email belongs to member household 'The Nguyens' — select that household instead of creating a new hirer." It will never quietly attach the booking to a copy of a member. Switch Hirer to Existing household, pick them, and carry on; they'll still be charged the guest rate you chose.

What gets refused

• A rate that isn't switched on.
• The member rate for a hirer record — book them on a guest rate instead. (The member rate also still needs a membership that covers the hire date, as it always has.)
• A booking with neither a household nor hirer details filled in.

Nothing is created when a booking is refused — a rejected booking leaves no half-made hirer record behind.

6. Payment before collection

A non-member or commercial hire must be paid for before the pack leaves the building. This is deliberate and there is no staff override: a guest has no membership to hold and no portal to chase them through, so payment up front (plus the bond) is the whole safety net.

Open Mark collected on a guest booking and you'll see one of two lines:

• "Paid in full — ready to hand over."
• "$X still owing on this account — Non-member hires must be paid before collection." Confirming is refused until it's settled.

What counts as paid: anything on their ledger. Take cash or EFTPOS at the desk and record it (Members → the hirer → record a payment), or record a bank transfer when it lands. Credit they already hold counts too — it's real money.

What the numbers mean: the amount shown is their balance excluding the fee and bond of their other bookings that haven't been collected yet — those appear as a separate note. That's why a business with three parties booked can collect the one they've paid for without being blocked by the other two.

Members are unchanged: their fee and bond sit on their account balance like any other charge, and collection isn't gated on it.

7. Collection, return, bond and cancellation

Collecting a guest hire works exactly like a member's: the same recall, safety-warning and missing-piece checks run, the copy goes on loan, and the loan is due back on the hire's end date.

Two deliberate differences, because a guest has no membership:

• A guest hire can't be renewed. Party hire is date-targeted — there's nothing to renew into. If they need it longer, take a new booking.
• A guest hire doesn't accrue overdue fees. The bond is the lever for a late return: hold it until the pack is back and settled.

Returning is the normal party-hire return: check the pack in, and on a clean check the bond is released automatically; if the check reports missing or damaged pieces the bond is held so you can settle a damage fee first and release it deliberately with Refund bond. Full detail in Bonds.

Cancelling a guest booking reverses the fee and the bond in full, at staff discretion — there is no automatic forfeit. If they had already paid, that reversal leaves credit the library owes them, and there is no online refund rail for a guest. Hand the money back (cash or bank transfer) and record it on their ledger, the same convention as releasing a membership bond. The payout worklist lists every household in credit, so it won't be forgotten.

8. When a hirer joins the library

Enrol a casual hirer in a membership (Members → the hirer → Enrol) and their record becomes an ordinary member household — one household, one ledger, one history, instead of a member account sitting next to a shadow hirer record. Their past hires stay on it.

A business stays a business even if it takes out a membership: a childcare centre with a membership is still a business, and its name is still the business name.

9. Where hirers show up — and where they don't

Hirers are not members, and ToyHive keeps the two apart on purpose.

They are excluded from:

• The "All members" announcement audience. They gave you an email to arrange a hire, not to join a mailing list. (The membership-based audiences never included them anyway.)
• Member counts and tiles on the Members page and the dashboard's "needs attention" figures — a one-off hirer is not a lapsed or unverified member.

They are visible in:

• Members, behind the Household type filter — it starts on Member households; switch it to Casual hirers, Organisations or Everyone. Their rows carry a Casual hirer / Organisation badge.

  Search obeys that filter: searching a hirer's name while the filter is on Member households returns nothing, because the type filter is applied before the search. You won't be left guessing, though — when a search comes back empty and the filter is hiding matches, the page says which ones ("2 casual hirers match 'Nguyen' — they are hidden by the Household type filter") with a Show everyone button beside it.

• Reports → Data exports → Households, behind the same Household type dropdown (default Member households). Every households export carries a Household type column, so a mixed export is legible in a spreadsheet — which is what a grant acquittal needs.

• Reports: the Households area has a Household type dimension and filter, so you can count members and hirers separately (or together) in a committee report.

• Reports: the Party hire area has a Hire type dimension and filter — group by it with the Fee revenue measure to get revenue by rate, which is the whole point of charging non-members and businesses more.

They never get portal access. A hirer record is never linked to a login, so a hirer can't sign in, browse, reserve, or book online. Everything they do goes through the desk. (That also keeps their email free for a real membership later.)

An organisation can also be a member. A business household isn't only a hirer — a childcare centre can hold a membership and borrow regularly, on a membership type priced for organisations. Staff enrol them from the household page (there is no public sign-up for organisations), and you can create one directly under Members → Add household without booking a hire first. Their memberships are counted separately from member families everywhere the numbers are reported. See Memberships & renewals → Organisation memberships.

10. "Why is this price?"

Two places answer it without opening settings:

• The booking form's price line names the source of the fee and, when there is one, the bond: the toy's own price for this rate, your library default for this rate, or the member price.
• The toy edit form's placeholders show what each rate works out to for that toy when you leave the box blank.

If the number is still wrong, it's one of three things: the toy's member fee (Inventory → the toy), the rate's uplift or default bond (Settings → Party hire), or a per-toy override you set earlier (Inventory → the toy, in that rate's block).