Pickup, return and booking statuses

A booking in Rentalbuddy carries three separate statuses that people mix up constantly. Telling them apart is most of this article:

Which one	Where you see it	What it answers
Booking status	The Status column in Bookings	Is this booking live or cancelled?
Payment status	The Payment Status column, and the Payment section on the booking	Has the money arrived?
Pickup status	The status dropdown on the booking and in Booking Management	Where is the equipment?

The pickup status is the one you work with day to day, and the one that controls your availability.

The booking status

The Status column in the Bookings list is not translated — it shows one of three technical words:

• RESERVED — the booking exists but is not yet a confirmed, live booking.
• OK — a normal, live booking. Most of your list.
• CANCELED — cancelled. Cancelling is described in Edit, move or cancel a booking; it does not move any money.

The payment status

Paid, Unpaid, Partially paid, Pending, Refunded, Expired or Failed. Pending means a payment is under way but not finished — bookings in that state are deliberately left out of the Booking Management timeline and its list, so an abandoned checkout does not clutter your day view.

The pickup status — the four states

This is the dropdown that appears on the booking itself and on every row of the list in Booking Management. It has exactly four choices:

Not collected - pre-flow required The customer has something to complete before they can be given their codes — a set of questions, photos or agreements you configured. Bookings start in this state only if you have switched that step on for the location. See Before the customer can unlock below.

Ready for pickup The normal starting state. Paid, waiting, equipment untouched. Shown as a white bar with a dark outline on the timeline.

Picked up The customer has the equipment. Setting it stamps the Check in time on the booking. Shown as a solid blue bar.

Returned The equipment is back. Setting it stamps the Check out time — and frees the unit. Shown as a solid green bar.

You can set any of them by hand, from either place:

1. Open the booking under Bookings, and use the dropdown under the booking details, or
2. Open Booking Management and use the Status dropdown on the row — no need to open the booking at all.

The booking also shows the two timestamps as Check in and Check out, alongside the booked Start and End times. They are not the same thing: Start and End are what was booked, Check in and Check out are what actually happened. A dash means it has not happened.

Marking a booking Returned frees the unit immediately

This is the single most useful thing on this page, and most operators only discover it by accident.

When you set a booking to Returned:

• the Check out time is stamped as now,
• every product line on the booking is flagged as returned,
• and from that moment the unit and its lock no longer block anything.

The equipment becomes bookable again straight away — even if the booked end time has not passed. A customer who booked until 18:00 and is back at 14:00 gives you four hours of extra rental, but only if somebody marks the booking Returned. Until then the system still considers that kayak out on the water.

So: when a customer comes back early, do not cancel the booking, and do not edit its end time. Just set Returned.

What Returned does not do: it moves no money, sends no refund, and sends no email of its own.

One consequence to be aware of: a booking that is marked Returned can no longer be moved to another lock. If you try to drag it in Booking Management you get "Returned bookings cannot be moved to another lock." You can still move a different booking into that lock for the same period.

What the customer does

Everything below happens on the customer's unlock page — the page they reach from the link in their confirmation email.

Pickup

In the usual case the customer does not press anything. When they open their unlock page at the right time, the booking flips from Ready for pickup to Picked up by itself, and the Check in time is stamped then. That is why a booking can show as picked up before anyone at your station has seen the customer: they opened their codes.

If they open it too early, the codes are withheld and the state does not change.

Return

Two taps on the unlock page: Confirm return opens a return page with the same title, and Complete rental finishes it.

• If you have not configured any return requirements, pressing Complete rental is the whole thing — the booking becomes Returned.
• If you have, the return page shows your form first, and it must be completed before the booking is closed. Their answers are saved first; only then is the booking marked returned. The finishing button reads Complete rental in both cases, and afterwards they see a thank-you confirmation.

Whether the customer sees a return button at all is a location setting — Show Confirm Button, described as "Display a confirmation button that customers can click to confirm they have received their booking".

If your customers routinely never press it, that is normal, and it is exactly why the manual Returned dropdown exists. Nothing forces a customer to close their own booking.

What happens when a customer does not return on time

Nearly every operator asks this during setup, and the short answer is: nothing happens automatically. There is no "overdue" status, no alert to you or the customer, and no automatic late fee. The booking simply stays at Picked up until a person — the customer or you — marks it Returned. What does change is access:

• The customer's unlock page works from 15 minutes before the booked start until 30 minutes after the booked end. These margins are fixed — they are not a setting. (The PIN code itself can be visible to the customer earlier than that — the full timing picture is in Customers aren't getting a PIN code (or the code doesn't open the lock).) From the booked end itself, the page's countdown (if you show one) already reads "Your booking has already ended." even though the codes still work; once the 30 minutes are up, the page replaces the codes entirely with "Your booking is no longer valid."
• The physical code may outlive the page. An Igloo padlock's PIN is generated into the lock itself and cannot be cancelled remotely — it typically keeps opening the padlock for up to an hour or two past the booked end, even though the page has stopped showing it. Allockate unlock links also work until an hour after the end. So in that window a customer's page may say no while the lock still opens — treat that as normal, not a fault.
• The unit re-enters availability on schedule, not on return. Once the booked end (plus your blocking time — see below) has passed, the lock becomes bookable again even though the booking still says Picked up. If the kayak is genuinely still out, the next customer books a unit that is not there — this is the mirror image of the early-return behaviour above, and the main reason to keep an eye on Booking Management at closing time.

What you can set up:

• A "please return" nudge: create a custom email under Email Settings triggered After booking end with Booking status set to Picked up only — it then reaches exactly the customers who picked up and never completed a return. (Customers who never collected at all are left alone.)
• Paid overtime, while their page still works: the customer's Extend booking button lets them pay to keep the unit longer. It disappears with the rest of the unlock page 30 minutes after the end, and extensions are refused outright once the booking ended more than 12 hours ago. There is no way to charge someone automatically after they overstay; anything owed for a late return is between you and the customer.

One term not to confuse with any of this: Blocking time after booking ("Buffer time before the next booking can start.") on the location's open dates is turnaround time protecting you between bookings — it gives the customer no extra time at all.

Return requirements — questions and photos

Return requirements are configured per location.

1. Go to Locations and open the location.
2. Open the Customer flow tab.
3. Open step 4, Return (Close-out + Checklist) — "Define what the customer must do to complete the return — checklist, damage questions, and photo requirements".
4. Under Return requirements ("Return questions, photos, condition reports, or confirmations before the booking is closed.") add what you need with Add requirement.
5. Press Save.

Each requirement is built from a preset. The ones most used on a return are Take a photo, Upload a photo, Written answer, Choose one option, Check to confirm and Star rating. A requirement you mark as mandatory has to be completed before the customer can finish — "Customers must complete this requirement before continuing." A requirement can also be switched inactive, which hides it from customers while keeping it in your settings.

Worth knowing about the two photo presets: Take a photo opens the phone's own camera app (rear camera); Upload a photo opens the photo library instead — the admin describes it as "Does not open the camera first." There is no camera preview inside Rentalbuddy itself. If customers report photos coming out black or blank, that is a phone problem, not a Rentalbuddy setting (a known iPhone/Safari issue was fixed mid-2026). Ask them to retry, or switch the requirement to Upload a photo so they can shoot in their own camera app and pick the image.

Account settings or location settings? The Customer flow tab either follows your account-wide defaults or is specific to this location. If your changes seem to have no effect, check the Location-specific switch at the top of the tab first — this is covered in Customer flow and booking experience — what your customers see.

Where the answers end up

Open the booking and look for Return answers. Answers to the step before unlocking appear under Before unlock answers, and answers given during checkout under Customer answers. Each section only appears when there is something in it.

Photos the customer uploaded are gathered into the booking's image gallery, so you can look at the condition of a unit after it comes back.

Before the customer can unlock

The mirror image of the return step is step 2 of Customer flow, Before Unlock (Optional). Switch it on and add at least one requirement, and new bookings for that location start life as Not collected - pre-flow required instead of Ready for pickup.

The customer then sees your questions instead of their PIN codes, and the codes appear only once they have submitted. Use it for waivers, safety videos, ID photos or a condition check before the equipment leaves.

Reopening a booking the customer returned by mistake

Yes, you can — customers cannot undo their own return, but you can.

1. Open the booking, or find its row in Booking Management.
2. In the status dropdown, choose Picked up (the rental is still running) or Ready for pickup (it should not have started at all).

Two things to know before you do it:

• The check-in time is rewritten. Choosing Picked up stamps Check in as now, not as the original pickup time. Choosing Ready for pickup clears both Check in and Check out.
• A review the customer left on return is discarded. If they answered a rating or questionnaire when they returned, moving the booking back out of Returned deletes it.

The unit is taken out of availability again as soon as you do this, so if someone booked the freed slot in the meantime you can end up double-booked on that lock. Check the timeline in Booking Management before reopening a return from a busy day.

Quick reference

Situation	What to do
Customer is back early and you want to re-rent the unit	Set Returned
Customer never pressed return	Set Returned yourself
Customer pressed return by mistake	Set Picked up again — note the check-in time is rewritten
Equipment handed over at the desk	Set Picked up, or let the customer's unlock page do it
You want photos of the equipment on return	Customer flow → step 4 → Return requirements
You want a waiver signed before unlocking	Customer flow → step 2, Before Unlock (Optional)
Booking should not happen at all	Cancel — see Edit, move or cancel a booking