Read the match count on every listing that has a unit behind it before you call it done. Setting Status to Public puts the listing on the storefront and puts no stock behind it, and the two failures look nothing alike:
- A rule that matches nothing. The listing is visible, priced and permanently unbookable. The only sign is the rule’s own live count, reading zero.
- No rule at all. The card reads No stock items reserved or deducted when the listing is purchased and availability is unlimited. Correct for a delivery fee or an insurance add-on, wrong for anything physical, because nothing is ever held and you will oversell it.
Price the undated Default table, not only a seasonal one. Every new listing is created with one undated table named Default, and that is the table that applies whenever no dated table does.Every further table you add requires a validity period, and the admin says why: Only price tables without validity period can be used as a default price tables for listings.So a listing whose only prices sit on a dated table has no price outside that window. That is the shape of most “the storefront shows no price” reports during a launch.
The six passes over one listing
Open a listing from Catalog → Listings. Work the tabs in this order to reach bookable with the fewest revisits. They are not a wizard, so any order works.
Leave Status on Draft for passes 1 to 5, and switch to Public last. A listing published half-built is a live listing that does not work.
Leave two tabs until later: Attributes carries the catalog attributes you designed in step 3, and Checkout settings holds the fields a customer fills in at checkout. Neither blocks a booking.
Decide what actually differs between variants
Count the variants before you add an option. Every combination becomes one, and the Variants tab keeps a running Total variants count: three sizes and four colours is twelve variants, each of which can be individually priced, individually stocked, and individually wrong. Decide which of three cases you are in:
Use name-only variants, or none, for most first listings. Per-variant stock and pricing you did not need is maintenance you carry for the life of the listing.
Split them into separate listings if the grid is mostly empty, say three of twelve combinations stocked. Publishing is per listing, so anything sold at only some locations has to be its own listing regardless.
Price the listing, or connect a shared rate card
Prices live in price tables, not on the listing. Adding a table on the Pricing tab offers two options, and the choice is worth making deliberately:
Open a shared table’s Linked listings before you edit it. A shared rate card is a shared consequence. Its purchase types and prices are edited on the table itself, and read-only on a linked listing, marked Controlled by the linked price table.
Switch on the sections that decide what a customer can do with the listing. A section that is off is a purchase type the listing does not offer:
Pick the booking shape that answers your question. Fixed price per duration sells named periods such as a day pass or a weekend rate. Rate based bills the duration actually booked, a day running 24 hours from pickup.
Read the unit suffix carefully on a fixed-duration price. The dropdown offers each unit twice: Day (Elapsed) runs the full period from pickup, Day (Started) derives the return from the pickup day. That suffix is a revenue decision rather than a formatting one, and Price a listing works it through with a real booking.
Turning Booking price on brings out the Booking deposit card, which stays hidden until at least one of the listing’s tables offers bookings. The deposit belongs to the listing rather than the table it appears beside, so one listing holds one deposit however many tables it carries.
Sell the same unit twice: one SKU, two listings
Nothing in TWICE scopes a stock item to a single listing. A listing’s Fulfilment rule matches stock by SKU, by attribute or by name, and two listings whose rules match the same units share one pool. That is how the same thing is rented and sold without duplicating inventory. Pick one of two setups. They are not equivalent:
Expect a sale to take the unit permanently, from the moment the order is committed. A booking occupies its window and releases the unit afterwards. A sale occupies the unit from now on, and a future-dated sale still takes it immediately.
So a unit sold on the resale listing leaves the rental listing’s availability at once. That is correct, and it means selling out of your rental fleet can happen quietly where both listings draw on one pool with nothing separating them.
Separate the pools with an attribute if you want a resale channel that cannot eat the fleet. Put a retired or for sale flag on the stock item and match each listing’s rule on it. The fleet to resale guide covers moving units between them.
Set what a customer is allowed to book
Fill in four settings on the Limits tab: the shortest booking, the longest, the increment between them, and how late an order can be placed. They take a minute and are the difference between a fleet you control and one a customer can book for a year. Two of them behave differently depending on how the listing is priced:
Set them on anything you rent, and set the order deadline in particular. It is the only setting that stops a too-soon booking appearing on the storefront calendar at all. None of the four constrains a sale, which has no duration and no start time. Full detail in purchase and booking limits.
Group listings so customers find them
Build manual collections for a launch. A collection groups listings so customers can browse them together, a listing sits in several at once, and being in one changes nothing about the listing itself. Leave smart collections until tagging is a habit. They join listings by tags automatically, which is the better tool later and a liability before then: inconsistent tags give you a collection that is quietly wrong rather than visibly empty. Smart collections match on tags only, not price, category, attribute or availability. Build them around how people shop, by activity, by season, or by who it is for, rather than mirroring your internal categories. Someone who has never seen your catalog should reach a representative item in two clicks.Publish, then check the real thing
Open the listing in the storefront on a real date before you move on to the next one. Open preview renders the listing in a drawer inside the admin with the booking action disabled. It is good for copy, images and pricing, and it will happily render a listing that is not published, not available at the location, or restricted to a customer tag you are not in. Open in storefront opens the real page, which is the check that proves publishing worked. A listing that failed to publish is not there at all.Done when
- One listing is complete across all six tabs, and Status is Public.
- Its Fulfilment rule reports a non-zero matches in inventory count, and the units it matches are at the location you sell from.
- The undated Default price table is priced, not only a dated overlay, with Purchase price, Booking price or both switched on.
- Any shared rate card’s Linked listings contains exactly the listings you meant to price.
- The listing opens in the storefront, not only in preview, and shows a price for a real date.
- It can be added to an order for that date, and doing so holds a unit.
- Booking limits are set on anything you rent, including an order deadline.
- The listings you have built are in at least one collection, and that collection opens on the storefront.
- You can build the second listing by repeating this, without looking anything up.
Related articles
Build your catalog
The launch step this guide belongs to.
How to create and publish a listing
The four decisions that make a listing sellable, tab by tab.
How to set up variants on a listing
Options, per-variant stock, and per-variant pricing in full.
How to price a listing
Price tables, Elapsed versus Started, and deposits.
How to set purchase and booking limits
The four Limits settings, and what each one does on each pricing model.
How to control what stock a listing draws from
Writing the Fulfilment rule and checking what it matches.
How to build a collection and merchandise it
Manual and smart collections, and where they surface.
Design your storefront
The next step, once the catalog exists.