Creates a rental, reservation or quote. Also converts a quote or reservation into a rental using the quote ID from the initial MakeReservation call.

A rental item can be put on hold by calling the UpdateUnitStatus SWS method, before calling this method, to ensure nobody else takes the rental item while setting up the reservation. If the customer declines the reservation/rental, you will need to call UpdateUnitStatus again, to make the unit available.

The progression of reservations to rental is Quote > SoftReservation > HardReservation > Rental. If you set up a quote, it can be updated to any of the following types of reservations. If you set up a hard reservation it can only be cancelled or set to a rental, it cannot go back in the progression.

Settings for the different types of quotes:

• Quote – QuoteType = QuoteOnly, RentNow = False
  • Does not reserve a unit at all. If a customer wants to rent and no units are available, they will have to wait for a unit. No reservation fee can be applied as no rental is reserved.
• Soft Reservation – QuoteType = SoftReservation, RentNow = False
  • Reserves a unit of the type requested. This does not guarantee a specific unit. A reservation fee cannot be applied as there is not a specific unit being held.
• Hard Reservation – QuoteType=HardReservation, RentNow = False
  • Reserves a specific unit. A reservation fee may be applicable based on the site rules. If they have assigned a reservation fee, the total to hold the reservation can be found using the GetTotalDue method.
• Rental – QuoteType = QuoteOnly, RentNow = True
  • The first payment of a rental is always required in full or, if the site allows it, can be deferred at the site. A deferral cannot be done through the API. If a move in payment is not taken, nightly processing will set the rental to abandoned and remove the rental from the customer’s account.

To convert a quote or reservation to a rental, use the quote ID from the initial call. Run the quote ID through MakeReservations again, choosing “True” for RentNow. This will put the unit into the “In-Process” status. Once a payment is completed, the quote will become a rental.

To prevent duplicate use of a unit, we use the version number.

For a work flow of what is required for a new reservation/rental, see the Workflow for Creating a Reservation or Rental. (Note: A move-in will always require a payment even if it’s a $0 cash payment, otherwise, the rental is cancelled by the system during our nightly processing.)

Parameters

Returned Parameters

Example

As with every method we need to pass in credentials. We do this with the LookupUser request object.

We’ll assume you’ve got a web reference, let’s name it SWS, in your Visual Studio project.  At this point we need to our objects.  We’ll need the standard service object, a MakeReservation request object and a MakeReservation response object.  As part of the request object we also one or more RentalContact objects. We can define and create those like this:

// Create a request and response objects
SWS.WSSoapClient service = new SWS.WSSoapClient();
SWS.MakeReservation_Request request = new SWS.MakeReservation_Request();
SWS.MakeReservation_Response response;

SWS.RentalContact conRequest = new SWS.RentalContact();

Prior to setting the data in the MakeReservation Request object we’ll need to define our rental contact. It can take in an array of contacts but only one is required, unless specified otherwise by the site rules.  To establish a contact we need to define the ContactId, AddressId and PhoneID. These are created using the AddNewContact, AddNewAddress, and AddNewPhone methods. Please see the workflow mentioned above for additional information on account and contact creation.

// RentalContact object
conRequest.ContactId = 123456;
conRequest.AddressId = 123456;
conRequest.PhoneId = 123456;
conRequest.PrimaryFlag = true;

Here’s my sample code of the Request object.

// MakeReservation Request
request.SiteID = 123456;
request.AcctID = 123456;
request.UnitID = 123456;
request.Version = 5;
request.QuoteType = SWS.Quote_Types.QuoteOnly;
request.RentNow = false;
request.Price = 50m;
request.Contacts = new SWS.RentalContact[] { conRequest };

Finally we can call the method and pass across the login object and the request object to perform our reservation. It’s a good
idea to do this in a Try Catch block.

// Call the method that will load the response object
 try
{
  response = service.MakeReservation(user_request, request);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
  MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}

Note that if something goes wrong the service will respond with an exception. You’ll want to take a look at that message returned in that exception so it can be debugged.

Each organization has the ability to limit when a reservation can be made.
These limiting factors can be found at GetSiteRules Info.

For a full list of methods see SWS Methods.