UKC

Hi, hope I can mine the UKC hive mind. My brother is looking to set-up a business website for taking bookings, but it will need ultimately to converse with other business’s diaries (think room/property booking). It would also need to take payments. What would this cost to develop and how long would it take? I haven’t got a clue, so any advice gratefully received. 

Go with a third party solution. For example:

https://www.picktime.com/scheduling-software/meeting-rooms

Almost certainly you'll be able to pay for some tailoring. DIY development is the last resort - don't go there.

Thanks - could that be adapted for property bookings, and could you market it as your own website (or would you link to it from your own website)? 

I think this part is too vaguely defined for anyone to be able to give you a meaningful answer.

There are loads of options for calendars with bookings. And quite a few services for processing payments. But what does "converse with other business's diaries" actually mean? That could range from cobbling together existing packages to needing to build something fairly complex from scratch.

Cheers - I mean that a booking taken on this website would block out that period in the calendar of the business whose accommodation is being booked. I guess it depends on what software (channel managers I think is the term used) they are using?

Appreciate the replies  

Who is this "business's being booked with"? So he is wanting something that can book against multiple other businesses? Thats almost certainly going to get messy quick since unless he can get them on a common platform there is probably going to be some integration work. If its just one or two then it would be a case of talking with them and seeing what options they have.

I think the other businesses tend to use a small range of channel managers, so his website would need to integrate with maybe 3 of these to cover most of the market. 

Assuming neither of you have web development experience, you have a few choices:

1. Find a good small company who could choose the packages and integrate it for you.

2. Or, get a short list of products that look ok, and speak to the software house about someone they recommend to do you an implementation.

3. Figure out the budget and review. £500 (excel spreadsheet and facebook), £5k (minimally adapted package and payments) or £50k (reasonable but minimal bespoke implementation) will make a big difference on how to proceed.

Above all, cut the spec back to the bare bones for the first implementation - the minimum that will get the business running. Then spend money on marketing, design, and search engine optimisation. Run the business with that for a few months, and see what to do next.

Make staged payments, and hold back 20% to keep them keen on the final snagging.

Good luck!

That’s great - thank you. I’ve passed it on.