A hirer is anyone who books one of your assets — a person, an organisation, or a person booking on behalf of an organisation. Every booking is attached to a hirer record, so you build up a list of who's hired what over time. This article covers how hirers are added (with or without your help) and how to manage their details.
For the one-time module setup, see Getting started with Hire.
Where to find your hirers
Open the Hire page and click the Hirers tab. You'll see a list of every hirer who's ever booked from you, with their name, organisation, type, and contact details.
How hirers get added
There are two ways:
Automatically — when someone books via the public portal
When an external organisation books through your public hire page, they fill in their own details — name, email, optional phone, optional organisation, optional address — and we save a hirer record automatically. No manual entry needed.
If the same email comes back for another booking, we reuse the same hirer record rather than creating a duplicate. Their contact details refresh to whatever they typed in most recently, so if they update their phone number on their next booking, you see the new one.
Manually — when you take a booking outside the portal
When you create a booking yourself from the Hire Actions → Add hire menu, you can pick an existing hirer or add a new one inline. Or click Add hirer on the Hirers tab directly to add one without a booking yet — useful when you've got a long-standing relationship with a local organisation and want their details on file.
Adding a hirer
The Add hirer dialog has these fields:
| Field | Required? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | The person's name — even when the booking is for an organisation |
| Yes | Where confirmation, payment, and reminder emails go | |
| Phone | No | A direct line for queries |
| Type | No | One of Scout group, Community, Private, Corporate, Other |
| Organisation | No | The organisation name, if there is one |
| Organisation tier | No | The pricing tier that applies to this hirer — see below |
| Notes | No | Anything for your own reference (multi-line) |
Address fields aren't on the manual form. They are collected when a hirer books via the public portal and shown on their record if so.
Editing a hirer
Click any hirer row to open their detail sheet. You'll see their contact details, type, organisation, pricing tier, and any notes — plus an Edit pencil in the header.
Edit mode swaps the view for the same fields as the add dialog. Cancel reverts, Save writes the changes.
Organisation tiers and pricing
Organisation tiers let you charge different rates depending on who's booking. Common patterns:
- Scout group — your district, a neighbouring group — gets a Scout-friendly rate
- Community — schools, charities, local clubs — gets a community rate
- Commercial — businesses running training, away days, events — pays the full rate
You set tiers up in Hire → Settings → Organisation Tiers, then add tier-specific rows to each asset's pricing tab. When a hirer is assigned to a tier, their bookings pick up the matching rate; if no tier is set, they get the Standard rate.
When someone books via the public portal and you've configured tier-specific pricing, they're asked "Which best describes you?" on the booking form and they pick their own tier. Their answer saves to their hirer record automatically — so the next time they book, the tier is pre-selected.
Hirer types versus tiers
These two concepts are easy to mix up:
- Type — a label on the hirer record (Scout group, Community, Private, Corporate, Other). Useful for filtering your list and seeing at a glance who's who.
- Tier — the pricing tier that controls the rate they pay. Independent of type — you might have two different commercial customers on different tiers if you've negotiated a special rate for one of them.
A hirer can be type "Community" but on the "Scout group" pricing tier if you want them to get the friendly rate. Set them independently to match your group's policy.
Deleting a hirer
From the row action menu on the Hirers tab, choose Delete. A confirmation dialog warns you before completing the action.
Hirers with active bookings (pending or confirmed) can't be deleted — the system blocks it and tells you to deal with the bookings first. This protects your records from accidentally orphaning a hire.
Deleted hirers are removed from the list but their historical bookings stay intact for your records.
Repeat hirers
The same email address is treated as the same person. When a regular hirer comes back to book again — whether through the portal or by you adding a booking manually — Scoutworks recognises them and links the new booking to their existing record. Over time you build up a useful picture of who books what and how often.
What's next
- Getting started with Hire — the one-time module setup.
- The public hire portal — how new hirers find and book your assets.
- Creating and editing hire assets — set up the tier-specific pricing that hirers pick up automatically.
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Related guidesGetting Started with Hire
How to set up the Hire module so your group can publish a public booking page for halls, campsites, equipment, and minibuses — and collect payments online.
Read articleThe Public Hire Portal
How your public booking page works, what a hirer sees from arriving on the page to receiving their confirmation, and how the three approval modes differ.
Read articleCreating and Editing Hire Assets
How to add halls, campsites, equipment, and minibuses to your hire portal, set their pricing, choose booking rules, ask custom questions, and block out dates.
Read article