Guides

Getting started

Getting started: your first 30 minutes A short, ordered path from an empty account to your first bookable vehicle. Do these in order and you will not hit the dead ends that come from setting things up out of sequence. 4 min read Add your first vehicle group A vehicle group is the thing customers actually book and the thing your pricing is attached to. You have to create at least one before Glovebox will let you save a vehicle, so this is usually the very first thing you set up. 4 min read

Troubleshooting

Make a vehicle bookable (why customers can't book it) Whether a vehicle can be booked depends on several switches in different places, so a car that looks fine can still be unbookable. This is the one checklist that names every control, in the order worth checking them. 6 min read

Bookings

Work from the Coming up sheet What is happening, in order, day by day. Pickups, returns and transfers on one list — the thing to work from in the morning, and to print for the counter. 3 min read Take a booking over the phone or at the counter Not every booking comes through your website. This is how to put one in yourself, in the order the form expects, and what happens after you save. 5 min read Find the booking you are looking for The bookings list opens on Upcoming and has five other views. Knowing exactly what each one asks for is the difference between finding a booking and deciding it has vanished. 4 min read See your week on the fleet calendar The calendar is one row per vehicle across time. It is where you see the shape of your week, give an unallocated booking a car, and take a vehicle off the road. 5 min read Cancel a booking and handle the refund One screen, three refund choices, and a decision only you can make. Glovebox works out what your policy says is owed — you decide whether it refunds that, a different amount, or nothing through Glovebox at all. 6 min read Amend a booking after it's priced Everything under Adjust pricing changes what the customer owes and nothing else. No card is charged, no refund is issued, and the difference sits on the outstanding balance until you do something about it. 6 min read Deal with an alert Glovebox raises an alert when something needs you rather than waiting. Each one has something you can do about it. 3 min read

Pricing

Charge more in peak season and less for long hires Your base daily rate is the starting point. Rules move it — up for summer, down for a fortnight's hire, whatever your season looks like. This is how they combine and which one wins. 6 min read Give a customer a discount code A code a customer types on your booking page. You decide what it takes off, when it can be used, and how many times. 4 min read Check your rates across the year A month-by-month view of what a hire would actually cost once your rules have applied. Useful for spotting a season you forgot. It does not save changes, whatever the Save button suggests. 3 min read Let Glovebox adjust prices for demand An optional layer on top of your pricing rules that nudges rates up when you are busy and down when you are not. It starts in shadow mode, where it shows you what it would have done without changing a price. 5 min read Write your own demand uplift rules Uplift rules you author yourself, with a ceiling on how far they can push a price. This is the manual sibling of automatic demand pricing, and you turn it on under Settings → Explore features. 3 min read

Handover

Hand a vehicle over at pickup Seven steps at the counter, in a fixed order, ending with the hire on. The order is deliberate — the customer signs before the bond, and the bond is taken before the keys. 6 min read Take a vehicle back at return The mirror of the pickup flow. Readings are compared against what you recorded at handover, and nothing completes until the bond is dealt with one way or the other. 5 min read Manage the agreement on one booking Agreements are versioned and append-only: nothing is ever overwritten, and most regeneration happens without you. What you actually do by hand is chase a signature, sign at the counter, or recover a failed generation. 7 min read Set up your rental agreement terms Until you add your own terms, the rental agreement customers sign carries a platform default and none of your conditions. This shows the two ways to set your terms and how to clear the warning about a blank agreement. 4 min read

Migrating in

Switching to Glovebox from VEVS A practical cutover for VEVS operators. Glovebox recognises a VEVS export automatically and maps the columns for you, so your reservations come across with their references and customers intact. Money already taken does not come across, and that is the part to plan around. 9 min read Switching to Glovebox from RCM A practical cutover for RCM operators. There is no RCM-specific importer, so this runs through Glovebox's general CSV booking importer, which is flexible about column names and shows you a preview before anything is written. 9 min read Import bookings from a spreadsheet Any system that exports a CSV can be imported. You map the columns once, check the preview, and can save the mapping for next time. 5 min read

Fleet

Add your first vehicle Adding a vehicle takes a minute once you have a vehicle group and a location to put it in. This walks through the required fields and the two that trip people up: the group (which you must create first) and the home location. 5 min read Move a vehicle between branches Cars end up in the wrong place. A transfer books the vehicle out for the move so nothing is hired from under it, and repositioning suggests the moves worth making. 5 min read Keep on top of servicing, warrants and registration Service schedules tell you what is due, work orders record what was done, and compliance dates stop a vehicle going out with an expired warrant. It is an optional module. 6 min read

Customer comms

Choose which emails Glovebox sends Glovebox sends a lot on your behalf. This is the one screen that controls it — which emails reach customers, which alerts reach your team, and who they appear to come from. 6 min read Set up pre-arrival emails A last note before the customer travels — where to meet, what to bring, anything outstanding. You can approve each one first, or let them send on their own once you trust them. 5 min read Put your own information in the hire email The three things customers ring you about — how to return the car, who to call if it breaks down, what to do after a bump — written once, in your words, and included automatically. 4 min read Message customers about weather, closures or a recall A road is closed, a storm is coming, a batch of vehicles needs checking. Broadcasts reaches the customers it affects — the ones on hire now, or picking up in the next two days — by text and email. 5 min read

Locations

Set up pickup and return locations Locations are the branches customers choose when they book. This covers adding one, the two switches that decide whether it shows as a pickup or return point, and where to add delivery or one-way fees. 4 min read

Payments

Connect a way to take payment Until you connect a payment gateway your booking page cannot take a deposit, so this is one of the first things to do. It covers connecting Stripe, using Windcave, and the one difference that matters: only Stripe can auto-charge for damage, fuel and over-mileage after a hire. 5 min read Set your deposit and balance rules Your deposit and balance rules decide how much a customer pays at booking and when the rest is due. This covers the deposit type, the minimum, and the pay-in-full window for last-minute bookings. 5 min read Set up and release bonds A bond is the security amount you hold against a hire. This covers the default amount, the difference between an authorisation hold and a capture, and how long after return the hold is released. 5 min read Automate balance payments and reminders Instead of clicking Request payment on every booking, Glovebox can send the balance requests and reminders for you. Glovebox asks for the money; it never takes it from a card on its own. 6 min read Charge after the hire The bond release buffer is your window to raise post-hire charges — this is how you actually raise one. Two separate tools: over-mileage, which Glovebox works out for you, and an ad-hoc charge for everything else. 7 min read Record a payment taken outside Glovebox Money that never went through the gateway still has to reach the ledger, or the booking shows as owing and the automation keeps chasing. This is the one place to record it — and the one place to unpick it. 5 min read

Website

Add your fleet to your website Copy one snippet from Settings → Website → Embeds and paste it into your site. Your fleet appears as cards, each linking into your booking widget. Appearance is set in Glovebox, so you never re-paste. 4 min read Set up your booking website Glovebox includes a booking website. Pick one of four themes, put your colours on it, and publish when it looks right. 5 min read Add a page to your website Pages are built from blocks you stack in the order you want. No HTML, and every block already matches your theme. 4 min read Edit your website menu A page existing and a page being findable are different things. The menu is where you decide what people see. 2 min read Put the booking form on your own website If you already have a website you like, keep it. The booking widget drops into it, and this is also where conversion tracking is set up. 4 min read Test two versions of your wording Try two wordings of the same thing and let your customers decide. Useful for protection plan names and similar labels where opinion is cheap and evidence is not. 3 min read

Settings

Invite your team and set roles You add your team by inviting them and picking a role. This covers the invite, what each of the three roles can and cannot do, and the staff seat limit that can block a new invite. 4 min read Set your cancellation policy How much a customer gets back depends on how much notice they gave. You set four tiers, and Glovebox applies them. 5 min read Set your timezone, currency and units The settings everything else is expressed in. Worth getting right on day one, because they change how every date, price and distance in Glovebox reads. 3 min read Set up your business details The details that end up on a tax invoice and in the emails your customers get. Small screen, disproportionately visible. 3 min read Turn Glovebox features on and off A lot of Glovebox is optional and starts switched off, so your account stays as simple as your business needs. Modules is where you change that. 3 min read Connect Xero Connect once and Glovebox creates the contact, raises the invoice and applies payments as they are captured. Imported bookings are deliberately left out. 4 min read Connect Google Calendar For teams who live in Google Calendar rather than in Glovebox. Bookings appear alongside everything else in their day. 2 min read Let customers collect without you there For after-hours and unstaffed pickups. The customer does the handover on their phone, and only gets the lockbox code once the photos and the bond are done. 5 min read Ask customers to authorise card charges at checkout If you take a bond or charge for fuel and damage after a hire, this is where the customer agrees to it in writing. Each tick is recorded against the booking and printed on the rental agreement. 5 min read See your Glovebox plan and billing Your subscription to Glovebox itself, as opposed to the money you take from customers. 2 min read Tell Glovebox what you rent Cars, campervans, trailers, boats — Glovebox adjusts its wording to match. Set this early, because it changes what your customers read. 2 min read Connect another system to Glovebox For connecting a broker, an agent or your own software. Most operators never need this. 2 min read Use Claude with your workspace Sign in once from Claude, tick the workspaces you own, and Claude can read your live bookings, revenue and availability. Changes are proposed first and applied only after you say yes. 5 min read

Revenue

Sell accessories and extras The things customers add to a hire. Priced per day or once, and offered on your booking page — as long as every vehicle in the group can carry them. 4 min read Offer insurance and excess reduction A customer facing a $2,000 excess will often pay per day to reduce it. Protection plans are how you offer that. 4 min read Charge for one-way hires A car dropped at another branch has to get home. One-way fees cover that, and you can price each route separately. 3 min read See your revenue and what is owing Three screens answering three different money questions — what you earned, what you are owed, and what is coming. 4 min read See where bookings drop off How many people looked, how many chose a car, how many paid. The gap between two steps is where your money is going. 3 min read Set up agents and corporate accounts For the business that hires from you every month and the agent who books on behalf of others. Their bookings belong together rather than scattered among individuals. 3 min read Offer airport transfers A run to the terminal, offered and priced on your booking page. An optional module. 2 min read

Customers

Find and manage your customers One record per person, with every hire they have had. Matched on email, which is why the email on a booking matters more than it looks. 3 min read Follow up bookings that were never finished Someone picked dates, chose a car and did not pay. That is a warm lead with a phone number, and most operators never look at it. 3 min read