Creating a guest spot or convention

An event is a stretch of time you are working somewhere that is not home: a guest spot in another city, a convention, a flash day, a private booking. You tell Maelo the dates and the venue once, and it handles the rest, blocking those days at home and offering the new place to clients instead.

Your permanent studio is not an event. That lives in Settings, Locations and stays there. Events are the temporary ones.

Go to Events and tap the plus. The form is three sections you work through in order: Event Information, Dates & Availability and Booking Settings. Nothing saves until you hit Create Event at the bottom, so it is safe to look around first.

Event Type is the first choice you make, and it shapes the rest of the form. There are four.

• •Guest Spot, for working at another studio temporarily.
• •Convention, for a convention or expo. This one swaps in a Convention Name field, because the hall is not what people call it.
• •Flash Day, for a session built around designs you have already drawn.
• •Private Event, for a private booking or a one off occasion.

Give the event a title as well. That title is what clients see when they choose where to book, so name it the way you would say it out loud: Berlin, March. Not Guest Spot 3.

Search for the address and Maelo finds it on the map, or drop the pin yourself if the place does not come up. Getting the pin right matters more than it looks, because that location is what a client is shown and what they will type into their maps app on the day.

Arrival Info is the optional line underneath, and it is the most useful field on the form. It is for the thing that is not in the address: a buzzer code, a side door, a booth number, which hall. Write it now while you know it, because the alternative is answering the same message six times on the morning of the event.

Under Dates & Availability you pick a Date Range: the first day you are there and the last. Then two tabs let you refine it. Select Days is for switching off days inside the range that you are not actually working, like the travel day at either end.

Set Hours is where you say what time you are open. Type it the way you would say it, such as 9am to 5pm, and apply it to every selected day at once, or set an individual day differently if one is shorter. These hours are what your booking slots come from while you are there, so a client cannot land an appointment before you have got to the shop.

The last section decides what the event does to the rest of your diary. Three questions, all of them switches.

1. 1

   Block off event days on your home calendar?

   On by default, and it should stay on. It stops somebody booking your home studio on a day you are in another country. Two sub options let you block the whole date range including the days you switched off, and clear any manual availability you had already set on those days.
2. 2

   Open books for this event right away?

   On means clients can book the event as soon as you create it. Off lets you pick a date and a time for books to open instead, which is how you run an announced drop rather than a quiet one.
3. 3

   Allow clients to request flash tattoos?

   Turn this on for a flash day or a convention where you are taking walk ups from designs you have already drawn.

Then hit Create Event. What happens next is covered in Bookings during an event.

Every event is a card on the Events screen. Tap anywhere on the card to open it for editing, or use the ellipsis in the corner for Edit Event, Pause Bookings and Delete Event. Change the dates and Maelo redoes the blocked days on your home calendar to match.

Deleting is permanent and takes the bookings attached to the event with it, so if a trip is simply not happening yet, pause its bookings instead and keep the card. Events move themselves into Past the day after the last one ends, which means there is nothing to archive and nothing to tidy up.