Finding your way around Rentalbuddy: the menu explained

If someone just handed you a login to an account that is already running, this is the page to start on. It walks the left menu top to bottom, explains the one control that catches everyone out — the location switcher — and tells you what the two "front pages", Home and the dashboard, are actually showing.

If instead you are building an account from scratch, read New operator setup checklist — from empty account to first booking first. It covers the same screens in the order you need to do them.

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The three parts of the screen

The left menu is the main navigation. If it is closed, the burger icon at the top left opens it — it is labelled menu.

The top bar shows your company name with the currently selected location underneath it, a button that opens your own booking flow, and — on pages that have one — a Video Guide button.

Everything else is the page you are on.

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Which location am I working in?

Open the left menu. Above the menu items there is a dropdown labelled Location — whatever is selected there is the location that Products, Stations and the booking button work against. Change it and the same screens show different data. This is the single most important thing to get right, and it is easy to miss.

Three ways to check what is selected without opening the menu:

• The Location dropdown itself, at the top of the open menu.
• The small line of text under your company name in the top bar (and in the menu header) — that is the selected location's name.
• On mobile, the top bar shows the section you are in with the location name underneath.

Next to the dropdown there is a globe icon, tooltipped Settings, which jumps straight into that location's settings. If a red dot appears there, the tooltip reads Location is currently closed — the location is outside its open hours right now.

If you have more than one location, glance at the Location dropdown before you edit anything. Editing the wrong location for weeks is a real thing that happens, because most screens look identical between locations.

Note that not everything is location-scoped. Settings is account-wide, and Bookings, Customers and Promo codes have their own filters. Location-specific settings — open dates, the booking button, the website page — live inside Locations, on the location itself.

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Home

Home is where you land when you log in. It shows one of two things.

While your account is still being set up, it shows Welcome to Rentalbuddy! and a Guide — a numbered checklist with a progress bar and an x/y completed counter. It tracks these steps:

• Join Rentalbuddy
• Create your first Location
• Create a Product
• Configure payments
• Set up locks & access (shown when you have an unmanned location)
• Activate your account

Each row is clickable and either opens a short dialog or jumps to the right screen; three of them stay greyed out until a location exists, with the hint "You need to create a location before you can…". The number badge on the Home menu item is how many steps are still outstanding.

Once every step is ticked, Home stops showing the checklist and shows the dashboard instead. So on an established account, Home and the dashboard are the same page — that is expected, not a bug.

The dashboard

The dashboard is the reporting overview. At the top you set a Date range, choose whether the figures are counted by Booking date or Start date using the Bookings by dropdown, and — if you have more than one location — pick which ones to include under Locations (the default is All locations).

Below that are the summary tiles: Average booking length, Average order value, Total Revenue and Total reservations, plus Membership sales if memberships are switched on for your account. Then a revenue-and-volume chart over the period, and two more panels: Customer Nationality and Products.

What it covers and where its limits are is in Reports and exports — what you can get out of Rentalbuddy.

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The menu, section by section

Exactly which items you see depends on your role and your plan, so your menu may be shorter than this list.

Home — the setup Guide while you are getting started, the dashboard afterwards. See above.

Bookings — the list of bookings, where you open a single booking to see what was paid, what was sent, and the PIN code, and where you refund, cancel or edit one. Go here when a customer contacts you about a specific booking. See Edit, move or cancel a booking and Refund or cancel a booking.

Booking Management — the operational view of the same bookings: what is out right now, on which lock, and what is coming in. This is the day-to-day screen at the counter, and the one where you can move a booking between locks. It is also the only section a read-only user sees.

Customers — customer records and their booking history. Go here to look someone up by name or email rather than by booking, or to book on a customer's behalf.

Products — everything you rent out: rental products, accessories, insurance, events and memberships, with their prices, inventory and tax. A location must be selected before you add one, because products belong to the selected location.

Locations — your business sites. Open a location and you get its own tabs: Location settings (name, address, timezone, staffed or unmanned), Book button (how customers reach your booking, and the code to embed on your website), Customer flow, Booking experience, Open dates (opening hours and seasons — nothing is bookable until these exist) and Website. A lot of what feels "missing" from the main menu lives on these tabs. See Opening hours and open dates and Install the booking button on your website.

Stations — the physical spots where your locks sit, and the locks themselves. Open a station to get the locks table, where each lock is switched Active and linked to a Product. Availability for self-service rentals is controlled here, not by the product's inventory number alone. Skip this section entirely if your location is staffed.

Users — the people who can log into the account. This item is only shown to users with full admin rights; if you cannot see it, ask whoever owns the account to add your colleague.

Accounts — the account list. Also admin-only, and not part of normal day-to-day operation.

Promo codes — discount codes and gift cards, including the 100 % code trick for placing a test booking without paying yourself.

Memberships — membership plans, if your account uses them. When memberships are enabled, a Membership sales tile also appears on the dashboard.

FAQ — the in-product help area, mostly video guides. See Getting help inside the Rentalbuddy admin.

Support — a support area built into the admin. It is not switched on for every account, so it may not be in your menu.

Settings — everything account-wide, on tabs: Account (company details), User Profile (your own login and password), Language, Customer flow, Email Settings (your confirmation and automated emails), Payments (currency and the Stripe connection), tax settings, Integrations and Billing (your own subscription). When you cannot find a setting on a location, this is the other place to look.

At the bottom of the menu you will also find the language selector for the admin interface itself, your email address, and the log-out button.

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Two levels of settings

Rentalbuddy has account-level settings and location-level settings, and mixing them up is the most common reason for "the setting isn't there".

• Account level — Settings in the left menu. Company details, currency, Stripe, taxes, email templates, billing. Applies to everything you run.
• Location level — Locations → open the location → its tabs. Address, staffing, open dates, the booking button and URL, the customer-facing booking flow. Applies to that one location.

If you are hunting for something, check both, and check that the right location is selected first.

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Quick reference

I want to…	Go to
See what is rented out right now	Booking Management
Find one customer's booking	Bookings or Customers
Change a price or add a product	Products
Change opening hours	Locations → location → Open dates
Get the booking button code or a QR code	Locations → location → Book button
Link a product to a lock	Stations → station → locks table
Edit the confirmation email	Settings → Email Settings
Check revenue for a period	Home / the dashboard
Add a colleague	Users (needs admin rights)
Watch a walkthrough video	Video Guide in the top bar, or FAQ