Reopening after winter: the get-ready-for-the-season checklist

The first warm weekend arrives, someone tries to book, and nothing works: no available times, locks that will not wake up, no PIN codes. None of these are faults — they are what an account looks like after a winter of expired open dates, drained batteries and lapsed lock-vendor connections. The same nine checks, in this order, put it all back.

If this is your first season entirely, start with New operator setup checklist — from empty account to first booking instead — this article assumes everything worked last autumn.

1. Reconnect the lock-vendor side

Skip to step 4 if your locations are Manned (no smart locks).

Your Igloohome connection does not last forever — it expires, and the admin starts warning you months in advance. When the connection is in its final stretch, a dialog opens on login saying "Your Igloo home connection expires in" so many days — or "Your Igloo home connection have expired!" — with a Reconnect with Igloo home button. Do not dismiss it and move on; reconnect. You can also check any time under Settings → Integrations, in the Smart locks section, which shows the same countdown.

Separately, check your payment method in the lock vendor's own portal. If the card on file lapsed over winter, code generation stops silently — the only trace is when a sync fails with "Payment method required. Please add a valid payment method in the Igloo Connect portal to sync your locks." Use Open Igloo Connect portal and settle it there before the season, not while a customer waits.

2. Charge the locks and look them over

Hardware advice belongs to your lock vendor, so keep to their guidance. Two things are worth knowing before you panic, though: batteries drain in storage, and a lock that sat uncharged all winter can appear completely dead until it has spent real time on the charger. Charge every lock, then check the physical basics — stickers with the locker number still readable, QR codes still on the units, shackles moving freely.

3. Sync the locks and check every row

1. Go to Stations and press Fetch latest info from igloo home in the Igloohome panel. This is also where the payment-method error from step 1 would appear.
2. Open each station and use Sync this lock from Igloo on any lock that misbehaves — you want Lock synced from Igloo on each.
3. In the locks table, confirm every lock has its Product set (no No product assigned) and Active status on. If you switched locks off for the winter, Activate all locks puts a whole station back in one click.
4. Press Save — product and active changes are not saved as you make them.

The full lifecycle — pairing new locks, moving them, master PINs — is in Connect and manage your smart locks.

4. Create the new season's open dates

This is the classic spring miss. Last year's time period ended in the autumn, and a location with no active period accepts no bookings at all — no error, just an empty booking page in March.

1. Go to Locations and read the Active open date column: No active or upcoming open dates or Open dates start in the future means work to do.
2. Open the location, go to the Open dates tab, and press Create new time period (or copy last year's period and give it new dates). Set Period start and Period end to cover the season.
3. Check the weekday Open and Close times — and set the opening time on the full hour. An opening time like 09:30 saves without complaint and then produces no bookable times at all for that weekday.
4. If your products use seasonal prices, set Price table for time period (High season / Low season) on each period, and check Time before start that you can book.
5. Clear out stale Custom dates — last year's storm closures will silently shut those days again this year.
6. Press Save.

Every trap on this tab is explained in Opening hours and open dates; if something still refuses to be bookable afterwards, work through Customers see no available times, or no products at all.

5. Review products, prices and inventory

Open Products and walk the list once: prices still right after the winter (including High Season / Low Season prices and any Different prices by day of week), descriptions still true, and Number of units matching what survived storage. Remember that at unmanned locations the bookable quantity is the number of active locks carrying the product — which is why step 3 matters more than the inventory number.

6. Check the booking button on your website

Winter is when websites get rebuilt, and theme updates are notorious for stripping embedded code. Open the location's Book button tab and use Preview — as its tooltip says: "Opens your website in a new tab with the booking flow so you can check that embedding works." While you are there, confirm URL where book button is implemented still points at the right page: confirmation-email links are built from it, so a page that moved over winter sends customers to the wrong place. Reinstalling is covered in Install the booking button on your website.

7. Reread your confirmation email

Open Settings → Email Settings and expand Confirmation email under Default emails. Read the Introduction text and Closing text as a customer would: is the phone number current, are the pickup instructions still true, did anything change over winter? Email preview shows the result. If you use extra automated emails under Your emails, check their Active switches too.

8. Place one real test booking

Do not let your first customer be the test. Book end to end — booking, payment, confirmation email, PIN code, return — on your live website page, not just the preview.

To avoid paying yourself, use a 100% promo code: the payment step still appears, but with a zero total Stripe asks for no card details — you just confirm. The full trick, including limiting the code's use, is in Create and manage promo codes.

If the code arrives but you want to double-check timing rules before opening day, Customers aren't getting a PIN code (or the code doesn't open the lock) explains when codes are generated and shown.

9. Switch off what is not coming back

Anything that did not survive the winter should stop being bookable before the season starts, not after someone books it:

• For a unit that is broken or away for repair, switch the lock's Active status off on the station page — do not delete the lock; deleting is permanent and strands any bookings attached to it.
• For a product you no longer offer at all, remove it from its locks first, then use Delete product — deletion is blocked while a lock still carries it: "This product is still linked to a station lock. Remove it from the lock via Stations page, then try again."

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That is the whole spring routine: vendor connection, batteries, sync, open dates, products, button, email, test booking, cleanup. Done in this order it takes an afternoon — done in the other order, it takes a season of support calls.