Locations and stations explained (and which settings live where)

"What is the difference between the station name and the location?" is the single most-asked concept question in support — and almost every "the setting isn't there" ticket turns out to be someone editing the right setting at the wrong level. This article is the map.

The five levels, top to bottom

Level	Where you find it	There is one per…
Account	Account Settings	company
Location	Locations in the menu	physical place you rent from
Station	Stations in the menu	group of locks at that place
Lock	inside a station	physical padlock, locker door or access point
Product	Products in the menu	thing a customer can book

Read it as ownership, not just hierarchy:

• An account owns your locations, your users, your Stripe connection, and your defaults.
• A location owns an address, a timezone, opening hours, prices, products and the customer's booking experience.
• A station is just a container for locks at one location. It has a name and nothing else that customers ever see.
• A lock owns its own on/off state, its identifier, its master code, its QR code — and it carries exactly one product.
• A product belongs to one location, and becomes bookable only through the lock (or locks) it is assigned to on an unmanned location.

The one rule that catches everybody: availability comes from locks, not from products. Three kayaks means three locks, each with the kayak product assigned. Adding stock to a product does not create bookable units on an unmanned location.

When to use one station and when to use two

A station has no address of its own — it inherits the location's. So the only question is whether the locks belong together operationally.

• One rack of eight padlocks in one place → one station.
• Two boxes 300 metres apart at the same beach → still one location, and normally two stations, because it makes the lists readable and lets you print QR codes per box.
• A second beach with its own address, opening hours or phone number → that is a new location, not a new station.

Locations are the level that costs you: your subscription has a maximum number of locations, and the Locations page shows "You have reached the maximum number of locations for your subscription plan." when you hit it. Stations are free to add.

Which settings live at which level

This is the table to check before you go looking for a missing setting.

Setting	Level	Where
Users and roles, Stripe, subscription	Account	Account Settings
Default booking languages	Account	Account Settings → Language
Default customer flow, checkout and return requirements, terms	Account	Account Settings → Customer flow
Name, address, phone, email	Location	Location settings tab
Timezone	Location	Location settings tab
Staff presence (manned / unmanned)	Location	Location settings tab
Opening hours, open dates, seasons, buffer time	Location	Open dates tab
How customers reach your booking	Location	Book button tab
Date and time picker style, theme colour	Location	Booking experience tab
What customers see at checkout, unlock and return	Account or Location	Customer flow tab
Public booking page	Location	Website tab
Prices, stock, images, add-ons	Product	Products
Which physical unit is bookable	Lock	Stations
PIN codes and master codes	Lock	Stations

Two of these deserve a warning:

Customer flow settings exist at both levels. By default a location follows the account. The Location-specific switch at the top of the location's Customer flow tab is what decides which one you are editing — when it is off, the page tells you "This location uses the customer flow from your account settings." and there is nothing to edit there. If a setting "isn't there", check that switch first. See Customer flow and booking experience — what your customers see.

Booking languages exist at both levels too. On Location settings, the switch Use location-specific booking languages does the same job. When it is off you get the note "This location uses the account's default booking languages:" and a link, Edit account languages.

Create a location

1. Open Locations in the menu.
2. Press Add new location. If the button is greyed out you are either at your plan's location limit, or your account information could not be loaded.
3. Fill in General Information (below).
4. Fill in Location & Contact Details (below).
5. Set Timezone under Language & Timezone.
6. Press Save.

You get Location created! and land on the new location's page. A first station is created for you at the same time, so you can go straight to Stations and start adding locks. If that step fails you get a warning instead — "Location created, but the default station could not be added. You can add a station from Stations." — and you simply add one yourself.

The other tabs (Book button, Customer flow, Booking experience, Open dates, Website) stay greyed out until the location has been saved once. That is expected.

General Information

• Location Active — the switch in the top right of the card. Turn it off and the location stops being offered to customers. This is the fastest way to take a whole site out of service without deleting anything.
• Name of your Location — required. Customers see this, so use the place, not an internal code.
• Staff presence — required. The options are Manned, Unmanned and Allockate, and the tooltip on the field is the whole rule: "If you plan to use smart locks, select Unmanned. Otherwise, select Manned."
• Product Type — required. Pick the closest of Boat, Bicycle, Camping, Trailer, SUP, Canoe or Kayak, Sauna, Skiing or Other.

Staff presence is not cosmetic. A location left on Manned produces no PIN codes at all, for any booking, however well your locks are set up. If codes are missing everywhere at one location, check this field before anything else.

Location & Contact Details

Location Email and Location Phone are the contact details customers see for this place. If you already run another location, the Copy from button beside the card title copies email and phone across — the tooltip reads "Copy email and phone from another location."

The address is set from the map, not by typing:

1. Use Search for a location and start typing the address, or press Use Current Location, or click the point on the map. On a phone the map is collapsed behind Show map.
2. The helper text under the map says it plainly: "Click on the map to set a location, or search for an address above. The address fields will be automatically filled."
3. Address, City, Country, Latitude and Longitude fill in and are not editable by hand. Only Zip Code can be corrected manually, and only when the lookup did not return one.

If the address is wrong, move the pin — do not go hunting for a way to type over it. If the lookup finds coordinates but no street address you get "Address not found for this location, but coordinates have been set."

Display Google Reviews below the map takes a Google Place ID. Its hint is honest about how it is normally filled: "Usually this is filled in correctly when you pick a location on the map. If it looks wrong, you can update it manually."

Language and timezone

Timezone is required, and it is derived for you: when you move the pin far enough, the timezone follows the new coordinates. Check it after moving a location a long way, because every opening hour, start time and PIN code window at this location uses that timezone.

Under it sits Use location-specific booking languages:

• On — you pick Languages to show in booking view for this location. Main language is shown but fixed to English.
• Off — the location follows the account, and the languages currently in force are listed for you.

If your account has no booking languages set yet, the switch is locked on and you are told "To change this: set booking languages for your account."

When you save after adding a language, you are offered a translation pass over your products, customer flow, website texts and legal text for the new languages. Take it — half-translated content is the classic cause of an empty terms page in one language.

Where stations fit

Open Stations in the menu. Each row is one station, and each station belongs to exactly one location.

• The station's Name of the Station is internal. Customers never see it, so name it for your staff: "Beach box", "Container north".
• A station cannot exist without a location. If you have not created one yet you get "You must first create a location before you can create a station".
• Open a station to reach its locks. Everything about pairing, activating, moving and printing QR codes happens there — see Connect and manage your smart locks.

Because the station carries no settings a customer can see, moving a lock between stations is a housekeeping change, not a customer-facing one.

Deleting a location

1. Open Locations.
2. Use the delete action on the location's row.
3. Read the dialog: Delete location? — "Are you sure you want to delete the location? The location, its products, stations, and locks will be removed."
4. Confirm with Delete location.

Before the dialog lets you through it checks for bookings:

• If the location has active or future bookings you are told "This location has active or future bookings." and, unless you are a platform admin, delete is blocked with "You cannot delete this location while it has active or future bookings."
• If the check itself fails you get "Could not check bookings. Try again, or contact support if the problem continues." and delete stays blocked.
• If there were too many bookings to count you get "Booking check may be incomplete (too many results). If delete is allowed, verify bookings before proceeding."

This is a real deletion of the products, stations and locks underneath it — there is no undo. If you only want to stop selling at that place, turn off Location Active instead, or end the open period on the Open dates tab.

Quick "am I on the right screen?" check

• Changing an address, phone number, timezone or opening hours → Locations → the location.
• Changing a price, an image or stock → Products.
• Making a physical unit bookable or unbookable → Stations → the station → the lock.
• Changing what every location does by default → Account Settings.
• Changing what only this location does → the location's own tab, with the location-specific switch turned on.