Go-live checklist

A new account can take a real, paid booking the same day. Doing it well takes about a week, most of which is waiting on Stripe rather than working.

This page is the order to do it in. It mirrors the Launch track in the EDU Academy at Admin > Learn, which tracks the same five days against your live data and ticks each one off when the underlying thing is genuinely true rather than when you claim it is.

Time budget

Day	Work	Elapsed
Day 1 — Account	30 min	Stripe verification starts, 1 to 2 business days
Day 2 — Business	1 hour	Same day
Day 3 — Fleet	2 to 4 hours	Same day
Day 4 — Automate	1 to 2 hours	Same day
Day 5 — Go live	1 hour	Same day

Around six to nine hours of work. The calendar week is set by Stripe and by how long you choose to test.

Day 1 — Account

Goal: your account exists and Stripe verification is running.

[ ] Complete the four-step setup wizard
[ ] Add your name and phone number to your profile
[ ] Select your country and start Stripe onboarding. Do this before anything else on this list
[ ] Upload your logo, square and at least 256 x 256 px
[ ] Invite your co-owner or manager if you have one

Stripe is the long pole

Verification takes one to two business days, occasionally longer. It blocks nothing else in setup, but it blocks taking money. Start it on day one and let it run while you build.

Marks Day 1 complete in the Academy: your account details are filled in.

Day 2 — Business

Goal: the shape of your business is configured correctly.

[ ] Set your timezone. Check it twice, because existing bookings do not move if you change it later
[ ] Set operating hours for every day of the week
[ ] Configure your tax rates for your country. See Taxes
[ ] Decide who pays the fees and set both toggles. See Fees
[ ] Set your location name and booking page URL
[ ] Add your cancellation and refund policy text
[ ] Configure deposits and pre-authorisation holds if you take damage deposits

Marks Day 2 complete: location, operating hours and logo all present.

Day 3 — Fleet

Goal: everything you rent exists, priced correctly, with the right unit counts.

[ ] Create every rentable item under Fleet > Inventory
[ ] Set the quantity on each item to the true number of units you own
[ ] Set pricing for every duration you actually sell
[ ] Upload photos for each item, because they are what sells the booking
[ ] Configure availability rules: lead time, minimum and maximum duration, buffer between bookings
[ ] Set up seasonal pricing if your rates change through the year
[ ] Add any add-ons: fuel, insurance, equipment hire, delivery

Quantity is the field that causes overbooking

The quantity on an inventory item is how many units can be booked at once. Leaving it at 1 when you own six means five of your boats never get sold. Setting it to six when you own one means five customers arrive to nothing.

If one physical asset is listed twice, for example the same pontoon sold both as a rental and as a tour, link them by asset so availability is shared. See Inventory.

Marks Day 3 complete: fleet exists and carries pricing.

Day 4 — Automate

Goal: the things that should happen without you, happen without you.

[ ] Configure your waiver and when it is presented. See Waivers
[ ] Set up booking confirmation email and SMS
[ ] Set up reminder messages before the rental
[ ] Turn on review requests after the rental. See Reviews
[ ] Turn on cart recovery for abandoned bookings. See Cart recovery
[ ] Build or connect your website, or embed the booking widget on the site you have
[ ] Set up your next-steps page so customers know what to bring and where to go

Marks Day 4 complete: messaging sequences and a website are both live.

Day 5 — Go live

Goal: real money moves, end to end, before a customer is anywhere near it.

[ ] Confirm Stripe is approved and payouts are enabled
[ ] Take a test booking on your own card through the public booking page
[ ] Sign the waiver as the customer would
[ ] Check in and check out the booking
[ ] Refund yourself and confirm the refund lands
[ ] Take one sale through the POS register
[ ] Take one walk-up
[ ] Confirm the confirmation email and SMS actually arrived, and read them
[ ] Check the booking appears on the journey board and the manifest
[ ] Point your website and booking links at RentalTide

Marks Day 5 complete: the location is live.

Practise in sandbox first

New accounts can run in sandbox mode and take practice bookings with no real money involved. The Take a test booking item on your home checklist walks you through one. Use it to train staff before you switch to live card processing. See Sandbox.

Before you open: the short list

If you do nothing else on this page, verify these. Each one is something operators have got wrong on a real opening day.

Check	Why it matters
Timezone is correct	Wrong timezone puts every booking on the wrong hour, and fixing it later does not move the bookings already taken
Inventory quantities match reality	The single most common cause of overbooking
Stripe payouts are enabled, not merely connected	Connected is not the same as approved. Money collects but never lands
You have received a confirmation email yourself	Deliverability problems are invisible until a customer says nothing arrived
A staff member who is not you has completed a booking	You know how it works. They are the ones who will be doing it
Your waiver is the version your insurer approved	Not the placeholder text you pasted while testing
Tax rates are right, and inclusive vs exclusive matches local convention	Wrong here and every invoice from opening day needs correcting
Cancellation policy is written and visible at checkout	This is the text you will point at during your first dispute

The first week after opening

Watch the dashboard daily. It surfaces failed payments, unsigned waivers and unassigned bookings before they become tomorrow's problem.
Check payment failures. A declined card on a future booking is recoverable for days, and invisible if nobody looks.
Read your daily flash. One email, yesterday's numbers.
Reconcile your first payout against the ledger so you know the money ties out before it matters.
Ask your staff what is slow. The fixes are usually settings, not training.

⚙️Initial setup

🗄️Switching from another platform

👥Training your team

🛡️Reliability and continuity

Go-live checklist