Guide

Offer insurance and excess reduction

A customer facing a $2,000 excess will often pay per day to reduce it. Protection plans are how you offer that.

4 min read

This guide answers

  • How do I offer excess reduction?
  • How do I sell insurance?
  • How do protection plans work?
  • Can a protection plan have its own bond?

Assets → Protection plans.

Each plan has a daily price and the excess a customer is left with if they take it. Your standard excess applies when they take nothing.

A typical ladder is a basic plan that halves the excess and a premium one that nearly removes it. Two or three options is plenty — more than that and people choose none of them.

What the customer sees

Plans appear on your booking page with the excess each one leaves. The number that sells it is the difference between your standard excess and the plan's, so make sure the standard one is set correctly or the saving looks smaller than it is.

Snapshots

When a customer takes a plan, the name, price, excess and bond are recorded on the booking as they were that day. Changing a plan later does not change what an existing customer bought, which is what you want if it is ever disputed.

Set a different bond per plan

By default every plan uses your standard bond (set under Settings › Booking policies). If you want a plan to hold a different bond — a lower one on your top cover, say, or a higher one on a cheap or no-excess plan — set Bond (NZD) on that plan. Leave it blank to keep using the vehicle's own bond, or your business default if the vehicle has none set.

Things worth knowing

  • A protection plan is not insurance you have underwritten unless you have arranged that separately. Be careful in your terms about what you are actually offering.
  • The bond usually follows your standard policy, not the plan. Taking a plan reduces the excess; the bond only changes if you have deliberately set one on that specific plan (above). See Set up and release bonds.
  • A customer who upgrades their plan mid-hire gets the new plan's bond, but an already-placed hold is never changed automatically to match — Glovebox flags it if the two now disagree. Windcave tenants need to re-place the hold by hand; Stripe tenants pick it up at the next automatic refresh.

If it did not work

  • No plans on the booking page. Check they are active.
  • The saving looks wrong. It is measured against your standard excess, set under booking policies.
  • The bond shown on a booking is not what you expected. Check the plan first — a bond set there wins over the vehicle's and your business default. Leave it blank on the plan if you want the usual policy to apply.
  • Sell accessories and extras The things customers add to a hire. Priced per day or once, and offered on your booking page — as long as every vehicle in the group can carry them.
  • Set up and release bonds A bond is the security amount you hold against a hire. This covers the default amount, the difference between an authorisation hold and a capture, and how long after return the hold is released.

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