Key Concepts in Bloowatch

What it is

Bloowatch is built around a small set of connected concepts. Once you understand how they fit together, everything else — scheduling, selling, reporting — clicks into place.

Here are the six building blocks you’ll work with every day:

Activity

An Activity is the type of sport or experience your school offers. Think of it as a category for what you teach or sell.

Examples: Surfing, Scuba Diving, Ski Group Lesson, Kayak Tour.

You can be as broad or as specific as you need. A surf school might have one activity called “Surfing” or split it into “Surfing for Kids” and “Surfing for Adults” — it’s up to you.

Activities define the structure: how many participants per instructor, which staff members are qualified, and what gear is needed.

Product

A Product is a sellable offering built on top of an activity. It’s what appears in your price list, your online shop, and your bookings.

Bloowatch has six product types:

Product type	What it’s for	Example
Class	Single or recurring group/private sessions with flexible scheduling	”2-Hour Surf Lesson”
Course	Multi-session programs with a fixed number of sessions	”5-Day Beginner Dive Course”
Rental	Gear hire with per-hour or per-day pricing	”Wetsuit Rental”
Accommodation	Overnight stays with room types and seasonal pricing	”Beachfront Bungalow”
Camp	Bundles that combine accommodation + course in a single package	”Kids’ Summer Surf Camp”
Item	Stock-based products with fixed pricing, sold standalone or as add-ons	”Souvenir T-Shirt”

Each product has its own pricing, availability rules, and optional add-ons.

Activity Calendar

The Activity Calendar is the link between a product and the agenda. When you assign a product to an activity calendar, Bloowatch knows how to structure its availability and display its sessions in the planning views.

Think of it as the scheduling backbone: it tells the system “this product follows this activity’s rules for time slots, staff, and capacity.”

Session

A Session is a specific time slot on your agenda for a particular activity. It’s where the rubber meets the road — the actual event that happens on a given day, at a given time, with specific staff and a participant limit.

Every session has:

• A date and time
• A duration
• One or more assigned staff members
• A maximum capacity (determined by the activity’s participants-per-instructor ratio)

Sessions appear on the Activity Agenda, where you can create them, drag and drop them to new time slots, and see at a glance who’s booked in.

Booking

A Booking (also called an Order) is a purchase — someone buying one of your products. It ties a customer to a session (or rental period, or accommodation stay) and tracks payment.

You can create bookings in two ways:

• Point of Sale (POS) — for walk-ins, phone calls, or in-person sales
• Online booking — customers book and pay through your website widget

A booking always has a Client (the person who pays) and one or more Participants (the people who show up).

Client and Participant

These are two roles a customer can play:

Role	What they do
Client	The person responsible for the booking. They pay, receive emails, and are the main contact. Sometimes called the “Host.”
Participant	The person who actually takes part in the activity. They show up in session manifests and the agenda. Sometimes called a “Guest.”

One person can be both. A solo traveler booking a surf lesson is both the client and the participant. A parent booking for their kids is the client — the kids are the participants.

What it is NOT

People think…	But actually…
”An Activity is the same as a Product”	An Activity is the type of sport. A Product is what you sell — it has pricing, availability, and can be booked. One activity can have many products.
”A Session is a Product”	A Session is a scheduled time slot. The Product defines what’s being offered; the Session is when and where it happens.
”The Client is always the Participant”	Not necessarily. The Client pays. The Participant shows up. Often they’re the same person, but a parent booking for children, or a company booking for employees, separates the two roles.
”Bookings only happen online”	Bookings can be created from the POS (back-office) or through online sales. Many schools do both.

Why it matters

When these concepts are clear, setting up Bloowatch becomes straightforward:

• Create an Activity → defines what you teach and the rules (capacity, staff, gear)
• Create a Product → defines what you sell and at what price
• Link the Product to an Activity Calendar → enables scheduling
• Create Sessions → fills your agenda with time slots
• Take Bookings → assigns customers to sessions and collects payment

Skip a step or mix up the concepts, and you’ll end up with products that can’t be scheduled or sessions with no pricing. The chain matters.

A day in the life: the surf school golden path

Here’s how these concepts play out for a typical surf school:

Setup (done once)

1. You create an Activity called “Surfing” — max 8 students per instructor
2. You create a Product of type Class called “2-Hour Surf Lesson” — priced at €45/person
3. You link the product to an Activity Calendar so it shows up in your agenda

Daily operations

4. You create a Session for tomorrow at 10:00 AM, assign instructor Maria, duration 2 hours
5. A family of four walks in. You open the POS and create a Booking:
   • The father is the Client (he pays €180)
   • All four family members are Participants
6. The session shows 4/8 spots filled on your Activity Agenda
7. Two more people book online through your website — the session now shows 6/8

Maria checks the agenda in the morning, sees her 10 AM session with 6 participants, grabs 6 surfboards, and heads to the beach.

Glossary

Quick reference for all the terms covered above, plus a few more you’ll encounter:

Term	Definition
Activity	The type of sport or experience offered (e.g., Surfing, Diving). Defines capacity, staff, and gear rules.
Product	A sellable offering with pricing and availability. Six types: Class, Course, Rental, Accommodation, Camp, Item.
Activity Calendar	The scheduling link between a product and the agenda. Controls how sessions are structured and displayed.
Session	A scheduled time slot for an activity, with a date, time, duration, staff, and capacity.
Booking	A purchase that assigns a customer to a session, rental, or accommodation. Also called an Order.
Client	The person responsible for the booking — pays and receives communications. Also called Host.
Participant	The person who takes part in the activity. Appears in manifests and the agenda. Also called Guest.
POS	Point of Sale — the back-office interface for creating bookings manually.
Activity Agenda	The planning view where you see and manage all sessions for your activities.
Add-on	A secondary product attached to a main product (e.g., photos, extra gear, insurance).
Manifest	A list of participants for a specific session — used by instructors on the ground.
Partner	An external organization (hotel, reseller, agency) that brings customers and earns commission.

How it connects to other parts of Bloowatch

These six concepts are the foundation. Everything else in Bloowatch builds on them:

• Planning — The Activity Agenda, Rental Agenda, and Accommodation Agenda all display sessions created from products
• Sales — Bookings and the POS use products and sessions to process sales
• Customers — Every booking links to a client and participants in the customer database
• Partners — Partner bookings add a commission layer on top of regular bookings
• Reports — Revenue, occupancy, and activity reports all roll up from booking and session data
• eCommerce — Your online booking widget sells products and fills sessions automatically
• Communications — Transactional emails are triggered by bookings and sent to clients