Policies and legal texts

Guests like to know the rules before they come: how late they may arrive, until when they can cancel, and how they pay. In the Policies & Legal tab you write these rules once for every language of your venue. Clava then adds them to your guests' confirmation email and to their booking page.

The three texts

Despite the name of the tab, there are exactly three texts to write:

Write and save your texts

1. In Venue Setup, click Configure on your venue — see Choose a venue — then click the Policies & Legal tab (1). The editor needs a moment to load and first says Loading….

   

2. Click the policy you want to write (3): Late policy, Cancellation policy or Payment policy.

3. Click the language (4). The first tab is the main language of your venue. See Texts in several languages below.

4. Type your text in the box on the left (5). Use short, friendly sentences and plain text, without bold or lists — see Write plain text.

5. Do the same for the other policies and languages. Every policy has its own language tabs.

6. Click Save policies (2) at the top right of the editor.

   

Save policies is pale and can't be clicked until you change something. When you click it, it briefly says Saving…, and then the green word Saved appears next to it for a few seconds. One click saves all three policies in all languages. A red message above the editor means something went wrong — try again.

Your texts are live as soon as you save them. There is nothing to publish.

Good to know:

• A new venue starts without texts. A venue you add with New Venue has empty policies, unless you copy another venue and leave Settings ticked: then its texts come along. A venue that was set up while you signed up may already have a ready-made cancellation text and late text. You can change them like your own.
• An empty text is a deleted text. If you clear a text and save, that language's text is removed.
• The label above the box tells you the language. For example, Content (HR) means you are writing the Croatian text. In the pictures, the example venue writes in Croatian, its main language.
• The right half of the editor is only a preview. You type in the left half.

Where your guests see the texts

• In the booking confirmation email. The standard email has three lines: Cancellation:, Payment: and Arriving late:. A line without a text is left out. The email is in the language of the booking.
• On the guest's Booking Details page. The email contains the link Manage my reservation. It opens the page Booking Details, which has a block Policies with the three texts. The page always shows your current texts, also for bookings that were made earlier. You can see it in the picture in Write plain text.

The texts are not shown on the booking form before the guest books, and not on your website. Want guests to read your rules before they book? Write them in a section of your website too — see Add a section.

Write plain text

The box looks like a small word processor, with buttons for bold text, lists, links and pictures, and a preview that shows bold words as bold. Guests don't see any of that. Your texts are shown as plain text, so a word you wrapped in two stars, like **15 minutes**, appears with the stars (2). The same goes for # headings, - lists, links and pictures. The picture shows the Booking Details page of a guest: the block with your three texts (1), and a text in which the stars are still there (2).

So write like this:

• Use ordinary sentences. Don't use the toolbar buttons.
• Keep each text short — two or three sentences.
• Put each idea on its own line. In the email every line stays on its own line, but empty lines are dropped. On the Booking Details page the lines run together, so end every sentence with a full stop.

Texts in several languages

The language tabs follow your venue's languages: first the main language (Locale), then every language under Additional Supported Languages, in the order you added them. To add a language, see Offer more languages. A new tab appears at once; it is empty until you write something.

Each guest sees the text in the language of their booking. If you haven't written a text in that language, Clava shows your English text instead, and if there is none, one of your other texts. So a text in only one language is better than no text — but guests read it more easily in their own language.

Fix grammar and translate

Two small buttons above the box (6) can save you some typing:

• Fix grammar checks the text in the box. It is pale while the box is empty. A window Grammar suggestion shows your Original and a Suggestion (editable) — you can still change it — and sometimes a short list of Changes. Click Apply to put the suggestion in the box, or Cancel to keep your text.
• Translate from… appears when your venue has two or more languages. Choose the language to translate from and click Translate. The window Review translation shows the Source on the left and the Target on the right. You can still edit the target. Apply puts the translation in the box and replaces what was there before.

The suggestions come from an AI service, so Clava sends your text to it. Nothing changes until you click Apply, and even then the text is not saved until you click Save policies. If the helper isn't available at the moment, a red message appears above the editor for a few seconds and nothing changes — just write the text yourself. If the language you translate from has no text yet, you see The selected source language has no content yet — fill it in first.

Related

• Offer more languages
• Save your work in Venue Setup
• Fill in your texts for each language (website)