Every business has rules: how much notice a cancellation needs, what a deposit covers, who may drive, what happens if nobody is home. The problem is never writing them; it is that they change, and a booking made under the old rule keeps being judged by the new one. Attaching the accepted version to the booking makes the question of what applied a matter of record rather than of who remembers the website better.
The terms were on a printout in a drawer, the customer says they never saw them, and nothing recorded which version was in force that day.
The rules a customer agrees to when they book and the documents that travel with the work: cancellation and notice terms, deposit rules, house rules, rental conditions, safety notes, whatever your trade has to put in front of somebody before it starts. It fits a business with one short policy and one with a different set for every kind of booking.
It is not a contract management system, not a qualified electronic signature and not legal advice. It does not tell you what your terms should say, does not check them against any law and does not make an unenforceable rule enforceable. It keeps a record of what was shown, which version, and that it was accepted.
Three failures that are ordinary right up until the moment somebody disputes something.
You tighten the cancellation notice in June. A customer who booked in March cancels in July and quotes the old terms — correctly, because that is what they agreed to. Without a record of the version, the argument is unwinnable in both directions.
A policy on a page nobody read is not much of a policy. What matters operationally is that it was in front of the customer at the moment they committed and that they accepted it, which is a fact worth recording once rather than reconstructing under pressure.
The licence photograph, the signed house rules, the equipment condition sheet: when they live in email, the person doing the work does not have them, and the person who does have them is off on Thursday.
Four steps, and the first one is where most of the value is.
Short, in your own words, and only the ones you enforce. A policy you will not act on teaches customers that the rest are decorative too.
The rules appear at the point of booking, not behind a link somebody might follow. What a customer accepts is what they saw on the way in.
When the booking is confirmed, the version that was accepted is stored with it. Editing the policy later creates a new version for new bookings and leaves the old ones with the terms they were made under.
Where a job genuinely requires a document, it sits with the booking so the person doing the work can see it — and where it does not, it is not collected at all.
Three things, all of them dull until the day they matter.
Changing a policy does not rewrite history. Each booking keeps the version it was made under, which is what makes the answer to “what did we agree?” a lookup rather than a debate.
The record shows the version, when it was accepted and by whom on your side where staff took the booking. That is enough to settle almost every ordinary disagreement.
Attachments travel with the booking, so the person at the counter or on the road has what they need without asking the office to forward something.
A cancellation under old terms, and a document nobody could find.
The customer cancels four days ahead. The policy today needs seven; the one they accepted needed three. The booking shows which applied, the business honours it, and the conversation ends in a minute rather than in a review.
The engineer needs the signed site rules for a building. They are attached to the job, so the visit happens on time instead of waiting for somebody in the office to search their email.
A record of acceptance is useful evidence and a poor substitute for legal work.
Base can show that a version was presented and accepted. Whether a term is fair, lawful or enforceable where you operate is a question for a lawyer, and no platform should imply otherwise.
A licence category your rules genuinely depend on is worth recording; a copy of somebody’s passport because a field existed is a liability you created for yourself. Decide what you must see, keep only what you must keep, and delete it on the schedule you set.
Write your cancellation, deposit and house rules in plain sentences, and cut anything you will not enforce. Decide which bookings need which policy, because a rental and a lesson rarely need the same one. Decide what documents your work genuinely requires and how long you keep them — and then set that as a rule rather than as a habit. Decide who may change a policy, since that is the permission that quietly rewrites what you promise. Then read your own terms as a customer once, on a phone, and shorten whatever you had to read twice.
It records agreement. It does not create obligations or interpret them.
There is no qualified electronic signature and no identity verification. Where your trade requires one, use a service built for it and attach the result.
Base has no opinion on your terms and no knowledge of the law where you operate. Templates and defaults are conveniences, not compliance.
It is not a place to accumulate files. Keep what the booking needs; a filing system for everything else belongs somewhere designed for retention and access.
Yes. Your booking terms and conditions are shown when the booking is made, and the customer accepts that version; the acceptance is recorded with the version and the time. A rental, a lesson and a stay can each carry their own text, including the cancellation policy for bookings of that kind, and a later change applies only to new bookings.
They keep the version that was accepted when they were made. New bookings get the new version, so nobody is judged by terms they never saw.
Yes, with the version and the time, and with the member of staff where a booking was taken at the counter or by phone.
Yes. A rental, a lesson and a stay can each carry the terms that actually apply to them rather than sharing one general text.
No. It records that a version was shown and accepted. If your trade needs a qualified signature, use a service built for that and attach the result to the booking.
Only where your own rules genuinely require you to see them, and only for as long as you have decided to keep them. Collecting more than you need is a risk you take on yourself.
Next step
Registration takes an email address. The operating model, services and resources are configured afterwards, in the console.