PARISH TRANSPORT BOOKING ======================== A parish hires a bus or a lorry that picks people up at several outstations. There are only so many seats, the fare is collected in instalments over the weeks before the journey, and the people taking the bookings are catechists and outstation leaders with smartphones, out where the parish office is not. This is the register that holds all of it in one place. There are two ways into the same register, and they are the same register - not two lists that have to be reconciled afterwards: - ON A PHONE. The catechists use one shared username and password that the parish administrator creates for the whole parish, so nobody needs an email address or an account of their own. They reach it either as a card in the PRK FINANCE app (an icon on the home screen - it can keep them signed in for 90 days, which matters most to somebody standing at the roadside with a queue behind them), or at parishrecordkeeper.com/transport.php in an ordinary browser. Somebody who has their own member account does not need the shared username at all: signed into PRK ADMIN, the booking page opens with their own name on it, and the register records that name instead of a typed one. - IN PARISH RECORD KEEPER, the TRANSPORT window described here. This is the parish office's way in, and it signs in with a real member account. A seat booked on a phone is gone from the office screen the moment the office refreshes, and the other way round. That is the whole point: the number of free seats is counted on the server, under a lock, so two people taking the last place at the same moment is not possible. This is also why booking is the one thing in the PRK Finance app that ALWAYS needs a network: the accounts in it work from the copy on the phone, but a saved copy of a passenger list could sell the same seat twice. In that app booking is switched on per phone, on the Data tab ("This phone also takes transport bookings"). It is off until somebody ticks it, so the treasurers who use the same app for the accounts are not offered a page they have no username for. WHAT YOU NEED ------------- - A datafile whose Backend ID is linked to a workspace (the same registration that SERVER PANEL needs - see the "Workspace" item on the START screen). - A member or administrator sign-in for parishrecordkeeper.com. The window signs in by itself after the first time on this computer. - AN INTERNET CONNECTION, every time. This is the one part of Parish Record Keeper that cannot work offline, and it is a deliberate choice: a copy of the passenger list kept in the datafile would be a second answer to "how many seats are left", and then the vehicle gets overloaded. Everything else in the program goes on working without a connection as it always has. OPENING IT ---------- SERVER PANEL on the Control Panel opens the SERVER ACTIONS window; the TRANSPORT button sits there, in the "Other workspace features" column on the right, above REPORTS LOGINS. The small ? beside it opens this file. If the datafile is not registered, or the workspace has been closed, the window says so instead of opening - all its buttons would be buttons that cannot work. WHAT THE WINDOW SHOWS --------------------- Three lists, one above the other, and a panel of boxes at the bottom. JOURNEYS, at the top: every journey this parish has set up, open ones first. Each line shows the date, how many seats are taken out of how many the vehicle holds, how many people are waiting, how much money has come in of what is owed, and whether the journey is open or closed. Click one and the rest of the window fills in. PICK-UP AREAS, in the middle: the places the vehicle stops. Each area can have a seat allocation of its own - "Chikwa has 20 of the 60 seats" - or none, in which case it competes for the vehicle's seats first come, first served. An area can also have its own fare, for an outstation that is much further away; a * beside the fare means it has one of its own rather than the journey's. PASSENGERS, at the bottom: one line per booking. THE LINE IS A BOOKING, NOT A PERSON. "Mrs Banda + 3 children" is ONE line of FOUR seats - a household books once. The State column says at a glance what matters most when running down the list: "paid", "owes 150.00", "nothing paid", "WAITING" or "cancelled". The last column says who took the booking. Under the lists is the panel where a passenger is added or corrected, and the line at the very bottom is where the server's answer to whatever you last did appears - in green when it worked, in red when it did not. TAKING A BOOKING ---------------- 1. Click the journey. 2. Click the PICK-UP AREA the passenger is travelling from. This is the step people forget: the area decides where they are collected and what they pay. 3. Type the name and how many seats - counting the whole household on one line. 4. If they are paying something now, type it in the Payment box. 5. Press SAVE. The amount owed is worked out and FROZEN at that moment. If the parish changes the fare afterwards, what this passenger was told to pay does not silently change underneath them. IF THE VEHICLE IS FULL, the window says so and offers to put the name on the WAITING LIST instead. A waiting passenger takes no seat and owes nothing yet. When somebody drops out, click the waiting name and press BOOK IN. CORRECTING A BOOKING -------------------- Click the passenger - their details fill the panel - change what is wrong and press SAVE. Adding a seat is checked against the vehicle just like a new booking: "she is bringing one more child" must not overload the lorry either. To go back to entering somebody new, press NEW PASSENGER first. Otherwise SAVE would rename the passenger who happens to be selected. TAKING MONEY ------------ Click the passenger, type what was HANDED OVER NOW in the Payment box, and press RECORD PAYMENT. The box is the instalment, NOT the new total. Somebody who has paid 100 and brings 50 more: type 50, and the total becomes 150. A mistake is corrected by typing a MINUS amount. If the same payment is sent twice - a double click, or the catechist entering it on a phone at the same moment - the second one is REFUSED and says so, rather than quietly doubling what the passenger appears to have paid. If that happens, refresh and look at what is really recorded before entering anything again. Every payment is written into a history on the server that is never edited and never deleted, with the name of whoever recorded it. If a passenger disputes what they paid, that history is the answer. CANCELLING ---------- Click the passenger and press CANCEL BOOKING. The seats go back into the vehicle at once. NOTHING IS DELETED: the line stays on the list marked "cancelled", still showing what was paid - because the office is usually still holding that money and has to hand it back. The window says so when it happens. A cancellation can be undone with BOOK IN, which checks the seats again like a new booking and can be refused if the place has since gone. SETTING A JOURNEY UP (parish administrators only) -------------------------------------------------- The four buttons under the journeys list, and the four beside PICK-UP AREAS, only appear for someone signed in as an administrator of the workspace. A member sees the window without them and can still do everything else - booking and taking money is the catechist's job, and it is what the window is mostly for. NEW JOURNEY opens a small form with the whole journey on it at once: the name, the travel date (or nothing, if it is not fixed), the vehicle, how many passengers it carries and the fare for one seat. EDIT JOURNEY opens the same form already filled in, so one figure can be corrected without the rest being typed out again, and Cancel drops the lot. Write the date as 2026-12-25 - anything the computer can read as a date is accepted and turned into that form. No currency is asked for anywhere: a parish hires its bus and collects its fares in one currency, so every amount is simply a number. The seat count is the HARD limit. Set it to 0 while it is not decided, and no bookings can be taken until it is - which the window says on the red line rather than leaving anyone guessing. It cannot later be set BELOW what is already booked; the office has to cancel bookings deliberately first. NEW AREA opens a small form with the whole area on it: the name (usually the outstation), the seats set aside for it, the fare, and where it comes in the list. EDIT AREA opens the same form already filled in. Most outstations need only the name - the other boxes open with the answer that is right for most of them. 0 SEATS means the area has no allocation of its own and competes for the vehicle's seats first come, first served. LEAVE THE FARE EMPTY to charge the journey's own fare - empty and zero are not the same thing here: empty is the journey's fare, 0 means this outstation travels free. FROM PARISH AREAS takes the pick-up areas straight from the areas of the parish file, so a parish with thirty outstations does not type them out again for every journey. Choose the level - the three are offered under the parish's own names for them - look at the list of what would be added, and press ADD THESE AREAS. Each one arrives with NO seat allocation of its own and the journey's own fare; give the few that differ their own with EDIT AREA. An area already on the journey is left exactly as it is, so this can be run again after a new outstation has been added to the parish file. An area cannot be deleted while any name is still on its list, because deleting it would take those bookings with it. OPEN / CLOSE freezes a journey. A closed journey takes no new bookings, but the list can still be read and money can still be taken - which is exactly what is needed once the passenger list is settled but the fares are still coming in. DELETE JOURNEY is the one thing on this window that cannot be undone. It takes the areas, every booking, every payment recorded against them and the whole history. It asks for the name of the journey to be typed out, and the server checks it again before doing anything. IF THE JOURNEY IS SIMPLY OVER, CLOSE IT INSTEAD - that keeps the list and the record of the money. THE LOGIN FOR PHONES (parish administrators only) -------------------------------------------------- PHONE LOGIN, at the top right of the window, is where the catechists are given the username and password that open transport.php on a phone. ONE login serves the whole parish and every journey it ever sets up - it is not made afresh for each journey. Type a username (letters and digits, no spaces - something with the parish in it is easiest to remember), leave the password empty, and press SAVE LOGIN. The server makes a password and shows it ONCE, in a box that has to be closed. Write it down then: only a scrambled form of it is kept, and nobody - not the parish office, not the people who wrote this program - can read it again. If it is lost, type a new password for the same username and tell everybody the new one. "For whom" is a note for the office. It changes nothing. SIGN OUT PHONES ends the 90 days on every phone that was told to stay signed in with that login: each has to type the username and password again, while the login itself goes on working for everybody else. It is the button for a phone that was lost or handed on, and the message says how many phones it reached. SWITCH ON / OFF locks everybody using that login out of the phone page at once, and can be undone. That is what to use when a catechist leaves or the password has been passed around too freely: the journeys, the passenger lists and the money are untouched. REMOVE LOGIN deletes it altogether and cannot be undone - the bookings and the names of whoever entered them stay. Anybody who knows the username and password can see and change every passenger list in the parish, which is the price of a login that people with no e-mail address can use. Every booking records the name the catechist types on the phone, and that log is the only accountability a shared password allows. IF THE SUBSCRIPTION LAPSES -------------------------- A parish whose contribution has run out cannot take NEW bookings, and the red line says so. Payments can still be recorded and the list can still be read - an organiser halfway through a journey with forty people booked must not be stranded because the parish is a week late. See the "Workspace" item on the START screen for the date. WHAT IS NOT HERE ---------------- Passengers are NOT linked to the parish records. A booking is a name somebody typed. Most people on a parish bus are not in the file at all - relatives, schoolchildren, people from the next parish - and a link that could not be filled in would only slow down a catechist with a queue in front of them. The bookings are not part of the parish datafile and are not in its backups. They live on the server with the workspace. A journey that has been and gone can be left closed on the list as its own record. STAYING SIGNED IN FOR 90 DAYS ----------------------------- The booking sign-in screen has a box: "Keep me signed in on this phone (90 days)". A catechist who ticks it stops being asked for the username and password every journey; every use pushes the 90 days out again. It is off unless they tick it, and it belongs on their own phone only - anybody who picks that phone up can then take bookings in the parish's name. The parish office can end it at any time, from either side: the SIGN OUT PHONES button in the login window of the program, or the "Phones kept signed in" column on the workspace page of the website. Either makes every phone type the password again, while the login itself keeps working. Switching the login off, or deleting it, ends the remembered phones too.