15-minute setup

Getting Started with Hookset

Everything you need to set up your lodge, configure packages, connect payments, and start accepting bookings — all in one guide.

Create Your Account

All Plans

Getting started is free — no credit card required. Your account begins on the Free plan with 10 bookings per month, 1 guide, and 1 team member.

Go to Sign Up and enter your name, email, and a password.

Check your inbox for a verification email and click the confirmation link.

Once verified, you'll land in the onboarding wizard to set up your lodge.

Already have an account? Log in here to pick up where you left off.

Set Up Your Lodge Profile

All Plans

The onboarding wizard walks you through core lodge details. This information appears on your public booking page and guest communications.

Enter your lodge name — this is how guests see you.

Fill in your physical address: street, city, state, and ZIP code.

Select your timezone — all dates and schedules use this.

Optionally add your website URL.

You can update all of these later under Settings → Lodge Profile.

Define Your Seasons

All Plans

Seasons drive your pricing tiers. Each season has a name, start date, and end date. Create multiple seasons to charge different rates throughout the year (e.g., Peak, Shoulder, Off-Season).

Navigate to Settings → Seasons.

Click Add Season and enter the name, start date, and end date.

Repeat for each pricing period your lodge uses.

Seasons are referenced when you set variant pricing — each variant can have different pricing per season.

Create Packages

All Plans

Packages are your top-level offerings — the categories guests choose from. Most lodges have 3-4 packages (e.g., “Half-Day Wade Trip,” “3-Night All-Inclusive,” “Custom Stay”).

Go to Packages in the sidebar.

Click New Package and choose the type:

Day Trip — guided day on the water, no overnight stay

Overnight — multi-night stay with guided days Pro + Lodge

Fill in the package details:

Name — what guests see (e.g., “Full-Day Float Trip”)

Description — a short summary of what's included

Includes Meals — all meals, lunch only, or none

Includes Lodging — whether the package bundles accommodation

Deposit — type (percentage, fixed amount, or none) and amount required at booking

Check-in Days — which days of the week guests can arrive (e.g., Saturday only)

Guest-to-Guide Ratio — default ratio for guided trips

Packages are parent categories — the specific bookable configurations (nights, pricing, rooms) live on variants underneath.

Add Package Variants

All Plans

Variants are the bookable configurations within a package. A single package can have multiple variants for different group sizes or durations.

Open a package and click Add Variant.

Configure the variant details:

Total Nights — length of stay (0 for day trips)

Guided Days — number of days with a guide

Pricing Mode — per_guest or flat_rate (per-boat for day trips)

Min / Max Guests — group size limits

Room Assignment — optionally tie a variant to specific rooms Pro + Lodge

Fish on Arrival / Departure — whether guided fishing happens on check-in/checkout days

Don't use a “single supplement” — instead, create separate variants for solo guests vs. shared boats with different pricing.

Set Variant Pricing

All Plans

Each variant has pricing per season. This creates a pricing matrix of variant × season combinations.

Open a variant and scroll to the Pricing section.

For each season, set the price (total or per-guest, depending on pricing mode) and deposit amount.

Save. Pricing updates take effect immediately on your public booking page.

If a variant shouldn't be available in a given season, simply leave that season's pricing blank — it won't appear as an option.

Add Your Guides

All Plans

Build your guide roster so you can assign them to trips. Plan limits apply:

Free

guide

Pro

guides

Lodge

∞

unlimited

Go to Guides in the sidebar.

Click Add Guide and enter their name, email, phone, and any notes.

Toggle guides active/inactive — inactive guides won't appear in allocation suggestions.

Guide Allocation Board

Pro + Lodge

The allocation board gives you a weekly view of which guides are assigned to which trips. Assign guides to bookings, use auto-suggest for balanced distribution, and track fairness across the season.

Navigate to Guide Board in the sidebar.

Use the week picker to navigate to the dates you want to assign.

Assign a guide to a trip day, or click Auto-suggest to let Hookset recommend the fairest assignment based on trip counts.

The fairness tracker shows each guide's trip count for the month, helping you distribute trips evenly.

Set Up Rooms

Pro + Lodge

Define your lodge's rooms for overnight packages. Each room has a name, capacity, bed counts (king, queen, twin), price per night, minimum stay, and optional description. A calendar heatmap shows occupancy at a glance.

Free

rooms

Pro

rooms

Lodge

∞

unlimited

Go to Rooms in the sidebar.

Click Add Room and fill in the name, capacity, bed counts (king, queen, twin), price per night, minimum stay, and an optional description.

Use the calendar heatmap to see occupancy across dates.

Day Rates, Gear Rentals & Add-ons

All Plans

Hookset has three separate categories for services beyond packages. Each lives under its own sidebar section.

Day Rates

Standalone guided day trips with seasonal, per-guest-count pricing. Go to Day Rates in the sidebar and add items with a name, description, duration (hours), max guests per guide, and whether meals are included (all meals, lunch, or none).

Gear Rentals

Rentable equipment charged at a daily rate. Go to Gear in the sidebar and add items with a name, daily rate, per-guest or per-booking pricing, and optional inventory count.

Add-ons

Extras that can be attached to packages, gear rentals, or lodging — things like shuttle transfers, cooler rentals, or fly-tying lessons. Go to Add-ons in the sidebar and configure each with a name, price, per-guest and/or per-day pricing, and which services it applies to.

All three categories appear as selectable options during the public booking checkout flow.

Configure Booking Rules

All Plans

Booking rules control how reservations behave across your lodge. Find these under Settings → Booking Rules.

Shared Rooms — allow multiple bookings to share a room on overlapping dates

Shared Guides — allow a guide to be assigned to different bookings on the same day

Auto-generate Trip Days — automatically create daily trip records for each booking

Room Buffer Days — minimum gap (0-7 days) between room checkout and next check-in

Guide Buffer Days — minimum days off (0-7) after a guide's last assigned trip

Overbooking Mode — block prevents bookings beyond capacity; warn allows dashboard bookings with a warning (public bookings are always blocked)

Capacity Limits — max guests per day (lodge-wide) and max guided guests per day

Room Assignment Mode — auto (system picks smallest available room), guest (guests choose during booking), or lodge (staff assigns after booking)

Set Payment Policies

All Plans

Configure how deposits, balances, and cancellations work under Settings → Payments.

Set deposit rules for lodging, day rates, and gear separately — each can be a percentage, fixed amount, or none.

Choose how many days before arrival the balance is due. You can also enable charge full balance within window to collect the full amount when guests book inside the balance-due window.

Define cancellation policies — set tiers with a days-before cutoff, refund percentage, and description (e.g., “Cancel 30+ days before for 100% refund”). You can create multiple tiers and optionally tie them to specific packages.

Split Pay

Let guests split deposits and balance payments across their group. Enable it on any booking from the Payments section — each group member gets a personal payment link via email and pays their share independently. No account required. Learn more

Customize Guest Forms

All Plans

The form builder lets you control exactly what information you collect from guests during trip prep.

Go to Settings → Guest Forms.

Set standard fields to required, optional, or hidden. Built-in fields include phone, skill level, preferred fishing method, wader size, shoe size, and dietary notes.

Add custom questions — supported types include:

Text — free-form short answer

Textarea — multi-line text

Select — single choice dropdown

Radio — single choice radio buttons

Multi-select — multiple choice checkboxes

Checkbox — yes/no toggle

For dropdown questions, define custom values. Lodge-level custom lists (activity types, fishing methods, skill levels) are stored in your lodge config and shared across forms.

Custom form responses are visible on the booking detail page under the Guest Responses panel.

Connect Stripe

All Plans

Hookset uses Stripe Connect to process guest payments directly to your bank account. Transaction fees vary by plan:

Free2% + Stripe processing

Pro1% + Stripe processing

Lodge0.5% + Stripe processing

Navigate to Settings → Payments and click Connect Stripe.

Complete Stripe's onboarding flow — you'll need your bank account details, EIN or SSN, and business information.

Once connected, you'll see a green “Connected” badge. Payments from guest bookings flow directly to your Stripe account.

You can accept bookings before connecting Stripe — payments will simply be tracked as “offline” until you connect.

Automatic Tax Collection

Activate Stripe Tax in your Stripe Dashboard to automatically calculate and collect sales tax on guest payments. Hookset uses your lodge's state and ZIP to determine the correct rate — tax appears as a separate line item on checkout. If Stripe Tax isn't activated, transactions process normally at $0 tax. Learn more

Invite Your Team

All Plans

Add staff members to help manage your lodge. Each member gets a role that controls their permissions.

Owner — full access including billing and account deletion (the account creator, not invitable)

Manager — full access except billing (invitable)

Staff — view and manage bookings, guides, and guests, but no settings access (invitable)

Free

member

Pro

members

Lodge

∞

unlimited

Go to Settings → Team.

Click Invite Member, enter their email, and choose a role.

They'll receive an invite email with a link to create their account and join your lodge.

Publish Your Booking Page

All Plans

Every lodge gets a public booking page at gethookset.com/book/your-slug. Guests use this page to browse packages, pick dates, and complete checkout.

Go to Settings → Booking Page to customize your public URL slug.

Share the link on your website, social media, and email signatures.

On Pro and Lodge plans, you can embed the booking widget directly on your own website. Pro + Lodge

Notification Preferences

All Plans

Control which email notifications you and your team receive under Settings → Notifications.

New Booking Alerts — get notified when a new booking is created

Payment Received — notified when a payment is recorded

Balance Due Reminders — receive reminders for upcoming balance due dates

Trip Prep Completed — notified when guests complete their trip prep form

Guide Assignment Changes — notified when guide allocations are updated

Each team member can customize their own notification preferences independently.

Understanding Your Plan

All Plans

Hookset offers three pricing tiers. Start free and upgrade as your lodge grows.

	Free $0/mo	Pro $149/mo	Lodge $299/mo
Bookings / mo	10	∞	∞
Guides	1	10	∞
Rooms	0	5	∞
Team members	1	3	∞
Overnight pkgs	No	Yes	Yes
Allocation	No	Yes	Yes
Embed widget	No	Yes	Yes
Transaction fee	2%	1%	0.5%

View your current plan under Settings → Billing.

Click Upgrade to move to Pro or Lodge at any time — changes take effect immediately.

Need help choosing? Compare plans in detail or reach out to our team.

Ready to get started?

Create your free account and have your lodge set up in under 15 minutes.