How rules work together

The cycle

A cycle is one run of MAYA for your property. It comes round about every five minutes. Each cycle:

1. reads your bookings from your property system
2. refreshes your own rates when they are due (Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations)
3. runs every rule, for every room type, on the nights that need it: every night whose bookings changed since the last cycle, every night a change of yours reaches, every night where the last run switched a rule on or off or made or took off a change (until a run changes nothing there), every night whose booking speed reading leans on the nights around it when a booking lands within 10 nights of it, and, in the first cycles after midnight at your property, every night in the window, nearest nights first
4. sends the prices that changed, if your property is live (Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations)

A change you make that can move any night (a rule, a room type setting, a closed period, a "not a fair comparison" flag) runs the rules on every night again from the next cycle, nearest first. Switching a rule on or saving one also puts the days its window showed ahead of the rest. A typed price, rooms out of service and your answer on the three-changes banner run them on those nights. A change to a stay already over reaches future prices with the next day's pass.

Waits and lookback windows count whole days at your property, so time passing never changes a price during the day: a night keeps its price until something its rules read changes, or until the next day's pass. A booking speed rule on a night with little history reads the nights around it, so a booking on a nearby night of the same kind (weekend or weekday) within 10 nights can re-price it.

On Mews, a cycle reads your bookings and runs your rules, and that is all. Your own rates are not read and nothing is sent, live or not. Read Nothing is sent to Mews.

Typing a price on the calendar runs the rules again on those nights at once, without waiting for the next cycle. If a cycle cannot read your bookings, it prices nothing and sends nothing, and the next cycle tries again. If a pricing run cannot read what else it needs from MAYA's records (your typed prices, your rates, your room types, your closed periods or your "not a fair comparison" dates), it stops before it changes any price, and the next cycle prices the same nights again. When a pricing run cannot finish has the detail.

The window

Your rules price tonight and the next 395 nights: 396 nights in all, about 13 months. "Tonight" is the calendar date at your property, in your property's time zone, at the moment the cycle runs.

• Tonight is night 0 and is always priced.
• A night 395 days away is the last one in the window. A night 396 or more days away is not in it, which is why a rule can act 395 days out and not 397. The night comes into the window at your property's midnight and is priced in that day's pass.
• Past nights are never priced or re-priced. Once your property's date moves past a night, every change on it is left as it was.
• A price you type further ahead (up to 399 days ahead) is saved now. Your rules price it, and it is sent, once the night enters the window.

Two kinds of rule

The How rules behave panel on the Rules tab shows three short animations: "A rule adjusts, and cancellations can undo it", "An occupancy rule has no wait" and "A stronger rule's change covers weaker ones". A checkbox at the top, "Try the box", plays them with the undo box ticked or unticked. Under them the panel says the box works the same way on every rule, raise or cut, and that turning a rule off keeps its changes as they are.

After a rule acts goes through each kind step by step, and When a price change comes off has the undo box and every way a change comes off.

What a rule starts from

Every night and room type has a base price, and rules are applied on top of it. MAYA takes the first of these that exists:

1. a price a person set for that night: typed in MAYA, or changed in your property system on a night MAYA had already sent to, while your property keeps such changes as its price (as every property starts)
2. your own rate for the night, read from your property system

Nothing else. A night with neither is not priced: not the rate a guest paid for it, and not a base saved on an earlier run. A booking taken at one of MAYA's own prices would otherwise come back as the next starting point and climb with every booking. On Mews, your own rates are not read and a rate changed in Mews is never read back, so the base is a price you typed in MAYA, and a Mews night without one is unpriced. Read Where a night's starting price comes from.

If your system shows the night's rate as 0 (a closed night, for example), or has no rate for the night at all, and you have not typed a price, MAYA leaves the night unpriced. No booking speed or pickup rule acts on it, nothing is sent and the calendar shows a dash for its price, with "No rate in Cloudbeds for this night yet" (or your system's name) when the rate is missing. MAYA reads your rates as far ahead as your system returns them and keeps that night on record; a night past it counts as having no rate until a read returns it. This applies on Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, where MAYA reads your rates.

Standard rules still switch on and off on that night as they become true and stop being true. So once the night has a rate, any standard rule already on there applies straight away, and the change log shows it from then.

A 0 you typed yourself is a real price: a comp night. Read Setting a price yourself.

Putting the price together

For each night and room type, MAYA starts from the base price and applies:

1. every standard rule change that is on, in a fixed order that is not the order you made them (this only matters when a percent rule and a fixed-amount rule are both true on the same night). Rules added together by Import from PIE go in the order PIE listed them, among themselves
2. every booking speed and pickup change still on the price, in the order they were made
3. the floor and ceiling

Percent changes multiply: $200 raised 10% is $220, and 25% on top of that is $275, not $270. Fixed amounts add: $200 plus $25 is $225. The result is rounded to cents, and that is the only rounding there is. There is no setting to round to whole numbers or to make prices end in 9. For a price such as $199, type it yourself. Rules that act later still stack on it and round to the cent. If it would go above the room type's ceiling, the ceiling is published. If it would go below the floor, the floor is.

You can only type a price inside the floor and ceiling, or 0 for a comp night. If a limit changes later, a price you already typed stays as you typed it. Rules on top of it are kept between the limits, stretched to include your price. Say Standard's floor was $60 when you typed $70, and you later raised the floor to $80. Your $70 stays. A cut rule can take it no lower than $70, and a raise can go up to the $300 ceiling.

Which one fires when several match

The "?" panels in the rule builder give the short version: "A stronger rule is one that changes the price by more. If two change it by the same amount, a rule that watches booking speed is stronger than one that doesn't, and of two that do, the one set to the faster speed is stronger (the slower speed, for rules that cut)."

At most one booking speed or pickup rule acts on a given night and room type in one cycle. When two or more are true and not waiting, the stronger one acts. The first step where they differ settles it:

1. The bigger change to the price, in money on the night's starting price (its base, before any rule), comes first: 10% of a $200 base is $20, which beats $15, whatever other rules have already added.
2. At the same change, a rule with a booking speed condition comes before one without, and of two with one, the faster speed comes first for a raise (the slower speed for a cut).
3. Next, the pickup count that is harder to meet comes first (Greater than 6 before Greater than 4).
4. Next, starter rules come before rules you build, in this order: Sudden-spike catcher, Hot-week surge, Warm-date bump, Slow-date rescue, Slow-date trim. Every rule you build ranks the same at this step.
5. Next, the rule with more conditions comes first.
6. Last, the older rule comes first.

That order is what "stronger" means everywhere in MAYA, including where a rule counts from (Counting after a change).

A stronger rule that is still waiting can hold the night. It holds a weaker rule that moves the price the same way only when it would be true again on what it counts itself, the bookings since its own latest change. Then nothing acts on that night this cycle. It holds a rule that moves the price the other way while its whole window still matches. A rule waiting on a night after you went live from your current rates holds it the same way, on what it counts with its own changes there off (How a rule waits). A stronger rule can always act while a weaker one waits.

Before ranking, a rule is left out on a night where it could not move the price: a raise on a night already at its ceiling, a cut already at its floor, a percent on a price of 0, or any raise on a night you set to 0.

Standard rules do not compete. Every standard rule that is true applies, unless a price you typed has paused its change.

How often a price changes

Your rules check a night within about five minutes of its bookings changing, and every night in the window once a day, and a night's price changes only when something changes it, and it is sent to your property system only when it changes (Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, once you are live). On a quiet property, hours can pass with nothing sent. Guests do not see a price bouncing every five minutes.

What can move a night's price, and how often:

• A standard rule changes it once when it becomes true and once when it stops being true. A booking window rule becomes true as the night gets closer. An occupancy rule on a night that hovers around its line can switch on and off as bookings arrive and cancel.
• A booking speed or pickup rule changes it at most once per wait. At most one of these rules acts on a night and room type each cycle. With its undo box ticked, cancellations can also take one of its changes off.
• Three changes by the same rule on the same night bring the Rules that keep adjusting banner, which asks whether it should keep going.
• You, when you type a price, and your own rate, when it changes in your property system.

So a night can still change more than once in a day when bookings come and go, but never only because time passed: a wait or a lookback window moves on only at your property's midnight.

Deleted or switched-off rules

Switching a rule off freezes what it has done: its changes stay as they are, still cover weaker rules, and cancellations don't take them off. A price set by hand on the night still takes its booking speed and pickup changes off and pauses its standard ones while the price stands, as it does any rule's. And going live from your current rates takes changes off whether their rule is on or off: every rule's with Start from your current rates, and with Choose by rule and night, those of each rule you set to Skip and those on each room type left unticked under a night (Going live). Deleting a rule undoes everything it did from the next cycle. Read Turning a rule off, deleting it, or changing it.

Where you see all this

• The change log: every pricing run that changed a price, with the chain of rules and running prices for each room type and night.
• The numbers behind a change: what Show the numbers opens under a booking speed change.
• The fire log: each run a rule acted in, behind its number under Fired.
• Simulation mode: everything above runs in simulation and is written to the change log, and nothing is sent.