Your first 30 minutes in Basenautic: what to do after starting the free trial

You have signed up, confirmed your email and you are looking at an empty account. The fastest way to see whether Basenautic fits your office is not to configure everything. It is to put one real yacht and one real booking in, and watch what the software does with them.

Your trial runs for 14 days with every feature unlocked (Pro limits: up to 15 active yachts, unlimited users), and no card is needed. Here is the order we recommend for the first session. If you have not signed up yet, see Create your account and start the free trial.

Step 1: Company details and logo (about 5 minutes)

Open Settings → Company and upload your logo (PNG or JPEG, up to 2 MB). Fill in your trade name, address, phone, email and website, plus legal name, VAT number and tax office. Companies in Greece also get fields for the GEMI and MHTE numbers.

Why first: your logo and details appear on every booking confirmation and email, so everything you create afterwards already looks like yours. See Company details and logo.

Step 2: Booking defaults and bank account (about 3 minutes)

Open Settings → Booking defaults and set the terms you normally use:

Then add the account you receive payments into under Settings → Bank accounts. From now on, every booking gets its deposit and balance with due dates calculated for you. See Booking defaults.

Step 3: Add one yacht (about 5 minutes)

Yachts → Add yacht: name, model and base. Then Edit yacht to add registration details and the owner's details (bank, IBAN, owner email). The owner's bank details print on confirmations, and the owner email can receive unpaid-booking alerts later. See Add your yachts.

Greek companies that want to try the e-charter party export should also fill in the call sign, port authority and home port. See Prepare your yachts for the e-charter party.

Step 4: Enter one real booking (about 5 minutes)

Pick a charter you have already agreed for this season. If it came through an agent, add the agent first under Partners. Then Bookings → Add booking: yacht, partner, customer, check-in and check-out (the 7d / 14d / 21d / 28d buttons fill the check-out), charter party price, net price and any extras.

Press Save. The booking gets a reference such as FLU1026 that never changes, and its two instalments appear with amounts and due dates. See Create a booking.

Step 5: See what you get back (about 5 minutes)

This is the point of the exercise. From that one booking:

• Print a confirmation as PDF or Word, with your logo, the pricing, the payment schedule and the owner's bank details. See Booking confirmations.
• Record a payment you have already received and watch the status change from pending to partial or paid. See Record a payment.
• Look at the reminder schedule under 🔔 Reminders on the booking, so you can see when the client or owner would be emailed.
• Greek companies: press ⚓ on the booking to create the charter party, add the people on board and run the checks before exporting the e-charter party file. See Create a charter party from a booking.

Then, during the rest of the trial

1. Enter the rest of the current season. The dashboard, statuses and reminders only become useful when they reflect your real bookings.
2. Invite your team with the right permissions. See Invite your team.
3. Switch on automatic payment reminders once your payments are up to date, and adjust the email templates to your tone. See Automatic payment reminders.

Your bookings are in a spreadsheet? Send the file to contact@basenautic.com and we help you bring the current season over. The first-day plan for leaving spreadsheets covers the full move in more detail.