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Setting Up the Prom Module
A walkthrough for a boutique running prom for the first time in BridalOp. About twenty minutes, plus however long your schools list takes.
The end result: a girl buys a gown, it's recorded against her school automatically, and nobody from that school can be sold the same dress without your team being told.
Before you start
You'll need to know:
- Which of your products are prom stock. Not the individual dresses — the kinds.
- Which schools you sell to. Start with the ones you actually see girls from; you can add more any time.
- How strict you want to be when a clash comes up at the till.
1. Switch the module on
Settings → Modules → Prom Module.
Two new items appear in your menu under Operations — Schools and Prom Registry — plus a Prom card in Settings.
It won't do anything yet
Switching it on doesn't start tracking. That takes steps 2 and 3, and until they're done nothing is registered and no clash is caught — while every screen looks like it's working. This is the one thing worth being careful about.
2. Tell it which dresses count
Settings → Prom → Which dresses this applies to.
Tick the product types that are prom stock. Each shows how many products you have of it.
Most boutiques tick Prom and stop there. Tick Formal as well if you sell prom out of your evening-wear range, or Quinceañera if you do those too.
Check the count, not the label
This reads the Product Type field on each product, not the categories you created. If you have a category called "Prom" but your gowns are typed as Gown, ticking Prom here covers nothing.
The page tells you: "Nothing is being tracked yet" in amber, and 0 products covered under the list. If you see that, either retype your prom gowns or tick the type you're actually using.
Fix it now if you need to — it's a one-off, and it's the single most common reason the module appears to do nothing.
3. Add your schools
Schools in the menu. Name is all you need; district, city and state are only there to tell two Central Highs apart.
Add every school you regularly see girls from. It's fine to start with five and grow.
Never enter a school twice
Two entries for one school split its own exclusivity, and the same dress could be sold to two girls who go to the same place with nothing warning you. Search before adding.
4. Decide how strict to be
Still in Settings → Prom.
When a dress is already spoken for is the setting that matters most:
- Warn — staff are told and can proceed. Start here.
- Block — only owners and managers can override.
- Off — records silently, never interrupts.
Start on Warn for your first season. The person at the till usually knows something the database doesn't — a girl going to a different school's prom, two sisters — and every override is recorded with its reason either way, so you can read them back at the end of the season and tighten up if you need to.
Leave Ask why before selling it anyway ticked. The reason is the whole value of allowing an override.
When a girl has no school on her record — leave on Ask to begin with. Move it to Require once your team is in the habit, because a sale with no school on it is a sale the promise doesn't cover.
5. Start capturing schools
Three ways, and you want all three eventually:
On the customer record. New and Edit Customer now have School, Year and Prom date.
On the booking form. Settings → Booking, edit your prom appointment type, tick Prom appointment. Girls booking online are then asked their school before they arrive — the cheapest place to get it.
At the till. If a prom dress is being rung up for a girl with no school and you've set Require, payment stops until it's added.
6. Catch up on what's already sold
If you're mid-season, the dresses already sold aren't in the registry — the module only knows about sales made since you switched it on.
Prom Registry → Add by hand, one row per dress already spoken for. School, dress, colour, and the girl if you have her. It's tedious once and never again, and without it your first season has holes in it.
7. Publish the checker (optional)
Settings → Prom → The public checker. Copy the link onto your own website — "check whether your dress is still available".
It never says who has a dress, only whether it's free at that school. It's the most convincing proof you can give that the exclusivity is real rather than a claim, and when a dress is taken it offers what still isn't.
What good looks like after a fortnight
- Prom Registry has rows in it, and the number is going up.
- Your dashboard shows a Prom card with schools covered.
- The overrides count is low. A handful is normal. A lot means either your team is clicking through warnings, or schools aren't being recorded properly and clashes are being invented.
If it isn't working
| What you're seeing | Almost always |
|---|---|
| Nothing ever registers | No product types matched — check 0 products covered in Settings → Prom |
| Some sales register, others don't | Those customers have no school on their record |
| A dress shows free that you know is taken | It was sold before you switched the module on — add it by hand |
| Two girls at one school got the same dress | Check whether that school was entered twice |
| The checker page 404s | The module or the checker is off, or nothing in your catalogue is covered |
See also
- Prom Module — everything it does
- Prom Settings — every setting explained