Watch a ski rental counter on a Saturday morning and you will see the same thing at every station: a staff member holding a clipboard or a keyboard, asking a family of five the same six questions, one person at a time. Weight. Height. Age. How well do you ski. Shoe size. Skis or a board. Five people, six questions, and a line that is already out the door.
None of those questions need a staff member. The skier knows the answers, they have a phone in their pocket, and they were standing in that line for ten minutes doing nothing with it. An online check-in form moves the typing to the guest and leaves the counter with the work only the counter can do: fitting boots, setting bindings and taking payment.
This post explains how a ski rental check-in form works in Ribbe, what it collects, and what changes at the counter once the answers arrive before the guest does. For the surrounding system, see Ribbe’s ski rental software page.
A check-in form is a short questionnaire your guests fill in on their own phone by scanning a QR code. You design it once in the check-in form designer; the shop prints the QR on a poster, a counter card or a table tent, and every guest who scans it gets the same form.
The form is written for a party, not a person. The guest first says how many people are renting, then answers the questions once per person. Contact details like email, phone and where they are staying are asked once, for the main renter. Sizing questions are asked for everyone, because a wrong weight is a wrong binding setting.
Each answer that matters for the fitting is saved straight onto that person’s customer profile. Weight, height, age, skier type, boot sole length, stance and binding angles are not kept as a note on the order; they land in the same fields the fitting station reads. That is the whole point: the counter opens the party and the numbers are already there.
Ribbe ships a “Ski & snowboard check-in” template, so most shops start by adjusting rather than designing. It asks for:
Your details: first and last name for everyone; email, phone, address and “where are you staying” for the main renter only.
About you: weight, age and height as numbers with sensible limits, street shoe size, and boot size in mondopoint if they know it.
Your rental: a tick for skis, snowboard or both.
Skis: skier type I, II or III with plain-language descriptions, optional boot sole length and preferred ski length. These questions only appear when the guest ticked skis.
Snowboard: riding ability, regular or goofy stance with a “not sure?” hint, and optional board length and binding angles. Shown only when they ticked snowboard.
A closing note tells the guest the shop fits boots and sets bindings from these answers, so nobody panics over a size they do not know. The whole thing takes a family about three minutes while they wait.
The ski and snowboard check-in template open in the Ribbe form designer, with the live phone preview beside the question list
A group of people skiing down a snowy mountain slope with rocky outcrops
The flow on the phone is three screens: party size, the form, and the signature.
Party size. The guest picks how many people are renting. You can cap this per form; a one-person form skips the step entirely.
The form. One card per person, with the main renter first. Required answers are checked before the guest can continue, and the form scrolls to and highlights anything missing instead of showing a vague error.
Sign. The shop’s waiver appears as the real document, scaled to the screen, with a tap-to-sign box for each person. See digital waivers for how the signature is recorded.
If the phone locks or the guest switches apps, the draft is kept on the device for twelve hours, so a half-finished form is never a restart. Returning customers can enter a one-time code sent by email or SMS to pull up their profile and the people they rented with last time, and fill the cards with a tap.
The ski check-in form on a guest's phone: contact details, where they are staying, and sizing questions
When the guest submits, Ribbe creates a reserved order and the party appears in the POS under the Tickets view in a Waitlist tab. Every waitlist row shows a Form chip; tap it and the staff member sees each person’s answers side by side, exactly as the guest typed them.
Because the sizing questions are bound to the customer profile, the fitting station already knows the weight, height, age and skier type when staff open the order. The DIN setting comes from those values, and the boot size is on the profile for next time too. The counter adds the packages, fits the gear, takes payment and the order moves from the Waitlist to the active rentals.
The time saved is not dramatic per guest. It is about two minutes of typing and asking that no longer happens. Across a hundred parties on a peak morning, that is more than three hours of counter time given back to fitting.
Submitted check-ins waiting on the register's Waitlist tab in the Ribbe POS
The QR codes are built from your Online Reservations terminal, where two cards each hold a check-in form:
Waiver QR. The guest fills the form and signs. The order is reserved with the gear they ticked, but not paid, so it lands on the Waitlist as “waiting for payment” and staff complete it at the register. This is the right card for a shop that fits before it charges.
Order QR. The guest fills the form, signs and pays by card on the phone. The order arrives paid and the counter only fits. Right for shops with fixed package prices and a long line.
Both cards can point at the same form or at different ones. A lodge delivery poster and a walk-in counter card do not need to ask the same questions.
The Online terminal's Order QR card, where a check-in form is chosen for the poster
It does not pick a ski for the guest, and it does not set bindings; a technician still does both from the recorded values. It does not replace the fitting station, the waiver, or the register. It removes the typing in front of all three.
It also does not need the guest to have an account or install anything. The link opens in the phone’s browser on your own subdomain, and the form is only as long as you make it. A follow-up post covers how to decide which questions belong on it.
Start fitting before the guest reaches the counter Ribbe’s check-in form designer, waivers, fitting station and POS come in one system for ski and snowboard shops. Try it free for your next peak weekend. Start a free trial