Packages - Creating Packages and adding Items

Rate packages are an optional feature in Clock PMS+, however, by using them you will have a deeper level of analyses of your revenue and opportunity for optimization. Furthermore, depending on your financial/accounting practices, using Rate packages might be required.

The Rate packages can be used if you offer rates that include not only accommodation, but also extra services - breakfast, dinner, bicycle/ski rent, an excursion, transfer from/to the airport and many more.

Their main purpose is to 'break out' a certain amount of the price per night and allocate it to another revenue group/category. By doing this, in your revenue reports you will not have only 'Rooms' revenue, but also e.g 'F&B' revenue, 'Extras', etc.

Specifics

• Rate Packages contain 'Package items'. Those items are the additional services that are included in the packaged price and created beforehand as Charge Templates.
• A Rate Package must be connected to a Rate.
• A Rate can have only 1 Rate Package connected to it. This means that if you have 2 rates - 1 including Breakfast and 1 including Breakfast and Dinner, you need to create 2 Rate Packages - 1 that contains only a Breakfast element and another that contains Breakfast and Dinner elements.
• A Rate Package does not increase the price of the rate. The price that will be offered to the guest is going to be the one that you have set in the Rate itself. The Rate Package will only 'break out' amounts from the price per night and allocate them to other revenue groups/categories. See more information below.
• Guests will not see a breakdown of the prices per item/service on the BookDirect (WRS). They see the total package price per night. Such breakdown can also be hidden on the folios. See more information below.

Creating and Editing Rate Packages and Package Items

To create a Rate Package:

• Navigate to menu Settings->Rate Package-> click '+' to start creating a new package. Add a name (for internal use) and save.
• Open the newly created package for editing and click the 'Add' button in section 'Package Items' at which point a window will pop up:

• Charge template (1) - select the charge template (additional service/item) that will be part of the Package.
• Per Guest (2) - This is the calculation method indicating how the charge template will be calculated (per room, per guest, per adult or per child).
• Guests by default (3) - If the calculation method is 'Per Guest', set a default value for guests. This default value will be used if no information of Adults/Children is present in the booking.
• Children age from/to + Default children age (4) - these fields are applicable only if the calculation method is 'Per Child'. Enter an age range and the element will be charged, only if the children age matches the set range. Set a default age for the children, which will be used if it is not explicitly entered in the booking.
• On particular nights only (5) - the package items will be calculated and posted for specific night/s of the booking stay ( Example: 1,3,5 ), instead of every night of the stay.
• For specific dates only (6) - package items will be calculated and separated for the specific dates instead of each night of the stay.

  Example: Let's say you offer your guests New Year's Eve packages of various duration, but each of them includes one festive dinner. To separate the price for the dinner from the total package, so it only refers to December 31, add an item to the rate package to be calculated only for 12/31 instead of all days of the guests' stay.

• Offset days (7) - Package items are posted for the same nights as the accommodation (unless you apply point 5). Use this option to shift the charge with a given number of days. Set to '-1' to post the charge on the previous date or '1' to post on the next date.
• Price (different from the template) (8) - if selected, it will override the price of the charge template for this package only.
• Percentage (9) - if selected, it will override the price of the charge template with a % amount based on the total rate price for this package only.

• QTY override (10) - if selected, it will override the charge template value for this package only.
• Hide in folio printouts (the rate print text will be used) (11) - if selected, it will change the charge template print text with the one of the rate's charge template.

Pricing

The value (price) of the package items combined with the calculation method form the value of the package. As mentioned above, one of the specifics of the Packages is that they do not increase the price of the rate - the price per night is the one that you set in the rate itself. Connecting a package to the rate will simply breakdown that price into various revenue groups in your reporting. Let's examine a case to make this clear.

• We've created a package that includes Breakfast at a price of 14 GBP p.p.p.n. and a Bike hire at 20 GBP p.p.p.n. 

• We've created a Rate for this offer and have set a price of 200 GBP per night for 2 persons.

If we do not connect the package to the rate in your reports you will have the following revenue:

• Revenue group 'Rooms' - 200 GBP

However, once we connect the package and have a booking for 2 adults, the revenue will be the following:

• Revenue Group 'Rooms' - 132 GBP
• Revenue Group 'F&B' - 28 GBP (for the breakfast)
• Revenue Group 'Extra' - 40 GBP (for the bike hire)

As you can see, the value of the packaged items is deducted from the price per night that we have set and have lowered the Rooms/Accommodation revenue.

Presenting on the guest folio/bill

In the majority of situations, you would not want the guest to see this breakdown. This breakdown is mostly for internal analyses and revenue distribution, while the guest should only see the packaged price per night. 

You can easily achieve this and do not have breakdowns, but simply a total price per night by clicking the 'Hide on folio printouts' button when adding an element to a package.

This setting, combined with an applicable 'View' mode of a folio/bill will combine all the package items with the accommodation on 1 line and not show a breakdown.

Here is what you will see internally in the guest folio:

Here is the guest-facing part:

Charge templates

Since the items included in the package are Charge Templates, you can make full use of functionalities related to Charge Templates, such as Capacity counters to restrict how many times you sell a particular rate or attach a Housekeeping task to a Charge template that will require housekeeping doing something in the room for the arrival date.