Meals
If you offer Meals in your property, you can create them as 'elements' so that they can either be added in Rates that include meals or selected manually in a booking if a guest purchases a meal.
Specifics
- The main purpose of this 'Meal' element is to be included in the 'Meal report' so that your F&B outlet knows which rooms are entitled to a meal and also better plan their operations.
- The 'Meal' element has nothing to do with cost/price of the meal.
- You need to create each meal as a Charge template as well (with its respective price and other settings), in order to offer meals for purchase as an extra service or include meals in rates through a Rate Package.
Setup
It is necessary to set as many individual meals as you offer. For example: 'Breakfast', 'Lunch', 'Dinner'. Clock PMS+ also offers management of somewhat non-standard meals such as 'Lunch packet', 'Restaurant outside the hotel', etc. You can read more on the topic below. In order to create the meals navigate to menu Settings->All Settings->Rates->Meals&Restaurants-> click on '+'.
- Name (1) - enter the name of the meal
- Order (2) - enter the daily order of meals. For example: For 'Breakfast' enter 1, for 'Lunch' - 2, for 'Dinner' - 3.
- Standard (3) - choose if a meal is standard or not. See below for more details
- First meal (4) -select this for the first meal guests will have on the day of their arrival. Usually, it is 'Dinner”. By this field and the 'Order' field, it is determined which meals to be included in the report for the day of arrival and which ones to be in the report for the day of departure. The meal marked to be the first one and these having a greater order number will be included for the day of arrival, and the ones having a lesser order number for the day of departure.
Example: Let's say that the hotel offers meals in the following order 1-Breakfast, 2-Lunch and 3-Supper and the Supper is marked as the "First meal". On the arrival date, the guests from the booking including the three meals will be marked only for the Supper. On the departure date, the same will be marked for Breakfast and Supper.
Non-Standard Meals
The Meal Report may also give you information on the meals offered by you or partners of yours as an exception. Such meals, for example, are the lunch packet provided to tourists during excursions or the meals at restaurants outside the hotel in similar situations. You may mark such meals as non-standard (uncheck the 'Standard' checkbox).
Usage
Rates
When Meals are created, they can be selected in rates to indicate that it includes them and bookings made on those rates will be added to the Meal report for the Restaurant.
You can read more about creating rates HERE.
Bookings
Once created, these elements will be available in the Booking edit screen in two sections:
- Section 'Booking' - you will see a list with all the 'Standard' meals. Selecting one or more will include the respective meals for the whole stay of this booking.
- Section 'Meal' - from this section, you will be able to add both Standard and/or Non-standard meals for certain days of the stay. Simply click on 'Add non-standard meal date', select the date on which this booking will have the meal, select the respective meal and enter # of Adults and Children. This is useful in cases where guests do not have meals at all included in their rates and purchase e.g. a breakfast for their departure date or you need to include an additional meal for a date.
Important: If guests already have meals included and you add another one for a date, you also need to mark the included one. For example, if guests have Breakfast included, but purchase a Dinner for a certain day, mark both meals for that date. Selecting only Dinner will remove the Breakfast.
In addition, if you add a date, but do not select anything, any Meals that are already included (e.g. due to rate) will be removed for that day.
In the same section, you can also change the first meal for a certain booking. It will rearrange the meals for the date of arrival and departure only for the meal report concerning the given booking.
Important: We would like to remind you that none of the above actions - selecting 'Meal' in rates or adding 'Meal' in bookings will modify the price in any way. For rates, meals need to be created as Charge Templates and added through a Rate Package. For bookings, Charge templates for the meals need to be posted to the folio.
Restaurants
If your hotel has multiple eating areas, you can create them. For each booking, you have the option to set at which of your restaurants the specific guests will dine. In this way, the Meal Report will provide you with more detailed information for planning purposes.
To add the eating areas:
- Click menu Settings->All Settings->Rates->Meals&Restaurants-> proceed to the "Restaurant" page;
- click the "+" button and add each of the dining areas by entering its name.
Once created, the restaurants can be selected in the booking's "Meal" section.
Meal Report
The Meal Report provides information for the purposes of planning the meals for a certain date and has information which rooms/bookings have a certain meal. You can run the report for a certain period, providing individual information for each date. In order to have accurate information for planning purposes, the number of adults and children and the respective meals (as well as the non-standard ones, if any) is to be entered in each booking. You can access the report from menu Reports-> Meal Report.