Clock PMS+ Update (15 Oct 2018)

Company: Custom Fields

We have added a flexible system to the Company functionality to let you define custom fields.
You will be able to segment booking and sales data, and get sales summary reports based on these fields, e.g. Agents and Small Companies, Foreign and Local Companies, Mother Companies, etc. For even greater convenience, you will be able to define the indicators to be used for generating the summary/segmentation reports.

By default, we have added three custom fields to demonstrate the feature, however, you can delete them or add more, if necessary.

The three custom fields are:

• Company type – here you can enter a company type in accordance with your needs and then use it to get segmented data of sales and bookings, e.g. Agent, Online Portal, Small Company, etc.
• Master account – if working with many subsidiaries of a company, but needing summary info on the mother company, you can use this field to specify it.
• Report group – this field will let you create your own additional grouping parameter for the companies in the report, e.g. Local and Foreign.

To ease you with the entry of custom fields, we have also added an option for you to define a Value list for each of them. This way, instead of typing, you can simply choose the desired value for the given field from a predefined list. It is up to you to decide for which fields it is suitable to have a Value list. To create a 'Value list' for a field, go to Settings - Company Fields. Select the field and add the necessary values to the 'Value list' field.

From this screen, you can also add more fields. The custom fields can be used in segmentation reports, as well as for various other purposes of yours, such as custom data exports, for example.

The segmentation reports allowing you to segment by company fields are:

• Bed nights report
• Booking Segmentation Report
• Charges Segmentation Report

A new 'Branch' field to the Company screen. It is very convenient when working with different branches of a company letting you specify these branches. On all company search screens, now you can also search by Branch and company address to filter the results and quickly find the company you are looking for.

Charge Templates, Custom Fields and Packages

We have redesigned the use of charge templates to unify the way they are set up and add the new custom field feature.

The changes concern the rates and packages mainly. Until now, in every rate or package element, you had to enter all the necessary data like tax, revenue category, etc. This has changed and instead of repeated entry of one and the same information, now you can simply choose a charge template. For example, you may have only one nights charge template, now you can choose it in the different rates. The same applies to the package elements.

To let you keep the name of nights charge (along with the rate name), we have added a new option 'Use the full rate name as charge text'. If unchecked, the system will take the charge name from the charge template instead of the rate name.

Apart from being easier to define rates and package elements, the new changes significantly reduce the error risk. This unified approach allows you to freely define revenue groups and category everywhere, as well as the values of the new custom fields.

The new custom field feature in charge templates and charges is incredibly useful in exports and connections to accounting systems.

The existing data from rates and package elements have been migrated and used for the automatic creation of charge templates. You may need to edit their names to better distinguish them, because during the automatic migration they have one and the same name.

You can also use the "Hide from posting screen" option – a new check box letting you hide certain charge templates from the charge posting screen and still be able to use them in rates and package elements.

There are certain changes to the behaviour of the Surcharge functionality. Until now, if used for some of the folios, you weren't required to complete the Text, the Surcharge fields, etc., in the Surcharge section of the "Tax Settings" screen. Now it is necessary to fill in at least the 'Text' field in the already mentioned section to be able to the surcharge in folios.

Companies and Billing Info in Folios

We have introduced changes to the billing info section of invoices.

Our goal is to make the connection between invoices and companies clearer.

Before being changed, the functionality allowed invoices to be filled in with data of companies (directly in the 'Billing To' fields) not registered with Clock PMS+ which led to confusion in reports and ambiguity in exports.

Now apart from the company invoices, there are also invoices for private individuals, not containing a tax number field, for example. For your convenience, the new companies can be created from the same screen. In addition, if the invoice is issued to a company, now it is possible to make changes to the invoice data at customer's request, but the invoice remains linked to to the previously selected company. A new right and control event have been added to administer and audit such invoice editing.

WRS – Profile Login

In the WRS, we have added an option for guests to log in through the number of an old booking and its PIN.

The idea behind this feature is to reduce the number of doubled profiles. At login:

• The guest doesn't need to enter the necessary booking data again which speeds up the process.
• The registration card fields are also completed with data from the guest profile to make the check-in quicker.
• The booking is then linked to the guest profile eliminating the chance of profile doubling which leads to more precise statistics.

Other improvements

• Package elements – a new option "First night only". Now you can add one-off elements to packages to be charged only at arrival.
• The "Advanced" profile search has been redesigned. Search profiles by period of stay at a hotel. This search was missing after the last major changes to the profile system.
• New GDPR-related changes - retention period and "Forget" option.
  • Guest data retention period. Now you can set a period during which the guest data to be kept. With the expiry of this period (counted from the departure), the personal guest data for these bookings is deleted. Please note that only the data marked as encrypted is deleted. The rest of the details, which are of marketing importance are preserved. Nothing else of the booking changes. In short, you won't be able to see the personal guest data. You can find the new setting by going to Settings - Guest Fileds. The minimal retention period is 6 months.
  • "Forget" option. With the new GDPR-required option, you can easily destroy the data of a given profile in all the related bookings and registration cards. This feature cannot be used for profiles linked to expected bookings.
• Guest - a new "Show in the register" field has been added to the Guest edit screen. If it is not checked, the guest is not included in the "Hotel Registry" report. Use this field to remove persons from the Hotel Registry that are not real guests, but booking arrangers. Additionally, this new field is used by previous profile migration to mark the automatically created guests from the booking contact info as hidden.
• Guest Mailer - new Guarantee Policy filters. You can specify one or multiple guarantee policies for the email.
• Capacity Counters – set to zero for certain days. Now you can stop certain days by setting a zero availability.
• Events – now you can use Company credit cards in the Event folio.
• Profiles - export to CSV. Both normal and advanced profile searches can export results to a CSV file.
• Rates – The Set multiple days option can now update Guarantee policies.
• Passport images are added to the Guest edit screen for easier check and completion of guest data.
• The new WRS booking email sent to the hotel now contains the guest's notes and requests, too.
• Occupancy and Charges Report - a new booking guarantee status filter added.
• Occupancy and Charges D-M-Y Report - the report is generated in the background now. This way the volume of the processed data is of no concern any more.
• Charge Segmentation Report - the report format has been changed for greater export compatibility. Amounts are splinted in different columns.
• Split charges screen – an option to select all / none added.
• print_text is added as a Liquid parameter to the charge.
• POS E-Menu. Orders from the E-Menu Room Service can be sent to an email. To activate the feature, set an email from Management - 'Kitchen notify email'
• API - Guest index now shows top profiles only, not inducing history records. The family_id is added to guest show. This is the id of the profile (guest)
• Adyen tokenizations and missing e-mails. '[email protected]' is used as a customer email if emails are missing in the Channel Manager booking import. If the back office tokenization function is used, an additional confirmation screen is added for entering/checking the e-mail.
• Booking screen - profile note, profile level, profile picture and booking statistics are added to the guest data
• Guests - "important" mark in guest custom fields is used to mark guests with missing important information. The Missing important information icon is shown for these guests on the register, booking and booking search screens (Arrival, In hotel, Departures).

Integrations

• Third Party Ficalization API. Generic API for third party fiscalization integrations.
• The LightSpeed integration has been enhanced and now it can transfer your daily revenue to a special Clock POS account.
  After activating the daily revenue transfer, all charges that are not transferred to Clock PMS+ Suite yet will be transferred to a specially created Clock POS account.
  
  All charges will be transferred to one folio which will be automatically closed. You can configure how the folio will be closed from Management > LightSpeed Account Settings.
  
  Once you start receiving daily revenue transfers, you can begin generating common reports showing the charges for your PMS and POS account.

Fixes

• Channel Manager - duplicated guests are no longer imported.
• Profile Merge - related bookings and booking enquiries are reassigned to the master profile (target of the merge operation)
• Creation of multiple guests by double clicking the button is prevented.
• POS - The field for selecting surcharge base ("Surcharge calculated on") has been added to the screen.
• Revenue group "discount" has been added to the select menu on the Charge edit screen
• Hotel Registry export - column names have been fixed.
• The Fast booking search wasn't working if used on email sending screen.
• The Profile import is now working properly.
• The Guest title field appeared in the WRS even when there was no values to select from.
• Hotel Registry - cancelled bookings also appeared on the list. A Country filter added.
• WRS - Person Title - values didn't translate.
• The language of the WRS confirmations wasn't correct in some cases.
• The language in the Self Service – it was impossible to change the language if it had been selected in guest profile.
• Guest signature moved from the guest profile to the registration card.