Clock PMS Update (28 Sep 2015)

Guest Mailer - Send Any Email

We have improved the Guest Mailer Add-On, so that you can use it in an even greater variety of situations. In fact, all your emails can now be sent through Clock PMS. The templates let you compose your standard messages in advance. Then you can customize them and use the same branding and layout for all your emails.

Edit Before Sending

Before sending an email template, you can edit its body text.

If the template contains parameters like guest name, booking number, period, room, link to the Self Service Portal, etc., the system substitutes them for the information retrieved from the booking. The content can be edited further by deleting or adding information, or you can send it as it is to the respective recipient.

If you don't need a template, you can choose to use a blank email.

To send an email:

• Find and open a booking
• Select 'New Email' in the 'Booking Emails' section
• Click Template or 'Empty'. Note: You can create a template by going to 'Other' - 'Settings' - 'Guest Mailer'
• Edit the email content and subject, if necessary.
• Choose the email recipient (the system suggests a list of email addresses related to the booking) or enter an additional email address in the field.
• Click 'Send'

Sent

In order to enable you to easily track the emails sent to your guests, we have added a new section. It contains all the booking-related emails to the booking screen. There you can find the following sent emails:

• Confirmations (both automatically or manually sent)
• Automated Emails (pre-arrival, post-departure emails or the ones sent after the creation of a booking)
• Manually sent emails

To check all the emails sent in relation to a booking:

• Find and open the booking
• The 'Booking Emails' section shows all the sent emails with information on the user having sent the email, date and time.
• Click Open to see the content of the email sent.

Bookings

Overbooking Control

• A new right has been added to select the users who can create or edit the bookings causing overbooking. The new right has been granted to all existing users.
• New Control Event. With each overbooking (due to a new booking or editing an existing one), a control event is created for that matter. Use the Control Event Report to easily track the booking causing the overbooking, its creation or change date, the related user. In this case, you can also review the change log of this booking. The creation of such control events will start after this update.
• Booking Message. In case of overbooking, the user is notified of that through a message in the booking.

Optimised Folio Options

• Departures – quick folio opening. On the Departures screen, a new button has been added next to each booking to open its folios. If a folio is an open one, a folio edit screen opens. And if the folio is a closed one, a folio print screen opens (pending update).

  

• Lists of bookings – multiple folio opening. A new option has been added to the lists of bookings, enabling you to open the folios of the selected bookings (1 or more) in new tabs (each folio opens in a new browser). To use the new feature:

  

  • Access any of the following screens: Arrivals, Departures, In Hotel, Search and Advanced Search
  • Click 'Select Multiple'
  • Select one or multiple bookings
  • In the panel above the list, click 'Folios' dropdown menu to select 'Open Folios in New Tab'
• Charge posting to multiple bookings simultaneously. Now you can post charges to multiple bookings at once. To do so:
  • Access any of the following screens: Arrivals, Departures, In Hotel, Search and Advanced Search
  • Click 'Select Multiple'
  • Select one or multiple bookings
  • In the panel above the list, click the 'Folios' dropdown menu to select 'Charge'
  • On the right side of the screen, you can see the selected folios. Still you can deselect bookings or add new ones to the selection. Then you can post charges to the selected folios (the ones with marked checkboxes).

Other Improvements

• New Report: Payment Control Report. The report is similar to the Charge Control Report. It presents the history of charges and voided payments. Also this report introduces a new feature related to payments - Folio Value. This is the equivalent value of a payment in the currency of a folio (when operating with payments in multiple currencies). The Folio Value of a payment changes with the change of the exchange rate of the folio currency to the payment currency or with the change of the folio currency itself. In this case, a new line will appear in the report reflecting the folio value of the payment.
• Summing by meals has been added to the Meal Report. At the end of the report, you can see amounts by meals for the whole examined period.
• Channel Manager
  • The mapping is now automatically updated with the opening of the screen and it contains more product information.
  • A new concept has been introduced to reduce the overbooking possibilities.
  • An option has been added, so that you can re-send the updated product information for 1 year. The Re-send button is a part of the channel manager settings.
  • A new feature has been added to stop the sending of the data of a certain product. This way you have full manual control over this product (direct channel updates). To do so, use the Disable button next to a product on the Channel Manager Settings screen.
• Occupancy Forecast – your choice for the Details button is now saved (whether it is on or off)
• A New API - Custom Payment API. With Clock Payment API, hotels can perform custom payment services for collecting payments from their guests. This way a hotel can have an interface for a payment service provider or bank not supported by the standard Clock PMS payment interfaces. The interface can be used in all customer-faced add-ons as: Web Reservation System (for booking guarantee deposits); Self Service Portal (for booking guarantee deposits or final checkout payments); Gift Voucher Shop (buying gift vouchers). The interface cannot be used in Clock PMS back office.

Fixes

• The "ParityRate channel rates and availability" link in the "Channels" menu already works.
• For each new booking, created from the Occupancy Forecast screen, now the arrival date and room type are filled in automatically.
• The 'Single Row Folio' option could not be used with a custom Folio Print Template
• For the multiple hotel accounts, the Guest Titles did not work properly.
• In the Registration Card Editor, there was no Guest Title field
• The Self Service Portal background used to load with a reduced resolutions.
• WRS – the deep links, containing specific room number filters, did not work properly
• Room Calendar - Date Labels' explanations (in the upper part of the screen) were not arranged by date.