Charge Templates - Brief introduction
Charge Templates are one of the most, if not, the most important elements in Clock PMS+ due to several reasons:
- charge templates are what generate revenue in Clock PMS+ and essentially form your Revenue reports
- based on the configuration of the charge templates, the revenue can be divided into various groups and categories to allow you detailed revenue reporting, and performance analyses of your various services/items
- charge templates play a vital role in your accounting and potential export to your accounting system
- they help tracking of inventory of items and/or services with limited capacity (e.g. baby cot; parking spaces)
- they save time for your staff when needing to post an extra service or an item to a folio of a guest
Because of the above, it is vital that charge templates a properly configured - through charge templates the revenue is distributed correctly, the correct Tax% is applied and the text that will show on the guest bill is set, among other settings and options.
Furthermore, if it weren't for the Charge Templates, anything that needed to be posted manually would have needed all of the above information entered by the user which obviously would have been very time-consuming for your staff and impose a huge margin for error.
Important: Please make sure you also read Charge Templates - System Charge Templates and Charge Templates - Creating and Editing.
Here is a comparison when using and not using charge templates for posting:
- Using a Charge Template
- Posting a charge manually
As you can see in the images above, it took us 3 clicks to post a Charge Template without needing to edit anything, while when we posted the charge manually, it took us significantly longer and we had to fill out many fields at which point a mistake is possible.
Important: Although you can use the Manual Charge option, we recommend configuring a Charge Template for absolutely anything you may charge guests for - from mini bar items, SPA procedures and Meals to Smoking fees/fines, Damages and more, as they will save time and prevent mistakes. These are what we call Operational Charge Templates - they are used daily by you and your staff or automatically by the system. For some of them the price might not be set - the price depends on the situation (e.g. Damages), hence, there is the 'Floating price' feature in the charge template which will ask only about the price when posting the charge template.