A quite common case within the MICE segment is to have set event packages that include items, services and various activities, for example, you may have a 'Day package' that includes the meeting room rent, stationery, IT equipment, a coffee break and lunch.
On the other hand, you may work with a company with which you've agreed that you will block 20 hotel rooms for groups organized by them for each Saturday in the next year.
Naturally, creating all these events from scratch and building them up and adding all blocks, items and activities can be quite a time consuming and cumbersome task.
To ease your work with Events, we added a functionality that allows you to copy whole Events or parts of them to other Events.
Important: To copy an event, first create the new event - set the dates, name, select the company/agent that is organizing the event. The copy function copies Blocks (with linked rates, Block codes are NOT copied), Meeting Room bookings and Catering activities (with their activity types, setup style, locations, descriptions and staff notes), Charges in the event folio.
Once you've created the new event:
- click on the Functions button and select 'Copy from'.
- locate the event from which you want to copy elements - you can search by Name of the event; search through event/s attached to a company profile or event/s linked to a specific tag
Note: The 3 search fields work in conjunction. For example, If you have selected a 'Company' and search by Name, the system will search for an event with that name connected to the selected Company profile.
- Once you've found the event from which you want to copy information, click 'Select' to proceed further
- the next step is the most important one:
- New from date (1) - enter on which date the selected Event to be copied. See more about 'Date relativity' below
- New person count (2) - enter the number of attendees for the new event. This information will be transferred to the MR bookings and Catering.
- Charge Qty (3) - select how the charges will be calculated for the new event. See more about 'Qty relativity' below
- Included elements (4)- select from which elements information will be copied
- Event charges - charges posted directly in the event folio will be copied
- Catering - all catering activities and the related charges
- Meeting Room Bookings - all meeting room bookings and related charges
- Blocks - all blocked rooms by room types and rates
When you've entered the information and made the selections, simply click 'Copy' and the information will be copied into the new event, with the new dates, new person count and charges posted/calculated.
Important: You can copy information from a couple of events into one - e.g. copy Meeting room bookings from one event and catering activities from another. Simply have only the 'Meeting room bookings' element selected when copying from the first and only the 'Catering' element selected when copying from the second. Furthermore, you can copy several times from one and the same event - e.g. you want to copy the 'Meeting room bookings' but the 'Charge Qty' method to be 'Plain'; while the 'Catering' element to be copied with 'Charge Qty' as 'Coefficient. Again, copy once with MR bookings selected and Charge Qty - Plain; then copy a second time with the 'Catering' selected and 'Charge Qty' - Coefficient.
Date Relativity
When copying the content of one Event to another one, it is very important to know how date copying works.
Let's examine a case:
- We had a two day event from which we want to copy information. It has elements and charges for 01.01.2022 and 02.01.2022.
- We create a new Event for 4 days – arrival on 01.08.2022, and departure on 04.08.2022.
- While copying the content we enter into the From Date field: 01.08.2022.
- Now the elements and charges copied from the old Event where they were for 01.01.2022 will get a new date - 01.08.2022; the ones that were for 02.01.2022 will be for 02.08.2022.
- We once again copy from the same event, but this time we type the date of 03.08.2020.
- The copied elements and charges of the old Event initially being for 01.01.2022 will now be for 03.08.2022, and the ones for 02.01.2022 will become for 04.08.2022.
Qty Relativity
When copying the content, you have two options how charges to be copied:
- Plain - the quantity of all charges will directly be copied as they are. In other words, if a charge of the initial Event had a quantity of 10, the charge of the newly created Event will also have a quantity of 10.
- Coefficient - model will be applied under which the new quantities will follow the ratio between the old PAX and the newly entered PAX.
For example: You have an event with catering activity for 10 PAX and charges:
- Water - 2 EUR x 10
- Coca-Cola 1.5 l - 4 EUR x 2
- Fanta 1.5 l - 4 EUR x 1
When creating the new Event, and copying, we enter into the Persons field: 20.
The Coefficient between the new and the old PAX is 20 / 10 = 2.This way the copied charges will have the following values:
- Water - 2 EUR x 20 – The water charge will have Qty - 20 (10 * 2)
- Coca-Cola 1.5 l - 4 EUR x 4 – The Coca-Cola charge will have Qty - 4 (2*2)
- Fanta 1.5 l - 4 EUR x 2 - The Fanta charge will have Qty - 2 (1 * 2)
The same logic will be used if the new PAX are less than the old ones. Please note that charges posted directly to the Event folio (not through a MR booking or Catering activity) are copied 1:1.
Blocked Rooms
In the process of copying Blocks, the date relativity principles are followed, however, the number of rooms is copied 1:1. This way, what has been entered into the first event, this would be copied to the new Event, as only the dates will change in accordance with the Date Relativity model. Please note that you cannot copy Blocks having a longer duration than the Event they are copied to. In this case, the Вlock duration will exceed the new Event period resulting in an error.
Examples
To showcase how you can use the 'Copy from' function and use cases, let's examine a couple of examples.
Example 1
Let's consider that we've taken the local Rotary club for their regular meetings with dinner and accommodation. We've already had one event and we want to book the second. Everything between the two events is the same apart from the date and number of attendees. The video below shows the actions we did:
Let's clarify what we did:
- we located the first Rotary event we had and started to copy information from it.
- we entered the new PAX - 50 persons.
- we selected to copy everything without the Meeting room information/charges.
- we selected 'Coefficient' for charge Qty - this will modify the Qty of the charges in the new event and have the value for 50 PAX instead of the 35 PAX that were in the original event.
- we did another copy and copied only the meeting room information.
- we used 'Plain' for the charge Qty - this way, the charges for MR bookings will be copied 1:1. The reason for this is because those charges are static and do not depend on the number of PAX - the hire of the meeting room is a flat price; the hire of equipment is flat price (in our case). They were posted with Qty 1 and must remain with Qty 1.
- the result is: we have the hotel room blocks copied; we have the Catering activities copied along with the charges for 50 PAX; we have the Meeting room booking copied along with the flat hire prices. All this saved us a significant amount of time, because we did not need to enter every piece of information and post charges manually.
Example 2
In this example, we don't have an actual event. We've agreed with a local company that we will block 12 hotel rooms for them for every second Saturday for groups they are organizing. We are using the event module and the Blocks to reserve the rooms.
Let's clarify what we did:
- we created the new 'event' so we can apply blocks.
- we started the copy procedure and located the first 'event'.
- we only copied the blocks since there are only hotel room blocks in the original event.
- from here on, we can proceed with creating the rest of the 'events' so we can block the rooms for every second Saturday.