Event Templates
The 'Copy from' function unlocks one more time-saving and work-enhancing feature - using Event Templates.
In all of the examples that we saw in Part 1, we copied information from events that actually happened. However, there is another approach to using events - creating templates of event/conference packages which you offer allowing you very quickly to create an actual event when needed - to generate an offer for interested customers or simply create an event.
Delegate packages for 1 day; Delegate packages for 2 days; various Wedding packages; packages for organizing Workshops or Team building events and any other 'packages' you offer can be created as a template.
The configuration of such events is no different than a normal event. You create the event for 1 day, 2 days, etc., book meeting rooms, add catering activities and post charges. However, there are several specifics:
- Company profile - as you know, to create an event you need to attach a company profile. Our recommendation is that you create a 'system' company profile which you can attach to the template - e.g. 'Clock Hotel Event templates'. By having the company profile attached to the templates, you can easily find the templates when using the 'Copy from' function.
- Tags - tags can be extremely useful with the templates. As mentioned above, you can allocate your 'system' company profile to all event templates, however, the list of templates to choose from can become quite long if you have many offerings. The tags can help you with filtering the search - e.g. all your wedding packages to have tag WED and this way, when you search for the template, instead of seeing all templates, you will see just the Wedding ones.
- Person count in Catering - when adding the catering activities in your template, enter - 1 for 'Person count' of the Catering activity. When it comes to catering, you usually charge an amount per person - 5 GBP per person for the Coffee Break; 20 GBP per person for the business lunch, etc. Post your 1x5GBP coffee break charge and the 1x20GBP for the Business lunch and have the person count set to '1' for each catering activity. This way, when you copy from this template and use the 'Coefficient' method, those single charges will be multiplied by the new person count.
- Person count in Meeting room bookings- same as for the Catering if the charges are per person. However, often, charges for services/items related to meeting rooms are flat price (they are not per person) - flat price for the hire of the space; flat price for hire of equipment, etc. There are several ways in which you can handle this and avoid having these flat charges multiplied by the number of attendees:
- do not enter anything for Person count in the meeting room booking in your event template. This way, when copying from this template and using the 'Coefficient' method, the charges will not be multiplied by the new number of Persons.
- post the flat priced charges directly in the Event folio, instead of through the Meeting room booking. Charges posted directly in the Event folio do not get multiplied by the number of Persons when creating the actual event.
- do a 2-step copying as explained in THIS example.
- Wrong charges - while building up your templates and adding charges, if you post a wrong charge by mistake, start over by creating a new event template. Voiding the charge will not be enough as the system copies also voided charges. The event in which you had the wrong posting can be deleted.
- Cancel the event template - once you have created your event template with all the information, cancel it and void the charges/folio. This is needed so that both the event template and charges are not 'active'. If the charges are not voided, they will be part of your revenue which is something you do not want. The fact that the event template is cancelled and charges voided is not an issue as you can still find it while copying and everything will become active in the 'actual' event.