Clock PMS+ Update (21 Aug 2023)

New Features

• On-line Check-In- full folio payment required.

  To the On-line Check-In application, we have added the option to require the full payment of the bills  of a guest prior to their arrival. The bill payment can be made through an already tokenized credit card or alternative payment methods such as iDeal, Bancontact, ApplePay, GooglePay, etc. To give you greater control for which bookings specifically to require the payment of the related folios, we have added one more setting. It will let you specify which guarantee options are not to fall under the requirement for advance payment. This way, using the guarantee options, you can define for which booking groups an advance payment is required or not.

  Here are more details about the new functionality:

  • To activate the new feature - select ' ' by selecting  Web->Online Check-In Settings from the navigation bar;
  • To exclude a certain booking group from this requirement, fill in the guarantee options in the 'Guarantee options excluded from payment' field on the same screen.

    

  • When a booking requiring payment goes through the Online Check-In process, the payment of the booking folio will be required at the new step, if not paid already.
  • If for some reason the booking has several unpaid folios, the payment of each of them will be required.
  • Folios, marked as 'Hidden on the Self Service Portal' will not be shown and no payment will be required for them.
  • The payment can be made through tokenized credit cards.
  • The credit cards marked as “OTA” cards will not be suggested for use.
  • If the guest wishes, they can enter separate new cards for each payment.
  • The guest can also use alternative payment methods. These methods are to be set for use in the very payment processor and are also to be marked as allowed for the respective payment processor in the Clock PMS+ settings.
• New Inventory Items Report

We have added a new report to Clock PMS+ to assist you with the reporting of the sold minibar articles or other similar goods. The report only includes charges with a completed 'Inventory code' field. Fill in the field in the respective charge templates. The charges posted under these templates will then be included in the report. Included are charges from valid closed folios, as they are filtered by the folio closing date. Charges from open folios are not included in the report. In addition, if a given closed folio is voided, it will no longer be included in the report. Please note that the voiding of folios for past dates will lead to a change of the report for the respective past period.

• Early Checkout

We have made several changes to reduce the errors and enhance the process automation in this case. Here are more details of the changes:

• When checking out a booking whose departure is on a future date, the system will require you to shorten the booking period. In contrast to the situation up till now, the system no longer allows  you to check out the booking before changing the departure date. This way, the early checkout always releases the room for new check-ins and respectively creates a housekeeping task.
• In relation to the early checkout charges, the system gives you two options: 
  • To keep the charges for the shortened days - select “Check out” (1), if the guest is to pay the remaining number of nights;
  • To remove the charges for the remainder of the stay -  select “Reduce stay and charges” (2), if the  guest is not to pay the remaining number of nights .

    

• For the purposes of greater control, we have also changed the Early Checkout right. If the user does not have this right granted, the same cannot use the early checkout feature  or shorten the stay in terms of already checked-in bookings.

Improvements

• Stopping the automatic recalculation of rates when editing checked-out and voided bookings. You know that the system automatically recalculates the services related to the rate and the booking charge templates when the booking period is changed. As a result of your comments, we have decided that if this occurs with checked-out and voided bookings, such behaviour leads to more issues. Here is why we have stopped the automatic recalculation for checked-out and voided bookings.
• Clearer description of the alternative payment methods. In BookDirect and the new Online Check-in, we have improved the description of the button for alternative payment methods. It now shows the names of the supported methods letting the guest immediately choose the desired payment method, e.g.  credit card, Apple Pay. The payment methods visualised  on the button correspond to the ones set for the payment processor in Clock PMS+.

• Capacity counters - we have made improvements to the Daily view;
• Folios (new) - 'Billing to' data is transferred from the main folio to the Advance documents. Through the transfer of this information from the source folio to the Advance document, you can easily issue Advance invoices to companies regarding charges from the folios of the booking.
• Folios (new) - the charge source in the Advance documents based on Payment is now the payer of the source folio.
• POS - 'Credit Card Transaction Report' added. Through the new report, you can receive information of the details and status of the credit card transactions for a certain period.
• POS - we have added the new version of the Charge Control Report.

Fixed

• The direct link from the emails to Online check-in (Kiosk) used to load the home page and require login in some cases.
• Meeting Room Calendar - in the ultra compact view, the booking visualisation has been corrected.

Integrations

• The folio_ledger endpoints have been optimised and have a faster response now.
• Clock PMS API now allows you to manage the blocked rooms for an event. For more details please refer to the API documentation. 

Localizations

Belgian Federal Statistics export

The export has been redesigned and has a new fresh look. The export is accessible from Reports > Localizations > Federal Statistics. Some configurations of the new export should be done before using the export:

• Guest visit purpose field - Select the purpose of visit for every guest from this field. Please note the field should be preconfigured from Settings > All settings > Guest Profile Fields. The field should have the following Value List set:

      1: Leisure

      2: Business

      3: Groups

• Default visit purpose - fill in the default value for purpose of visit that to be exported if no purpose of visit is selected for a guest. Select 1 for Leisure, 2 for Business, 3 for Groups;
• Default country - Select which country should be exported if one is not selected for a guest;