New Features
SynXis - use of restrictions at Room Type and Rate Plan level
The restrictions at the Room Type and Rate Plan levels are now certified and ready for use. Previously, these restrictions directly affected every connected product, meaning that restricting one room type would lead to changes in 20 rates, for example. This resulted in sending 20 times more messages and slower communication. With the new certified feature, these restrictions are sent separately, not as part of each product. This means that a single message concerning the room type will close all associated rates in SynXis, speeding up communication and reaching the desired changes across all channels more quickly.
Additionally, this functionality allows for a reduction in the number of mapped rates. That is, you can transfer some of your rates as arbitrary and have them exist only in SynXis. Such rates will not be mapped, and no updates will be sent for them, but they will still adhere to the restrictions at the room type and rate category levels.
We would like to remind you that the restrictions at the Room Type and Rate Plan levels can be found in the rate management screen under the "More..." tab. We encourage you to use these levels when your goal is to limit room types, rate plans, or the entire hotel, rather than individual rates. This will reduce errors, speed up your work, and give you a clearer view of the higher-level restrictions.
To send separate messages to SynXis for these restrictions, rather than as part of the messages for each individual rate, you need to enable a setting concerning the activation of each one (1). Before doing this, it is advisable to contact SynXis support to check if this functionality is set up for use on their side. Additionally, you must add mapping between the rate plans in SynXis and the rate plans in Clock PMS+ (Rate Plans/Categories section in the SynXis settings). Regarding Room Types, the existing mapping for rates is used (Room Type/Rate section in the SynXis settings).
SynXis - Round Prices
Sometimes, if two systems or connected channels operate, one with tax-exclusive prices and the other with tax-inclusive prices, discrepancies may occur. For example, if Clock PMS+ sends a price of $200 including a 20% tax, and the channel operates with tax-exclusive prices, it might return a price of $166.66 without tax. In this situation, Clock PMS+ will add the tax and get $199.992, which rounds to $199.99. To address such discrepancies, we have added another setting to SynXis - "Round Prices" (2). If enabled, Clock PMS+ will perform an additional rounding to a whole number. Thus, amounts that, after tax is added, are $199.99 or $200.01, will be rounded to a whole number - $200.00. This applies to both room prices and the prices of additional services.
Improvements
Rate Plans - Archiving
We have added archiving for rate plans and those originating from tour operator contracts. If there are rate plans and rates from contracts that you no longer use, you can archive them to keep them from appearing on the lists. To archive :
- Open Rate Plans -> More... -> Rate Plans.
- Select the desired Plan
- In the edit screen, select "Archive" and Save.
- A screen will open showing the linked rates that will be archived. Confirm the archiving of the Plan and the associated rates.
Archived plans can be viewed in the list by selecting the second icon at the top and the "Show Archived" option. You can unarchive them if you open the edit screen and remove the check mark. Please note that the linked rates will not be unarchived automatically. Find them and unarchive those you wish.
BookDirect
If you use BookDirect, you can benefit from the following update: Icons for popular payment methods.
This will facilitate guests in navigating to their preferred payment method. To ensure the correct icons appear, make sure the following settings are configured:
- For Cards - go to Menu Settings -> All Settings -> Credit Cards - select the credit cards you support. These icons will appear regardless of the payment operator you use.
- Alternative Payment Methods - icons for popular methods are taken from the payment operator settings in Clock PMS+. This works for Adyen, WorldLine, and Stripe.
- Payment methods without a set icon will display with their commercial name.
New versions of reports
- New versions have been made for the following reports: "Accounts Receivable", "Charge Summary D-M-Y Report", "Closed Folios", "Closed Folios Summary Report", "Taxes", with a link to the old version for each.
- Additionally, the reports "Closed Folios", "Closed Folios Summary Report", and "Taxes" have been redesigned to operate asynchronously (in the background) and can handle larger data volumes..
- A new section "Voided folios, closed previously" in the new versions of the reports "Taxes" and "Closed Folios". In the new section, you will see the folios whose cancellation date falls within the report period, but their closing date is prior to the report period. This allows for the use of the reports in an "incremental" manner, without needing to review past periods and audit cancellations.
Clock POS
We have added a new version of the Closure screens, similar to those in the PMS. The new screens are optimised for handling larger volumes of data. There is a link to the old version in the new version.
Fixes
- On the booking screen, when a Block is selected for which no number of guests and rate are defined, the corresponding fields in the booking were cleared. Now the existing data will be preserved, if any..
- Automatic Payments (autopilot) + Adyen - we have made optimisations to the processing so that post-processing conflicts caused by asynchronous responses from the payment gateway are resolved or reduced.
Integrations
- Mailchimp - The integration has a new modernised look. It can be accessed by going to Settings > AppConnector > Mailchimp > Settings, once the integration is activated.
- INSEE - The export file has been optimised to fully comply with the latest INSEE requirements.
- Quickbooks - In some cases (mostly with credit notes), the quantity of the created charges was considered empty which was causing calculation difficulties and export errors. The behaviour of the export has been enhanced and it now successfully handles such charges.
- Hesta - To ensure statistics accuracy, the occupancy data of virtual rooms, being the alternative commercial representations of existing physical rooms, is not exported, if the property has such rooms.
- AJPES - A new document type mapping feature has been added to the interface settings screen (Reports > All reports > Localizations > Slovenian Ajpes Report > Settings). This enhancement allows you to easily 'translate' the document types configured in Clock PMS+ to those required by AJPES. It is especially useful if you use Clock's built-in ID Processor service. If no mappings are configured, the document types will be exported as originally entered.
- LightSpeed POS K series - The end-of-day revenue transfer procedure has been enhanced to prevent errors when the item quantity is zero.
- LightSpeed POS K series - The interface configuration has been optimised for better usability. The end-of-day activation and configuration process is now easier and more intuitive. You can activate the end-of-day transfer and create a Clock POS account to which revenue will be transferred for consolidated reports. During this process, you can configure the first revenue date (past or future) for the transfer. Note that the payment type mapping option will only be available if the payment transfer is enabled.
- IDeaS - The block data provisioning to IDeaS has been redesigned and now it exports not only the rate-calculated price, but also the manual price, if any.
- API:
- products endpoint - The behaviour has been streamlined to match the BookDirect functionality when a block code is used in combination with a manual price.
- charges_bulk endpoint - The new feature allows you to pass the 'charge_template_id' parameter, utilizing the details of the charge template for the charges to be created. You only need to include the parameters overriding the configured values in the charge template like price, text, print_text, etc. This way the process of charge creation is made a lot easier and more reliable.