Clock PMS+ Update (14 Jan 2025)

New Functionalities

Import of Guests/Rooming Lists

For this new module, we used an innovative and unique approach to provide a powerful tool that helps the hotel easily process groups of any size. This isn't just an "import" from a structured file. It's an interactive assistant covering the process from handling data received from the group organizer to creating bookings.

The biggest challenge was how to devise an assistant that would work with all kinds of files with different types and structures.

Here's a summary of the functions:

• Works with all input formats: pdf, doc, txt, xls, email, etc. - anything from which you can copy text;
• In real time the system shows how it "understands" the distribution of guests by rooms, even while you are editing the input data;
• Saves the original descriptions from the guest list as notes, so you can use them in the following steps;
• Works with a different number of guest names, depending on the input data;
• Can recognize guest titles;
• You can specify whether guests are adults or children, as well as the age of the children;
• Can understand the reference number and date of each booking;
• Automatically transfers information from the Company, Event and Block, so you don't have to fill it in manually;
• Provides real-time information about the remaining blocked rooms, as you distribute rooms across the blocks.
• Allows you to edit all fields before importing;
• Allows for intermediate saving and reading to/from an attached file to the event before the final import.

Processing a Guest/Rooming List happens in three steps:

1. Preparation of the text of the Guest/Rooming list, so that it is divided by Rooms.
2. Distribution of Rooms by Blocks (if any).
3. Completing the remaining booking fields, Reviewing and Saving the bookings.

Preparation of the text of the Guest/Rooming list.

Open the new import screen. If you are in the Event, click the Guests/Rooming list - import button in the Block section or from the main navigation - the Bookings section.

Getting started is simple. Open the file containing the Guest/Rooming list you received from your partner, copy its contents, and paste them into the field on the left (1).

In real-time, you will see in the right part (2) how the system has "understood" the file. Follow a few simple rules to distribute guests by rooms, and to allow the system to extract as much information as possible, without the need for manual entry.

• Copy and paste the desired text from your Rooming list. All formats are supported (email, pdf, xls, doc, jpg, txt, others).
• Select the name format, and whether the entered list includes titles.
• Place the guest names at the beginning of the line.
• Complex names, made up of many parts, should be connected with "_", which will be removed automatically after import. Example: "Adria van der Berg" > "Adria van_der_Berg".
• The text entered after the guest names is used as a note.
• To separate guests by rooms, use a blank line.
• '@' at the beginning of the line marks the guest as a child, and the number specifies the children's age (@, @2, @10). To make a quick change and mark the guest as an adult, click the red 'Adult' button.
• '-' at the beginning of the line marks the text as a note and carries it over to the next steps.
• To extract the Reference number and Date, place '#' before the booking number and '/' before the date. (#BO23-12345/01.01.2024)

For additional ease in preparing the rooms, we have added some quick functions - the buttons above the editor on the left.

• Choose what guest data you have - titles and the number and order of the names (3);
• Button for quickly removing blank lines (4) in the entire text;
• Button for quickly splitting the selected lines into one guest per room (5);
• Button for quickly distributing the selected lines into two guests per room (6);
• Button for quickly merging selected names (7), if they are from several words "von der Leyen" -> "von_der_Leyen".

All specified or missed data here can be filled in at the last step.

Distribution of Rooms by Blocks (if any)

At this step, you will define the Company, Agent, Event (8) and Blocks (9) to which the bookings are related. If you started the process from a specific Event, this data is already filled in. If the event has blocks, you can choose which rooms belong to which block.

As you distribute the blocks, you will see for each block - the number of blocked remaining rooms, which will decrease as you link the rooms to the blocks. These numbers are aggregated and show the minimum number of rooms in the block for the entire period. In certain situations, these aggregated numbers may not be accurate enough - for example, if you book several consecutive periods where the rooms do not overlap. In such situations, you can use the detailed view of the Block Pickup Report, to which we have added a quick link.

The system automatically fills in the following fields for future bookings, based on what you have selected.

• Period - from the Event;
• Room Type - from the Block;
• Rate and Manual price - from the Block;
• Guarantee Policy and Meals - from the Rate of the Block;
• Colour, Customer cost center and Marketing Segmentations - from the Event.

And here's something interesting! In the Event, we've added a new field: "Default Transfer Folio". If you fill in an Event folio in this field, the bookings will be created with this folio selected for transfer. In this case, the charges from the rates will be automatically formed and maintained in the Event folio, including upon extension, change of stay or recalculation.

Keep in mind, however, that the Company, Agent, and Event are not mandatory - you can import bookings without them. In such cases, the booking data will not be filled in automatically, and you will fill them in at the next step.

Completing the remaining booking fields and Preview

At this last step, you have the opportunity to review all the bookings that will be created. You can also change all automatically filled data or add new ones.

In the booking table, in the header, you will notice that for certain columns there is an edit button (10). If you select it, you will be able to fill in the data for the guests or booking directly in the table.

You can also use the mass еdit screen (11). Select the bookings and click the edit button (11) in the upper left. Fill in the fields you want to update and save. To delete the content of already filled fields - select the delete icon button to the right of the field.

Here are some interesting functions you can use:

• In addition to bookings for rooms, you can also create bookings for guests without stays at the hotel - from the edit form, select the checkbox "Require Room Resource" (12) to 'No'.
• You can prevent the import of certain rooms if you decide that bookings should not be created for them - select the field "Hold the import" (14) to 'Yes'
• And finally, another interesting feature - "Split on check-in" (13). We know that in many situations you need to use the "sharing" function of a room, where two bookings are accommodated in one room. We've added a new functionality that allows you to mark the rooms that will have "shared" bookings in advance. See more about this below.

Automatic closing of folios for fully paid bookings in BookDirect and Check-in Kiosk

For countries whose legislation requires the issuance of a document to the customer, upon full prepayment for services, we have added a new functionality for BookDirect and the Kiosk. For both products, after activating the respective new setting, the system will close the folio if it is fully paid. In turn, the closing can send the closed document to the customer's email (existing functionality). Here are a few details:

• To activate the function, select the settings "Issue document for fully paid bookings " (for BookDirect) and "Close folio after payment" (for Check-in Kiosk). Additionally, there are also settings for the type of document to be used when closing.

• Closing the folio will trigger automatically if, after payment, the folio balance is 0, i.e., the folio is fully paid.
• In BookDirect, if several bookings are created and the payment is for their full amounts, all charges will be transferred to the first folio, which will be closed automatically if its balance is 0.
• If the settings require fiscalisation, it will be activated and the folio will be fiscalised.

Automation of Tax Changes

We know that legislation and tax rates, albeit rarely, change. This change creates numerous difficulties associated with manually updating the tax rates in open folios and charge templates. Therefore, we have created a special module to help you automate this process. In it, you can set rules for the system to change taxes. The change can happen automatically on a given date, or you can activate the change manually. Here are more details:

• To configure the new module, open Settings -> All Settings -> Charges & Taxes -> Tax change policy
• Add a new policy - fill in a description to guide you on what the change will be.
• Choose whether you want the tax change to affect charge templates (15) and/or charges in open folios (16).
• If it concerns the charges in open folios, the system will filter the charges whose revenue date is AFTER the date filled in the "After revenue date" field (17) and will update only them. If you want to change all charges in open folios, fill in some past date in this field.
• If you want the change policy to be executed automatically, fill in the "Schedule date" field (18). In that case, the policy will activate automatically, shortly after the change of date.
• Add the rules (19) to be executed. For each rule, fill in - which revenue group it relates to and possibly which category. Also fill in the current tax rate and the new tax rate.
• When adding rules, you can use their order to save a lot of rules in more complex cases.

• If you use tax codes and want to change them, fill them in as well - the old code and the new tax code with which you want to replace it.
• You can also execute the policy manually - open the "STATUS" screen and click the "Execute" button.
• In the Status screen, you can check the execution status of the policy. It is executed regardless of whether the screen is open or not.

Improvements

Folios

• Discounts on transfers from POS - When applying a discount, you can now also select the revenue groups from the POS, which will also discount and transfer the charges from the POS.
• Maximum % Discount in PMS and POS - setting for each user. We have added a new setting to each user "Max discount percentage". It is located in the user's edit section, under the User tab. By default, the field is empty, which means there is no limit. If you fill in the field with the desired percentage:
  • When using the discount functions in the PMS and POS, the system will control the entered percentage to not exceed the one set for the user.
  • If a discount  has already been added in the folio, the system will not allow a second one to be added, regardless of the percentage. In such situations, you first need to cancel the old discount before adding a new one.
• Quick function to create a deposit folio based only on the accommodation charges - If you issue deposit folios for partial payments received for the booking, the new function can help you. The existing functionality allowed you to create a deposit folio based on all charges or based on selected charges. The new function allows you to quickly issue a deposit folio, taking into account only the accommodation charges, without having to select them one by one. Find the new function in the folio screen, the charges section -> the All button -> "Create Advance Invoice - Rooms/Packages".
• "Single row folio" separates the used Advance - So far, the printout grouped all charges solely by tax groups. Advance consumption is a negative operation that reduces the amount. If it is not separated on a separate line, the nature of the folio changes and the amount of services provided is not clear, because the group comes out with a reduced value or directly with zero. Therefore, we have added another criterion for separating the rows - if there are charges from Advance consumption in the folio, they also appear on separate lines.
• Printing the folio - a new option to hide the texts "For Payment" and "Paid". For hotels that do not use deferred payments, organised in Clock PMS+, and these labels on the folio confuse the counterparties, you can now hide them from the standard printouts in the folios. The settings for showing/hiding different elements from the standard folio printouts are located in Settings -> All Settings -> Documents -> Folio Printing - defaults. The new option added there is "Hide  'For payment' and 'Paid'  labels".
• When editing company or profile data, we have added a button to open the company/profile itself. This way, you can edit all fields, including custom fields.
• Folio - the loading of charges is optimised and much faster, for situations when the charges are relatively few, but the number of bookings is larger. 

Events

• Archiving Meeting Rooms and Restaurants - By archiving, you can hide from the lists and calendar the rooms that no longer exist due to renovation or other reasons. Because they have been used in old bookings, they cannot be deleted, but must be archived. Archiving will hide them for future use and exclude them as a unit from the licensing. The new functionality is related to two new fields in the Meeting Rooms and Restaurants:
  • Active from date - This field is mandatory. When creating a Meeting Room/Restaurant, fill in the date from which the room or restaurant is operational. For existing rooms and restaurants, the field is automatically populated. 
  • Active to date - When you decide to archive a Meeting Room or Restaurant, fill in the date from which the room is out of operation in this field. Do not fill in a date in the future, because after you fill in any date, the room/restaurant will be archived and will not be visible in the lists.
• Size of the Meeting Rooms/Restaurants - We have added a new field for the size of the room to each Meeting Room/Restaurant. In addition to serving as information in the Calendar, the field is intended for future statistical/KPI reports. To clarify the unit of measure of the values filled in each Meeting Room/Restaurant, we have added another field where you can fill in text for the unit of measure itself (e.g. 'm2', 'ft2', ...). By default, it is 'm2'. The setting is located in  Settings -> All Settings -> MICE -> General.
• Default Transfer Folio - In the Event screen, we have added a new field in the Folios section - Default Transfer Folio. The field is intended to transfer information to Bookings when you create bookings for the Event through the new "Guests / Rooming List Import" screen. The folio, selected in "Default Transfer Folio" will be transferred to the booking - in the "Transfer to Company/Agent folio" option. This is the easiest way for all charges from the rates to be directed to one, summarising folio for the Event. Regarding the Booking and the "Transfer to Company/Agent folio" option, we remind you that the charges from the rate, the rate package and the city tax are transferred to the folio of the Event/Company. The charges selected in the booking (Daily charges), the manually made charges, as well as the automatic ones related to the room type, are directed to the booking's folio. At the moment, the new field in the event "Default Transfer Folio" is only used via "Guests / Rooming List - import", but soon it will also be possible to use it when manually creating bookings for an Event.
• Charge transfers - This option determines whether charges can be transferred to the Event or Company's folio. The option is set in the company itself and concerns the company's folios and the folios of the company's events. We have moved the Charge transfers field from the Company to the Event screen. This makes it easy and quick to access. We have added the information in the Folios section, as well as the ability to quickly open the Company and change the setting.

• We have added a new BEO template for the visual editor, which contains both gross and net amounts for all elements. This will give your counterparties clearer information about the value of the Event.

Splitting bookings for easier room sharing.

In different situations, two bookings need to share the same room. Cases requiring this may be a combination of individual bookings or bookings from different companies, etc. Sharing a room by two bookings required that a room number be pre-allocated to both bookings. This pre-allocation creates inconveniences in the management of the rooms. We have added new functionality to facilitate room sharing. Here are details about it:

• There is no need to create two bookings in advance. Create one booking for two or more guests and check the option "Split additional guests on check-in", available under the "Adults / Children" fields.
• Upon check-in, the system will automatically split the booking into two, with the main guest remaining in the first booking and the other guests being transferred to the new booking. The two bookings will share the same room.
• The second booking created by the splitting, is a copy of the first one, with all the main data being transferred. There is a peculiarity in the number of the second booking. Instead of receiving a new number, as is usual when copying, the number of the second booking is like the number of the first one with ".2" added at the end. That is, if the original number was "L12002", the number of the split booking will be "L12002.2". 
• When splitting the bookings, the price will also be split. The split is proportional to the guests. This means that if there are 2 guests, the price will be split in two, and if there are three guests - the first booking (with the main guest) will receive 1/3 of the price, and the second (with 2 guests) 2/3 of the price. The split price is recorded as a manual price in the two bookings.
• The split function can also be invoked manually. This can be done both before check-in and after check-in. The requirement is that the booking has an allocated room and that there are more than one guest (profiles) added. You can access the new function from the booking preview screen using the "Functions" button.

Other improvements

• Setup of the colour of the navigation bar - When you use multiple hotels and each hotel is on a separate tab in the browser, you have to check the name of the hotel to know which hotel you are working in at the moment. To make this task easier, you can now choose a colour for the navigation bar for each individual hotel. In this way, you will find it much easier to orient yourself in which of the hotels you are at a given moment. The new setting is located in Settings -> All Settings -> Hotel -> User Interface. There are two settings - for the background colour and the font colour. Save after changing them to see the effect. 
• All OOS statuses for a given room - You can easily see a list of all entered OOS statuses for a specific room. Open Settings -> All Settings -> Rooms -> Rooms Find the room and open the edit screen. At the bottom of the screen, select the "Room statuses" button. From there, you can delete incorrectly entered statuses, as well as see a log of the changes to the OOS statuses. 
• Meals - summary report - we have added a filter by restaurant. This will allow properties with more restaurants to get a clearer forecast for dining. 
• In BookDirect - we have added explanatory texts to the prices as to whether the prices include or exclude taxes. With this, in addition to making it clearer for guests, we also satisfy the requirements of the meta-search providers.
• In the "Housekeeping Tasks" screen - we have added a filter by sector. 
• Arrivals/Departures Summary report - we have added another column for the occupied rooms from the blocks. The residual block is displayed. Through the new data, you can make much more accurate planning of the expected occupancy. The column has been added only in the new report, which you can find in "All Reports (new)".

Fixes

• Datecs fiscalisation - an issue with fiscalisation of fractional quantities smaller than 1 (for example 0.25) has been eliminated. In such fractional quantities, in rare situations, the receipt was not fiscalised due to differences in rounding. 
• An issue has been resolved where, if a quantity greater than 1 is specified in a charge template associated with the rate, that quantity is charged, instead of charging the correct quantity - 1.
• Event templates - the automatic allocation of Meeting Rooms and Restaurants was not correct if Layout was selected. The automatic logic did not correctly account for either the selected Layout or the capacity of the rooms for it.
• D-edge - we have changed the algorithm for extracting information about the Agent, by looking at the two possible places where it can be provided.
• When using the e-menu from the POS for room service from the guest's Self Service Portal, in rare situations, when there is no open folio in the booking, an error occurred during the transfer from the POS to the hotel account.
• Occupancy/Revenue Forecast and Pace report - reported revenue from expired or consumed blocks. Revenue is now reported on the remaining number of rooms in the block.
• Housekeeping Tasks screen - in older versions of Chrome, an error occurred when editing tasks or automatic allocation. Also, an error occurred when trying to edit a task and set 0 credits. 

Integrations

• AppConnector - In some cases, the Atomize integration appeared to be enabled, even though it wasn't;
• SALTO KS - Salto's newest access control solution, SALTO KS, has been integrated and your guests can now easily access their rooms and other restricted areas of the hotel conveniently from their Self Service Portal. More information about the integration and how it can be configured can be found HERE;
• Gastronovi POS - The charges coming from the hotel and end-of-day transfer were missing the charge custom fields data. This is now fixed and the custom fields are properly filled in;
• ROMANIAN eFactura integration - To comply with the requirement for the electronic sending of documents in Romania, we have integrated an automated interface with eFactura. An article with a description and configuration information will follow!
• GERMAN fiscalisation - The statuses of the Daily Closures and Dsfinvk Reports were not always properly received form Fiskaly, causing the Daily Closures to appear as PENDING or displaying error. Now it is fixed.
• BELGIUM Federal Statistics - The export contained data of all guests, as now this is fixed , and only the data of the main booker is sent;