Clock PMS+ Update (24 Mar 2025)

New features

Event Sales Pipeline

Many of you wanted us to find a solution to the case study related to the management of Event Sales Pipelines. Events have a more complex sales process that goes through different steps. Tracking the progress of each deal requires more than the currently available statuses. Additionally, each hotel has its own habits and its own deal management procedure. To solve the case studies related to sales organization, we added “Sale Stages as well as new Pipeline screen to focus on the clear management of all transactions.

What are Sale Stages?

“Sale Stages" is a new field on the Event screen to manage its status. What's different from the previous statuses is that the Sales Stage values are fully customizable - that is, you can set the values to what best suits your needs.

It's important to note that we're keeping the old way of working as well. If you do not add any stages, the screens do not change and  will show the old status fields. This important feature will enable you, when you are ready, to smoothly transition to a new work organization - more flexible and responsive to your needs.

Our plans are to add the same Sales Stages for bookings and accordingly, they will also enter into Piреline. Stay tuned for our updates!

The new Sales Stage settings are located in Settings -> MICE -> Sale Stages.

• Add the Sales Stages you want;
• The short name is visible in tables and locations where space is limited;
• The colour helps you navigate and identify the different stages more easily. The same can be used in the Activities Calendar (see below).
• The sort order is important. It determines the order of the milestones in the Pipeline, and also the function to quickly move to the next status.
• Guarantee status and Check-in status - These are the "base" or existing statuses. Select the values to which the sales stage corresponds to the base statuses. When you select a Sale Stage in the event, its base statuses will change to those set in the stage.
• Include in Pipeline view - Whether this stage is selected by default to display in the Pipeline screen.
• You can delete a stage if it is not selected in any Event.

Event 

On the new event screen and on the edit screen, you will now be able to choose from the new Sale Stages. By default, the first stage is available, depending on the sort order you have set.

On the edit screen, the next status is offered for quick selection. For more options, select  "More...",  where you will see all the stages.

The new Sale Stages allow "exceptions" for a specific Event. We have mentioned that the base Event statuses change from those set in the Sale Stage, however you may need exceptions. For example, if the Event is in the "BEO Waiting" stage, which you have set to have the "Optional" guarantee status. But if you have a reason to make the given Event have a guarantee status of "Guaranteed", you have two options:

1. Have individual sale stages for all situations - for example, "BEO Waiting" and "BEO Waiting/Guaranteed", but such an approach would increase the number of stages

   or

2. To make an exception for the Event itself and make it "Guaranteed" without changing its Sale Stage. This can be done from the "More.." screen of the status change. There, select "Custom status" and choose what the Guaranteed or Check-in status should be for that Event. Note that the next  Sale Stage change, will bring its own status and the exception will drop. From the same screen, you can remove the Sale Stage of the Arrangement if for any reason you want to do so.

We have added two new fields to the Arrangement that will help you manage sales - Expected Value of the deal and Expected Close Date of the deal. Both fields can be found on the new Event screen, and on the edit they are under the deposit - "Expected".

Pipeline

Pipeline is a special new screen that focuses on sales management and shows events in the perspective of their sale stages. You can open it from the Event -> Pipeline navigation menu. If you are in search of events, you will find it as a new quick access tab.

What options does the screen have:

• By default, the stages you have marked as "Include in Pipeline view" are selected
• You can choose any combination of stages you wish to include in the screen.
• The screen has three views:  Traditional "Pipeline" view, Compact view and Print-friendly Table view. You can change them quickly through a button in the upper right corner.
• On the screen, you can see the estimated revenue amounts for each stage and the events with that milestone.
• Directly you can edit the expected value and end date of each event.
• You have multiple options to filter the events:  
  • Depending on the expected value - more or less than a specified value;
  • Expected close date - before or after a specified date.
  • PAX of the event - more or less than the specified guest count.
  • Arrival period of the event;
  • Assigned to - user or department;
  • Marketing Metrics - Source, Channel, Segment;
  • Amount currency is (if using more than one currency).
• You can also  change how events are sorted: ascending or descending by creation date, arrival date, company, expected deal value, and expected deal close date.
  • Quick buttons to change the status of the Event. One quick button to move the event to the adjacent right status and one button to select any status from the list. If you select a status that cancels the event, the cancel screen will open for you to select the necessary options.

Activity Calendar

In the Activity Calendar you can select the new option to colour the activities in the colour of the Sale Stage. In the calendar, select the settings icon, top right and enable "Use Sale Stage colours". This new option gives you full control over the colours in the calendar, as you can always change the colours of the Sale Stages to suit your needs.

One more change is that in this colour mode ("Use Sale Stage colours") the colour selected in the Event is also taken into account. The Event colour takes priority over the Sale Stage colour and the activities will be coloured in the colour selected in the Event.

"Use Sale Stage colours" is remembered for the current device and you do not need to select it again the next time you open the calendar.

Search - Event

In the Events search, if Sales Stages are set, they are displayed as the main option to select. Searching by base statuses is kept- to view them select "Show All". A new column for Sale Stage has also been added.

Incoming emails for the Event

So far in the Event, you've seen the emails you've sent that you've created from the Event screen itself - whether they're BEOs, other templates, or newly created emails. However, this is far from all correspondence with the customer. Neither the emails you received from the client, nor your replies if they were sent directly from your inbox were visible. We decided to improve this. You will now be able to see the related correspondence with the customer. To do this, you need to give the system access to your general mailbox (IMAP server) from which you send and receive mail (for example [email protected]). Clock will regularly scan the emails in the mailbox, detect sent and received emails related to previous correspondence in the Event and add them to the email list in the Event.

The system currently detects links when they are a follow-up correspondence to a letter sent from the Event screen. We also plan to add the ability for initial emails that have no information about what they refer to to be subsequently linked to an Event. When we add this feature as well, you will have the full archive of correspondence available directly in the Event itself.

You can link a single mailbox (box) to the system, if you use different addresses to communicate with your customers, then you can do the following: form a summary mailbox - a new dedicated, summary address - for example [email protected]. Then add rules to each of the addresses you use to copy the received and sent emails to the general box. This will form a summary mailbox for the system to keep track of and you will have the complete correspondence.

To configure the connection,navigate to menu All Settings -> System -> IMAP Settings.

Improvements

New screens - Arrivals, Departures, In Hotel and Bookings - Advanced Search

We have completely redesigned the main booking search screens - Arrivals, Departures, In Hotel and Booking Advanced Search. They are now significantly more interactive, functional and fast, and we've increased their performance by an impressive 400%. So you can serve your guests faster and more efficiently. You can access the new screens by selecting Bookings from the navigation menu and then clicking on the "NEW" button in the appropriate row.

Here's what's new on the screens:

• All guests from the booking - Searching by guest details - name, email, phone number, now searches not only the details of the main guest but also additional guests and the contact person. Also, the names of all guests and the contact person are visible in the results table. We've added an option for whether to display all guests or just the primary guest. This way you can choose between a more compact or detailed view. Especially for the operational screens (Arrivals, Departures, In Hotel) changing this option does not cause a screen reload and changes the view instantly.
• Interactively display and hide notes - Similar to the above option, for Arrivals, Departures and In Hotel, changing this option does not cause the screen to reload.
• We have added the colour of the booking in the numbers column - This will make this field even more useful.
• Room Upgrade - In all searches, you can now distinguish the bookings that have a Room Upgrade. We have added an icon (up arrow) in front of the room type/room number to indicate the availability of an upgrade. And there is now a filter in the Advanced Search that can be used to find all bookings with a Room Upgrade.

• The mass functions are now accessible from the button with the dots - top right.
• New mass function: Assign room from number - In this allocation model, the system sorts rooms by name and selects rooms sequentially from a certain number up or down. You can use the function to assign rooms to groups so that they are close together. If you do not fill in a number, the allocation will be done according to the allocation model set in the settings: Ordered, Random, Equal usage, Dense or Occupancy dependent. 
• New mass feature - Add Charges - With the new feature you can select multiple bookings from the list and charge all of them for one or more services. Especially useful for hotels handling multiple groups, this feature will minimise some routine tasks to a few clicks. From the mass functions, select Folios->Add Charges.
• New mass feature - Notes - You can now add notes for an entire group. You can add notes of different types at once: Notes, Meal Notes, Housekeeping Notes and Client Requests. Select the mass functions ->Notes button.

• Bookings Advanced Search - in the Block column, we have added room type information

Bookings Advanced Search 

We've made a major upgrade to the search personalisation capabilities, and with the new powerful mechanism, you can easily and quickly build your own reports regarding your booking lists. This greatly expands the way you use the screen and its usefulness.

Customisation options:

• Open the customisation screen - in the "Custom views" field, select the Edit button.

• Select the options whether to see the Booking Notes and All Guests (including the contact person)
• Columns - Select which columns to see in the report. You have a choice of 44 columns to show or hide.
• Columns order - Arrange the columns so that they are most convenient for you. Choose whether the booking number should be the first or last column. Arrange the information according to your needs.
• Group by - Choose what to group the bookings by. Grouping will be done by the value of the selected field, it can be Status, Room Type, Date or any of the 44 fields. For each of the groups you will get the totals - number of bookings in the group, number of Adults, Children and total number of guests.
• Sort order - Select by which field the data in the report should be sorted.
• Click Apply - You will see the result, and the changes made will be remembered for the current device and you open the Advanced search.

Custom view

Use the Apply button (described above) to change the main view of the Advanced Search. However, what if you want to have several different views to choose from? We've added that option as well. You can create many personalised views, and for each you choose the columns, arrangement, sorting, and grouping. Save each view so you can reuse it. What's more, saved views are available to all users in the account. This enables you to create standardised reports for different purposes that can be used by all users and on all jobs. Here's how to create a personalised view:

• Open the customisation screen;
• You can change the columns, arrangement, sorting and grouping;
• From the Apply button, select the drop-down menu and “Save as”;
• Enter a name for the report and save;
• If you want to change the saved personal view, the easiest way is to select it from the list on the left, change the settings and select “Save as”. If you keep the same view name, it will update. If you change the name, it will be saved as a new view.
• You can delete a personal view with the delete button at the end of its row.

• In the parameters and filters screen, you can select the view to apply. In the “Custom views” field, you will  see a list of all views, just select the one you want to use.
• After generating the report, you can also quickly change its view. Click the customise button in the top right corner. A list of all saved personal views will open – select the one that best suits your needs.

Other improvements

• Guests / Rooming List Import - two new improvements to our new functionality:  
  • Guest email recognition - If emails are present in the rooming list, they will be automatically recognized and associated with the guest.
  • Group reference number - When using the old "Create Multiple" booking functionality, all bookings get a common reference number starting with # and thus a group of bookings is formed, even if they do not have an Event. We have added the same functionality in Guests / Rooming List Import. If in the data source (first page), there are no reference numbers set (numbers starting with #), then in the second step a common number is offered (it is automatically filled in and corresponds to the date and time). You can remove or change it if you wish. This number will be carried over to the bookings and they will form a group of bookings.
• ID Processor - we have switched to a new version of the software to recognise and extract data from guest passports and documents. In the new version, more documents are recognised and recognition has been improved. If you don't use the ID Processor yet, you can read more about it in The ID Processor
• Deposit Ledger (v2) - in the Beginning Balance sections, I now have only one value - the balance itself. We removed the other amounts because they were confusing users.
• Import bookings from CSV - we added an option to disable the occupancy check. This way, we make it possible to import shared bookings. We advise you not to use this option unless you have a good reason to turn off occupancy checking.
• We have added a new currency - the Caribbean guilder (XCG).

Fixes

• Booking Segmentation Report and Charge Segmentation Report - we fixed an issue where the label of the selected segments and the ordering of the segments in it did not match the generated data.
• Adyen payout reconcile - we fixed an issue where amounts of certain currencies were treated in cents and divided by 100. Also system users were shown with an ID (code) instead of a name.
• Activity Calendar - we fixed a problem with shading of derivative usage of meeting rooms when the usage refers to more than one day.
• In charges, we corrected an issue where, in certain situations, the charge text was also recorded as print text. As a consequence, errors could occur related to the rights to edit the print text or increase the number of charges when recalculating.

Localisations

• Later this week: Bulgaria - Fiscalisation - We've added a new setting for how discounts and used advances are fiscalised. Currently, negative rows are fiscalised as "adjustments". This is because the adjustments function of the fiscal device can accept a tax group and is therefore the most convenient for this operation. The law on the other hand requires that the "Discount" function be used. However, the discount does not work with a tax group and there are many more limitations in using it. You can now choose which way to fiscalise discounts and deducted advances - by Adjustment or Discount. Consult our support team for the advantages and disadvantages of both methods.
• Bulgaria - ESTI- We have improved data export in several aspects:
  • Guest deletion. The export detects situations where a guest has been exported to ESTI and then deleted from the system. In such cases, the ESTI export issues a delete command. This feature is also useful when using the new functionality to separate guests into a new booking, where the guest will be deleted from one booking and added as a new guest to another booking.
  • For each export, you can now check the details it contains. This way you can audit the exports that have been made and their contents.
  • To make the consistency of the exports clear, we added the following organisation: to create a new export, you must first specify the status of the previous export - whether it was successfully sent to ESTI or had errors and was rejected. Otherwise, when you try to create a new export file, the system will return an error message.
  • When generating the data, if there is missing guest information that is required by the ESTI but missing in the system, you will see a warning icon for the corresponding box in the table. This will help you find the problems much faster and correct them. Full information on exporting to ESTI can be found at HERE.
• Romania -  eFactura
  • When a document is billed to a person the CNP is used as an identifier for eFactura. If the CNP is not provided by the customer, it is defaulted to '0000000000000';
  • New sending URLs were added for documents issued to companies;

Integrations

• Private Analytics / Google BigQuery:  
  • A new field report_segment_id has been added to the Charges table. The change allows the charge segmentation information to be accessed easily.;
  • A new field self_pre_checked_in has been added to the Bookings table. The field contains the date and time when the guests performed a self check-in and can be used for the self check-in usage analysis;
• API
  • When a planned booking room change is confirmed, it is considered as a booking update and hence included in booking_update notifications;
  • The following new parameters have been added to bookings endpoint to allow easier interpretation of the booking_room_changes information:
    • current_room_id - The parameter shows the current room_id of the booking in case the booking was moved to another one and it is different that the arrival_room_id;
    • room_change_confirmed_at -When the current_room_id change was confirmed.
• Lightspeed POS L Series - Fixed visualisation issue for charges transfered form deleted Lightspeed POS L Series. Thoske charges were generating errors in the folio screen and this error is now fixed.
• QuickBooks Online - Update to the latest QuickBooks Online API microversion to futureproff the integration.