Booking: Daily Charges
We have added a new feature to quickly charge various services for the booking period. Furthermore, for your convenience, the charged services are synchronised with the booking period and if the period is changed, the charges are automatically corrected.
How to use
- The selected charge templates are shown in the 'Daily Charges' section on the booking edit screen as checkboxes.
- The ticked checkboxes are automatically charged for each day of the booking period.
- If the booking period is changed, the unnecessary charges are automatically voided, and the missing ones are added.
- It is possible to manually change a charge price and it will be stored.
How to set up
- Add charge templates of your choosing, if not added yet
- On the Charge Template screen (Settings - Charge Templates), find the Booking Charge Templates section (at the bottom of the screen) and click 'Edit'
- Tick the checkboxes of the charge templates you want to see in the booking. Save.
- The selected charge templates will appear as checkboxes on the booking edit screen.
<[>Booking daily charges. Checkboxes in booking for fast charging.
Inventory Items
We have added a new functionality to let you track services with limited availability like 'Parking spaces', 'Baby cots', etc. You can easily check their availability for a given period through a new report specially designed for this purpose. The new feature is also linked to the WRS, as it automatically stops the sales of these services when they are not available for the period of a booking.
How it works
The new daily capacity tracking functionality is based on:
- Charge templates with set-up 'Capacity' and 'Inventory Code'
- The posted charges with their inventory code, quantities and service date.
For the charge templates whose availability you need to track on a daily basis, do the following settings:
- Daily capacity- this is the maximum quantity of a service you can sell for a day. Charge template example: 'Parking spaces (guests)', set the number of parking spaces to 20.
- Inventory code. Specify the inventory code and then use it to track the availability. For example: 'PARKING'
Open the 'Charge Template Availability Report'. Select the period, tick the 'Detailed by days' checkbox and run the report.
For each day of the period, you'll see the available parking spaces - 20.
The remaining availability, parking spaces in our example, is calculated on the basis of the charges containing the same Inventory code as the 'PARKING' charge template and the respective quantities of these charges. If you post a charge to a folio with the following quantity: 2, date: 01/01 and Inventory code: 'PARKING', then the Charge Template Availability Report will show availability of 18 for the date: 01/01.
Using the other new feature – 'Booking: Daily Charges', you can set the 'Parking spaces (guests)' charge template to appear in bookings for fast selection and charging on a daily basis for the booking period. Furthermore, we have added a quick link to Charge Template Availability Report on the booking edit screen. The report is run for the booking period and you can easily check the availability of each service.
Available charge template. Fast link from booking screen/
Also, you can sell one and the same availability at different prices.
For example, you can offer the parking spaces at different prices to hotel guests and external customers. To do so, create two charge templates with different prices: Parking spaces (guests) and Parking space (external) and specify one and the same inventory code: 'PARKING' and capacity of 20. The sale of each of them will reduce the availability for both hotel guests and external customers, as both services have one and the same inventory code.
It is even possible to set different capacity for a service. For example, set Parking spaces (guests) to 20, and Parking spaces (external) - 10. This way you will limit the sale of parking spaces to external customers to no more than 10 spaces. Once again, with each sale, the availability for both hotel guests and external customers will simultaneously be reduced.
Reusable Rate Packages
Up till now, the rate feature had the option to define package elements, however, you needed to set these package elements separately for each rate, even when these elements were the same. This was a bit inconvenient. We have changed the way these packages and their elements are defined. Now they are set separately from rates and then can be be easily selected in a rate, if necessary. In other words, each package is set only once and can be used on multiple occasions (in many rates). This makes the management of packages and rates really easy. Furthermore, now you can specify package element quantities and track them in the reports. The existing packages (defined in the settings of rates before) are stored and transferred as separate packages, i.e. you can continue using them without any additional settings on your part.
To set up the new packages:
- Go to 'Settings' - 'Rate Package'.
- On the Rate Package screen, you can see the separate rate packages and the rates they are used with.
- Add a new package and its elements. As before, the values of the package elements are deducted from the rate prices and are posted as separate charges. We have paid attention to another specifics you often ask about - if it is possible for package elements not to be visible to your guests. You can use the print text field, if you need these package elements to be shown in another way on guests' folios. For example, if you set one and the same 'print text', let's say 'Room', to all elements of the package, then these charges will be summed and shown in one line only when the 'By Date' or 'Compact' folio view used.
- Save
- Find the rate you need on the Rate search screen.
- Select Edit/Tags (from the dropdown menu next to the rate)
- In the 'Rate package' field, select the respective package. Save.
- Repeat the last steps with the rates having the same package.
- If you need to delete a package, you can do it from the edit screen of the package, but, first, make sure it is not used by any rate.
Mobile Keys & SALTO
We have added an interface to the SALTO access control system. Apart from using it to issue standard room key cards, you can also issue mobile keys for your guests to open their rooms through their smartphones.
Mobile app opens the room door
How mobile keys work
- Your guests need to install a special app on their mobile phones (Android or iPhone) - JustIN Mobile.For your guests' convenience, you can add a 'JustIN Mobile' link (or QR code) to the confirmation letters:
- Click the Key button on the booking screen or the booking search screens.
- Select 'Mobile Key' and the country code, check or enter the phone number (the phone number from the booking is suggested).
- Issue the key.
- Please pay attention to the following: the issue of a new original key terminates the validity of the previously issued keys. Therefore if there are already issued keys (mobile ones or cards), use the the 'Duplicate' or 'Duplicate Mobile Key' feature to add a new key without invalidating the already existing ones.
- Your guest will immediately receive their key in the app installed on their mobile phone (JustIN Mobile) as well as a notification.
- When your guest arrives and is in front of the room door, they need to open the app and activate the respective mobile key to open the room door.
How to set up the interface
- Create a new API user 'Salto' and grant this user access to accounts of your choosing ('Settings' - 'API User').
- Set the IP and port of the server where the PMS interface to Salto is. Open 'Settings '- 'Room keys settings' - 'Salto'. Fill in the API User (the one you have created during the previous step), Server Host (IP address or host name for the PMS interface to Salto), Server Port (port of the server). Select Active and Safe.
- In 'Settings' - 'Room key settings', define:
- Default 'From' time for Room Keys and Default 'To' time for Room Keys
- If your system supports mobile keys, enable 'Mobile Key support'
- If the cards issued to your guests have to open doors to common areas, you can fill in the codes for these zones and easily choose them afterwards.
- Add the encoders you have by entering their names in the Identifier field the way they appear in the Salto system.
- Map the rooms of ClockPMS to the ones in Salto.
- On the screen of each room ('Settings' – 'Room'), enter the names of the rooms from Salto (if more than one, use a comma to separate them) in the 'Room door code(s)' field.
- In the the 'Common door codes', fill in the codes for the common areas (PMS Authorizations), linked to this room (for example, the front door, the door for accessing the floor ). You can find these codes in your Salto software. Contact your Salto representative for more information. Please note that the codes (PMS Authorizations) from Salto are not always filled in as a one-to-one match in Clock PMS. The PMS Authorizations codes in Salto are in the range from 1 to 62, however, each of them corresponds to one character. For example, for the range from 1 to 9, there is no change and the codes are the same . In the range from 10 to 35, the codes correspond to the capital Latin letters from A to Z, and for the range: 36 to 62, there are special characters. Please contact our support team for more details if using more than 9 codes.
Other Improvements
- Guest profiles - picture. Now you can add a guest profile picture. Apart from being able to upload it as a file, you can also use the experimental feature for taking pictures through the web camera of your computer or tablet. This functionality is not supported by all browsers yet, but we hope its support will advance over the time.
- Bookings – a button for quick folio closing. On the booking edit screen, we have added a quick folio closing button next to each folio. Use it to close a folio in a way of your choosing and go to the folio print screen.
- Kiosk – credit card payment via Adyen POS terminal. As part of the integrated payment features, now you can use the Adyen terminal with the Kiosk. You can order a Clock Kiosk with built-in POS terminal or use your own kiosk with an added terminal. Please pay attention that the connection to Adyen POS terminal requires Clock IoT Device (you don't need an extra device, if you already have one).
- Kiosk - Salto. From the Kiosk, you can issue Salto system cards. You can order a Clock Kiosk with built-in Salto card encoder or use your own one.
- Booking enquiry templates – we have added salutation and custom editable fields: Custom header and Custom footer.
- Catering – now you can use the rich text format in the description and note fields.
- Booking email. Now you can change the email message language without being necessary to edit the booking language.
- Multiple booking edit – we have added the following fields: marketing source, marketing segment and language.
- RoomCloud – the value of the shop field from the booking can now be entered in the note
- POS – a new right - Discount and Surcharge. Use it to restrict the access to the following operations: 'Discount', 'Surcharge', as well as the 'Remove/Subtract taxes from prices'.
Guest Profile Photos
Fixes
- Registration cards - Document expiry date and Visa expiry date field calendars were for only 6 years ahead. Now they are for 20 years ahead.
- In some cases the language of the automatically sent emails was not correct.
- The problem with surcharge charge voiding after removing the surcharge percent has been fixed.
- Events – info invoice – the charge list showed the corrections (negative values) due to charge changes.
- Occupancy and Charges Report when run by room type sometimes didn't include the voided charges and there were discrepancies in the charge reports.
- In rare cases, the multiple day price update of a rate through the Multiple Days feature produced unclear error message.
- The quick search (from the navigation) didn't work, if called from a report screen.
- The problem causing a WRS error message when creating a booking based on a booking enquiry containing a deleted rate has been fixed.
- New booking: the Restaurant field information was missing, even when there was a default value selected.
- WRS error when max adults and guests defined in the WRS settings in case of integrated links for a greater number of adults and children.
- Channel managers – booking folios didn't account for the 'Default booking folios currency' setting
- Guest emails – the TinyMice editor ruined the links when saving the template.
- Booking Segmentation Report – the ACB parameter wasn't calculated properly