Frequently Asked Questions
There are no stupid questions! If you have any more, contact us, we will be more than happy to answer them
PMS/Diary
When a booking is made on my website or on an OTA site (ie Booking.com, Expedia, HRS) does it really go straight into the diary?
Yes, all details including credit card details are automatically entered into the diary and allocated to a relevant room. You no longer need to sit waiting for e-mails or faxes and manually type them into an Excel Sheet, Paper, Diary or PMS.
What happens if I want to allocate the booking to a different room from the room it was automatically allocated?
You can simply 'click and drag' the reservation to move it to another room.
What happens when a booking is cancelled?
The system will unallocate the reservation and restore the availability to the website and OTA's.
How do I enter an offline (i.e. walk-in/telephone) booking?
Simply add the guest's first name/last name, arrival and departure dates and the quantity of people. The system will show you which rooms are available on the specified dates and a suggested price. You can select the preferred room and if necessary change the price.
Can I add credit card details for my walk-in/telephone bookings?
Yes, you can enter credit card details which are stored in a secure online credit card vault.
Can I e-mail a booking confirmation to a guest when the booking is created?
If you add the e-mail address of the guest when entering a reservation, you can choose to e-mail the reservation confirmation to the guest.
How am I informed when bookings are made online?
They appear on the diary screen in front of you (without needing to refresh the screen), you also receive an e-mail with the booking details. The Diary Dashboard has a rolling 'Activity log' showing you what has happened during the day.
Can I print check-in forms for my guests to complete when they are checking in?
Yes. In fact at the click of a button all the checkin forms for a particular date or date range can be printed with the guest and reservation details.
What happens if I allocate a guest to a larger room than the one they booked (e.g. to a Double/Single when they requested a Double)?
You can allocate guests to any compatible room. When you have no double rooms left, you can allocate to a double/single, this reservation will show as 'mismatch', highlighting the fact they could be moved to a more optimal room when it becomes available.
Can I search the Diary for a specific booking?
In a search field on the Diary Screen you can enter a guest name or booking id, showing a list of all the reservations that match the search.
Can I add 'extras/charges' to a guest bill?
Yes, you can add 'extras' to a bill such as 'Dinner in the restaurant', 'Drinks at the Bar' etc.
Can I provide an invoice/bill to a guest prior to checking them out (sometimes guests want to see a copy of their bill to review over breakfast, before actually paying and checking out)?
Yes, you can print a preview/'pro forma' of the bill prior to checkout.
Can I view unpaid invoices (e.g. for guests of companies who are paying ‘on account’)?
Yes, in the 'Guest Bills' section you can search for invoices, including viewing all outstanding invoices, you can filter for specific guest accounts or reservation id.
If a previous guest makes a reservation are their details stored in the system?
Yes, when entering a reservation you can select 'choose a previous guest' and search for the guest.
Can I add 'comments' to a particular guest?
Yes indeed. For example, 'Guest prefers a ground floor room'. These details appear to reservations staff whenever a reservation is entered for that guest.
Can I print a housekeeping list that I can give to my cleaning staff every day to clean the rooms?
Yes you can. It shows the rooms, guests who are departing, staying or arriving and any guest comments.
Can I 'close out' specific rooms on specific days?
Yes. You can close out rooms, for example, if they are used for a long term let or unavailable for any other reason. They will be highlighted in the diary. Online bookings will not be automatically allocated to closed rooms.
Can I create a ‘provisional’ booking?
When the reservation is created it can have a status 'Provisional' or 'Confirmed', the status is highlighted using a colour of your choosing on the Diary screen.
Can I control the colours of the reservations on the Diary Screen?
Yes, in the 'Settings' page you can select the colours you want for each reservation status i.e. Confirmed/Provisional/Checked-in/Checked out.
Does this system work on a tablet?
Yes, most of the functionality available on the desktop is available on a tablet.
Mobile App
Is an app available for this system?
Yes, a free app is currently in development and will shortly be available, it is deliberately designed with just the key functions on it for a Guesthouse Manager ‘on the move’ or a Busy Barman who might also be looking after the accommodation.
Booking Engine
Can I create extras for a guest to select when booking on the website?
Yes, you can create 'upgrades' that a guest can select when booking a room online e.g. Breakfast, Parking etc.
What happens when a guest is looking for a room but there are none available on the selected dates?
The booking engine can be configured to handle this in a number of ways e.g. if the guest has searched for a Double Room but they are all sold, the booking engine can either
advertise a Double/Single or
advertise a Double (the guest will be allocated to a double/single and the guest can be moved to a double when one becomes available, allowing you to sell the Double/Single)
Are my room descriptions multilingual?
Yes, the basic features of the room and the Booking Process are translated into several different languages. 'Custom room descriptions’ are also available. Many hotels in the international market (such as London/Paris/Dublin) do not realise the advantage the OTAs have over their website because their own Booking Engine is not multilingual.
Does the Booking Engine allow guests to search using the quantity of adults and children?
Yes, Guests can enter the quantity of adults and children at the start of the booking process to get more accurately priced rooms. The booking engine is capable of optimising your rates allowing you to offer a better price than the OTA booking engines which are not capable of performing the calculations.
Channel Manager
Do I still have to manually manage availability?
No, the system knows how many rooms you have and how many reservations you have and automatically allocates the balance to the OTA's. This should save a lot of time and effort managing Rates and Availability.
Does this mean I lose control over where I allocate my inventory?
No, You can elect to close out some or all of the OTA's on specific days when you don't need their help to sell rooms. Some of our customers have the OTA's closed out for summer weekends or bank holidays months in advance.
Is there a risk of overselling or underselling?
This system should greatly reduce underselling and overselling as it takes out 'human errors', i.e. someone forgetting to reduce availability after a booking comes in from the website, or conversely closing rooms out on a Friday night because they are concerned that a rush of bookings over the weekend might cause the hotel to oversell when no revenue manager is present.
Is there any sort of a ‘safety net’ to prevent overbooking?
Yes indeed. A rule can be set when just a few rooms remain. The rooms are automatically closed out on the OTA sites and an alert is shown on the screen. If the hotel is happy that it is safe to release the final few rooms to the OTAs they can override the rule.
Can I have different prices in different OTAs?
Yes, you can specify different 'uplifts' for each OTA. This means the prices sent to the OTA site will be higher than on your own booking engine.
Do I have to perform the 'room mapping' myself?
No, the complex process of mapping is undertaken by us. Unlike many of our competitors, you do not have to worry about doing this yourself. You can benefit from our expertise on OTA management.
What happens when the rooms on the OTAs are changed?
An alert will appear on the screen advising that a remapping needs to be done. You can select the appropriate room or we can do this for you.
How do I manage rates?
Rates can be managed 1 day at a time or in 'bulk' from a single rates screen along with ‘Minimum Stay restrictions’ and ‘Closed to Arrivals’ etc. The connected websites are automatically updated within seconds of the changes being made in the Diary.
Do I have to manage all the rates individually?
You can... or they can be 'Derived', whereby the rate of a particular room type or rate plan is relative to its parent rate. For example, the 'Single Room' could be priced automatically at €20 less than the Double Room, or B&B is €8 per person more than the room only rate.
We have some customers who only control the rate for one room type and ALL other room types and rate types are automatically priced from the 'master' rate.
Can I have different rate types/rate plans?
Yes, you can have any number of rate types, e.g. B&B, Room Only, Non-Refundable, Self-Catering etc (additionally these 'Rate Types' can be 'Derived Rates', offering maximum choice to your customers without the work of managing the rates).
Can I create Special Offers?
Yes. Special Offers can be created in any format e.g. '2 B&B + 1 Dinner', 'Stay 2 Nights Get The 3rd Night Free' etc.
Reports
Are there charts that show my performance?
Yes the Charts display year on year graphs of;
Room Revenue
Room Rates
Occupancy
Along with graphs for:
Booking Sources (Where are my bookings coming from)
Room Types (Which room types sell best)
Rate Types (Which rate types sell best)
Financials
Can I get a Shift Balance/End of Day Report?
Yes, this report (called 'Cashflow') will show how much money has been taken for the day per payment method e.g. Cash, Credit Cards.
Can I see which of my rooms/apartments/bungalows have generated sales?
The Revenue Report will allow you to see how much revenue was earned by each individual room/apartment or groups of rooms/apartments.
Can I get a Financial Report?
Yes, the 'Management Overview' will show:
Room Nights Sold
Reservations
Occupancy
ADR (Average Daily Rate)
Rev Par (Revenue Per Available Room)
etc. etc.
Websites
What is a Self-Build Website?
Our self-build website is highly optimised for search engine optimisation and it is multilingual. The majority of the content is created from your room descriptions, photos, published guest reviews etc. You simply pick the website design from our available designs and choose your colour scheme.
Do I have any control over the look and feel?
Yes, you can change text on each page, upload 'header images', adjust the colours, upload your logo etc.
What pages and functionality are in the 'Self-Build' Website?
The self-build site is designed to be easy to maintain regardless of your abilities. It is fully integrated to the diary showing live information such as:
Property Description
Guest Reviews - published reviews from guests who have stayed at your property and submitted a review post departure, (you can choose the reviews to publish)
Offers, 'live' offers from the booking engine
Location page - google map of the property's location
Rooms page, pages are created using images, features and descriptions of the rooms added in the Diary
Photo Gallery - upload images for the header of each page or to a 'photo gallery' page
Document Upload - upload files such as menus or event information to specific pages in your site
So what is a Bespoke Website?
We can create the site for you ... these types of sites are for properties who are investing time and money in pushing direct room sales and need marketing and technical support. We build the website for you and optimise it for the web. Features:
Unlimited amount of pages on the website
Full Content Management System
E-Zine Generator (Send an e-mail to customers at the touch of a button)
Blog (allows you to add news articles)
Events (Upload Events in and around your property)
Popup (Create a home page 'Popup')
Price Comparison Widget
Web Content App (allows management of key content on the website via an App)
Photo Gallery - upload images for the header of each page or to a 'photo gallery' page)
Offers, 'live' offers from the booking engine
Support & Add-ons
Web Content Updating and Optimisation
Google Analytics
Creation and Maintenance of Google Adwords
Creation and Maintenance of Google Place Accounts
Google Webmaster Sitemap Submission
Metatag Creation and Optimisation
Distribution of E Zines (e-mails)
Price Comparison Widget
Favicon Creation
Photo Gallery - upload images for the header of each page or to a 'photo gallery' page