Clock PMS+ Update (20 Mar 2019) : Support Centre

SiteMinder

We are happy to announce the release of a new Channel Manager interface: SiteMinder.

SiteMinder has a reputation for being a powerful, capable and stable channel manager, suited for large and medium-sized hotels and chains. It will make a fine addition to our automated online distribution functionality. The new feature is designed to meet the needs of our large customers.

Here is more info on the new interface to SiteMinder

We have used an improved technology of detecting the changes to availability and prices. As a result, the changed availability and prices should update in SiteMinder for 2-3 minutes average to maximum of 5 minutes. The same applies to the download of bookings. During initial synchronization when the entire database is updated or there is a large volume of changes, the update time can be longer.

Availability

Mapping of room types (mapping of specific rooms is not supported) between the two systems. After the completion of the process
The system can automatically export Availability (Room Type Level) to the channel manager.
You can set a maximum number of available rooms to be sent for each room type. This way, if the number of available rooms exceeds the maximum set by you, only amount corresponding to this maximum number of rooms will be sent.
After Clock PMS+ exports its data to SiteMinder, the latter makes sure this data is sent to each of your activated OTA channels.
For each room type, you can temporarily (or permanently) stop the availability export. This way you can directly manage the available rooms in SiteMinder, while keeping the mapping of room types for the purposes of the import of bookings.

Rates

Mapping of rates between the two systems. Rates in both systems are Room Type Level, i.e. one rate belongs to a certain room type.
The currencies of rates are not accounted for, as what is important are the numeric values only. For greater clarity, you are recommended to use one and the same currency in both systems.
There is a setting to specify if the exported prices are to be treated by the Channel Manager and respectively the OTA channels as prices including tax or not.
For each rate, you can stop the export of prices and restrictions while keeping the rate mapping for the import of bookings

Restrictions

The rate restrictions sent by Clock PMS+ are: Minimum Stay, Maximum Stay, Stop, Closed for Arrival, Closed for Departure.
In case of no available rooms, Clock PMS+ sends a zero availability for the respective room type and Stop Sell to the related rates. Should free rooms appear eventually, the rate restriction will also be removed.

Booking Import

Import of new bookings, modifications and cancellations
The bookings created in the Channel Manager prior to the date of the interface activation will be ignored to avoid doubled bookings.
On booking import, a certain deposit amount can be charged to the booking credit card. For this purpose, you can specify the necessary action next to each rate in the mapping. Apart from charging, you can also set tokenization in Adyen. It will check the credit card validity through a zero transaction.
Please note that SideMinder does not send the CVC codes of credit cards. If necessary, you can contact your payment gateway to allow credit card transactions without CVV codes.
Booking extra services. Our interface processes the additional services in bookings. For these services to be charged to folios, you need to select 'Default charge template' in the Channel Manager settings, as well as to make a mapping between the extra services codes received from OTA channels and the charge templates in Clock PMS+. If no mapping is found for the code received, the service will be charged through the default charge template. The service price is retrieved from the data of the received booking. A charge to the amount of the received value is posted.
We also support a mapping of a channel to a company, allowing you to automatically specify Booking.com as company in all bookings from booking.com.

User Support

In contrast to the Integrated Channel Manager of Clock PMS+, the failed exports to channels, including OTA channel deactivation, as well as any other issues pertaining to the channel manager are to be directed to the SiteMinder Support Centre.

Ledgers v.2

Our target is to achieve a clear distinction between deposits, liabilities and account receivables. Four new reports: Guest Ledger, Company Ledger, Deposit Ledger and Trial Balance

The reports are still under development and testing. We will appreciate your feedback!

Guest Ledger

Includes bookings and non-resident folios.
Bookings are shown instead of folios
Bookings are grouped by status (checked-in, checked-out, cancelled).
All checked-in bookings are shown, even if their folios are paid which gives you a clearer picture of your current guests.
Typically, there should not be expected bookings as they don't have liability yet.
A new term in the report - LIABILITIES **

Company Ledger.

Includes company and event folios.
Only folios with non-zero balance or some movement are shown.
A new term in the report - LIABILITIES **

Deposit Ledger.

Includes folios with PAYMENTS but without LIABILITIES
To issue VAT invoices for payments made, you need to use Deposit Folios. If no VAT invoice is needed - use normal folio with regular payment instead.

All of the reports can be run for past dates. Reports will show the picture of bookings, charges and payments the way they were in that past date.
The reports can be run on the current date also, so they can be used as operational reports.

* CHARGES: Only charges for the selected or past revenue date are included. Charges for future dates (dates after the selected report date) are NOT included in the report.

** LIABILITIES and ACCOUNT RECEIVABLES: The services rendered to clients, not covered by the existing payment. In other words, the amount of charges MINUS payments, but not less than ZERO. Liabilities are in Open folios. Account Receivables - Closed folios. Examples:

Charges 100 EUR, no payments. Liability: 100 EUR
Charges 100 EUR, payments 40 EUR. Liability: 60 EUR
Charges 100 EUR, payments 120 EUR. Liability: 0 EUR

*** DEPOSITS: Taken payments in normal or deposit folios MINUS liabilities but not less than zero. Example: A stay of 3 nights charged at 100 EUR each. Payment in the folio: 300 EUR.

Before check-in - 300 EUR prepayment ( 0 EUR liability)
On check-in date - 200 EUR prepayment ( 100 EUR liability)
Second day - 100 EUR prepayment ( 200 EUR liability)
Third day and after check-out - 0 EUR prepayment ( 300 EUR liability)

Trial balance

Trial balance gives you summarised information of charges and payments in all three ledgers.

WRS - Asks for a guest name for each room

Prior to this change, the multiple bookings created at one and the same time in the WRS were all linked to the profile of the person having created them. To some extent, it was convenient because you could see all bookings created by someone from their profile screen. However, it also led to many errors when guests were checked in or registration cards were filled in (the data of the first guest got erased because no new profile was created for the next guest). There were issues with the Self Service Portal when guests while completing their registration cards were deleting the data of the previous guest.

Here is why we made the following change :

If multiple bookings are created in the WRS, with each next booking, guest names are required for the respective room.
Now there are two settings regarding which guest fields to be required in the WRS (Settings - Guest Profile Fields - Set visibility/requirement on different screens) – the existing 'WRS' setting related to the guest creating the bookings and a new one 'WRS Additional Guests' related to the data of each room after the first one. You can set the names of the other guests to be required only or add other fields, too.
If you set a separate email address to be filled in for each of the rooms, the confirmation letters will be sent to each of the entered email addresses.

As bookings can no longer be linked to one profile, you won't also be able to find them all through a simple search by name of the person having created them as before. To solve this issue, we have made following changes:

We have enhanced the 'Related bookings' feature. Related bookings are those having one and the same reference number. The bookings created in the WRS are such, as well as the ones created through the Create Multiple or Save as multiple features.
We would like to remind you that you can easily 'relate' bookings by entering '#' and the number of one of these bookings in reference number field of all of the bookings.
The already related bookings are now visible in all booking searches: Quick Search, Arrivals/Departures/In Hotel, Advanced Search, as well as in the form of a list of bookings in the guest's profile. So if you find one booking by guest's name, you can quickly and easily find all the related bookings. The related bookings are marked with .... (the number of all related bookings). Click on the icon to open the list of all related bookings.
On the screens of all related bookings, we have added a 'Master Booking' section with the contact details of the booking they are related to. This way you can effortlessly find the guest having created all these bookings via the WRS .

Web Reservation System - multiple rooms

Self Service – Housekeeping Tasks

With the last change to the Housekeeping functionality, we have added the option for multiple housekeeping tasks to be assigned to a housekeeper. We have extended this scope to the Self Service, where now there is an option for guests to directly create housekeeping tasks. Such tasks can be all kinds of guest requests like: "Softer pillow", "Extra blanket", "Please clean the room" or "Please do not disturb". Here is how the new feature works: