Clock PMS+ Update (29 May 2017)

Booking: Daily charges

We have added new charge automation options and expanded the existing ones.

Daily charges

We have improved the Daily Charges feature in bookings:

• Now you can add a charge of your choosing to the booking's Daily Charges section. The Booking charge templates feature remains to facilitate your choice of charges. You can set the most used ones to directly appear on the booking screen for fast selection.
• Now you can also choose one-time charges (i.e. not being posted on a daily basis). They are added on the arrival date.
• For the daily charges, you can make changes to the posting period. For example, this period can be set to only refer to a half of the guest's stay or include the departure date, too. To change the period, click the 'more...' link and fill in the desired period. If the fields are left empty, the charge will be posted as before – for all days of the stay except for the departure date.
• We have improved the reposting logic, so that the system stores the manually changed price of a charge and does not replace it when the booking is saved.

Room Type auto-charge templates

Use this feature to define charge templates which to be automatically added to a booking depending on the booked room type, e.g. a one-time cleaning charge or daily charges.

How it works:

• For each room type, you can set different charge templates, specifying for each them whether it is a one-time or daily charge.
• After the booking creation and depending on the booked room type, the charge templates are added to the Daily Charges section of the booking. Please note that these charge templates are not visible on the new booking screen. These charges will automatically be added AFTER the booking saving.
• You can easily remove a room type auto-charge template at a later stage by simply unticking its checkbox in the Daily Charges section of the booking.
• 'Room type auto-charge templates' are automatically posted regardless of where a booking is created: WRS, channel manager, based on an enquiry, file import or from the API.

Setup:

• First, set up the desired charge templates by going to 'Settings' - 'Charge Template'.
• In the 'Room Type auto-charge templates' section on the Charge Template screen, click the Edit button next to each room type and select which charges to be automatically posted. You can also define whether an auto-charge template to be a one-time or daily one.

WRS and Extra Services on the Self Service Portal

We have changed the way the extra services selected on the WRS or the Self Service Portal operate. Up till now, they were charged directly in the folio, which was not very convenient if a guest's period of stay had to be changed. Now they are added to the Daily Charges section of the booking. This way:

• It is easy to remove them. Simply untick the checkbox of the charge and save the booking – the charges will be voided automatically.
• If the period of stay is changed, the unnecessary charges are voided, and the missing ones are added automatically.

Codes for standalone pin pad door locks

We have added a new feature to let you send your guests the codes for the common doors in your hotel. This is very convenient for the self service hotels, apartment hotels and the ones without a 24-hour reception desk. If your hotel has an entrance door with a pin pad, you can prepare code changing schedule and enter it into Clock PMS. With the confirmation of each booking, the system will determine the codes related to the period of stay and send them to the guest. Please note this feature is designed for standalone pin pad door locks, i.e. Clock PMS will not change the lock codes. The code changing schedule itself is prepared by you, and Clock PMS only sends these codes to the guests. Here is the setup of the feature:

• For each location, enter an individual access code changing schedule. If you haven't used 'Locations' ever before, create at least one ('Settings' - 'Locations') and select it to be the location of your hotel ('Settings' - 'Hotel Map').
• Click 'Settings' - 'Codes for standalone pin pad door locks'.
• Add your code changing schedule for each location. Select 'New'. Fill in the location, the date from which the code will be valid and the code itself.
• Done!

With each new booking, the system will establish the location of the booking depending on the type of your property and the settings in 'Hotel Map', 'Room Type' or 'Room'. Based on the location and booking period, the confirmation email will contain the hotel entrance door codes for the respective period.

If using custom booking confirmation templates or you need to send a reminder email via the Guest Mailer, you can use the following parameter to add these codes to your email: {{booking.door_pin_codes_text}}

Guest mailer

• Number of nights filters. If you want to create different email templates for your guests with a longer or shorter period of stay, you can use the two new filters: Minimum stay and Max stay. Both filters work on the 'included' basis, i.e. if you set Minimum stay = 3 and Max stay = 6, emails will be sent for the bookings for: 3, 4, 5 and 6 nights. You can also use the filters separately, i.e. only the Minimum stay or Max stay.
• Another setting for automated emails - 'Up to arrival'. The differences between the former 'Before Arrival' setting and the new 'Up to arrival' one are:
  • If you set 'Before arrival' to 72 hours (3 days), then bookings created earlier than 3 days before arrival will receive emails, however, the last minute bookings and the ones created within 3 days of the arrival won't receive emails.
  • If you set 'Up to arrival' to 72 hours (3 days), then all bookings, even the last minute ones, will receive an email. The sending will start 72 hours before arrival, and the last minute bookings will be sent an email with their very creation.

Credit Cards

We have changed the organisation of the work with credit cards. Here are the changes and the new options:

• The credit cards related to bookings imported from the channels now can be tokenized in Adyen. This way the sensitive clients' credit card data is protected and inaccessible to users which does not prevent the use of these cards for the convenient one-click payments or pre-authorizations.
• Booking edit screen – the credit card fields are removed from this screen and moved to the booking screen. A new credit card can be added from the 'Credit card' section through the 'Operations ' button.
• Kiosk – now you can use the 'Adyen - Authorize, Capture and Tokenize' interface. Once a bill is paid by credit card, the data of the credit card is tokenized and can be used later, if necessary (e.g. for damage charges). To select the interface of your Kiosk, click 'Settings' - 'Kiosks'. Choose the payment service for your Kiosk devices in the 'Payment service' field.
• Self Service Portal – now you can use a custom payment interface for the payment of your bills.

Other Improvements

• Split of charges by a given percent.We have added a new option for splitting certain charges in two or more parts by specifying a different percent for each of the parts. For example, the nights of one folio can be split among three folios in the following ratio: 20%; 30%; 70%. How to use the new option:
  • Click the 'Split Charges' in the 'Rate and Folios' section on the booking screen
  • Add new folios, if needed
  • Select the charges to be split and click 'Split by percent'
  • Enter the percent for each of the folios where you need the charges to be transferred. The total percent sum has to be 100.
  • Click the 'Split' button
• A new view mode added to the Accounts Receivable Report: Summary. Use it to see the summary information on accounts receivable arranged in four groups based on the delay in payment: 0-30 days, 30-60 days, 60-90 days and over 90 days. To switch to the new view mode, go to 'Other' – 'Reports' - 'Accounts Receivable report" and click the 'View' button and choose 'Summary'
• Booking Segmentation report – we have added a new Period type parameter to let you filter bookings by Arrival, Departure or In Hotel.
• We have added a To-Dos section to the Event screen and now it is easier to manage the related tasks.
• Now you can see the information of the user having created or edited in the Events, Meeting Room bookings and Catering sections.
• We have changed the formatting of the guest name for a few Asian countries. According to the language of the booking or the country of the guest, the names are formatted 'FamilyNameFirstName' (without a space in between) for the following countries: 'KR', 'KP', 'JP', 'VN', 'CN'.
• Registration card number.Due to local legal requirements in some countries, we have added a new field to Registration cards - number. It can be generated in the following ways:
  • Manually. The number of the registration card is generated by the user through a button on the Registration card screen.
  • Automatically with the registration card saving. When saving a registration card, the system automatically generates an order number for the registration card.
  • Automatically with the booking check-in. When checking in a booking, a number is generated for the related registration cards. The registration cards created after the check-in also automatically receive a number with the saving of the registration card.
  • The settings related to the number generation method, as well as its formatting and initial value can be found here: 'Settings' - 'Tax Settings' – 'Numbering'.
  • You can specify if this number field is to be shown on the screen, printouts or the Self Service Portal by going to 'Settings' - 'Registration Card fields'
• Now the surcharge can be calculated on the basis of the gross or net value of the charge. The new 'Surcharge calculated on' field can be found on the 'Settings' - 'Tax Settings' screen.
• Departures: we have added a column containing the number of open folios for easier check of unsettled folios.
• Extra Services in WRS/Self Service Portal: we have improved the availability check (inventory items), so that the overbooking is decreased to its minimum.
• Self Service Portal: now it uses the language of the booking.
• You can also upload photos of the system users now.
• We have added a new language - Slovenian
• POS – bill printout label translations added, so that bills can be localised in your language.
• POS – printer language and encoding settings added. If you printer does not support UTF-8, you can check these settings.
• POS – bill printing from the browser. If you don't have a special printer, you can use the option for bill printing on the bill closing screen directly from your browser.

API and Customisation

• For custom folio printouts, we have added new liquid parameters for charges: charge.net_value|currency, charge.tax_value|currency, charge.gross_value|currency.
• For the purposes of local fiscalisation requirements, we have added three new fields to the API: fiscal_request_code, fiscal_response_code, and qr_code. These fields can be updated through the API. For this matter, we have also added liquid parameters to add them to the custom folio printouts: folio.fiscal_request_code, folio.fiscal_response_code, folio.qr_code_svg
• A new endpoint to the API and of the POS for easier access to the orders related to a given folio:
  • Folio orders: folio_orders: "/pos_api/1/2/folios/:folio_id/orders"
  • Charges in each folio: folio_order_charges: "/pos_api/1/2/folios/:folio_id/orders/:order_id/charges"

Fixes

• When setting a No show status to a booking and 'Auto-void booking charges on booking cancellation' is active, the message was incorrect.
• When surcharge percent deleted from a folio, the surcharge charges weren't correctly accounted for in the folio.
• It was impossible to remove blocked rooms for past periods from the table .
• WRS - Extra Services – the services "per day" were all charged on one date.
• Channel Managers – the check for conflicting manually edited prices didn't work always properly and unnecessary warnings appeared.
• The transferred charges didn't appear correctly in the Booking Segmentation report
• The calculation of rate charges used to also void daily charges as well as the manual charges from the room revenue group.
• WRS – The extra services weren't included in the total at the final step and the related deposit wasn't calculated properly either.
• It is no longer possible to delete a rate mapped by the channels.
• The booking preview showed the rate guarantee policy, even when it wasn't selected in the booking.
• Adyen - 3D-Secure – didn't work properly
• Adyen – now it can be used on the Self Service Portal
• On the virtual room screen, the statuses couldn't be added.
• Mass confirmation of multiple bookings led to errors
• POS – the manual charge required kitchen specifying when it wasn't necessary.