Cancellation Policies
We have added a new "Cancellation Policy" feature to let you automate the process of calculation and charging the cancellation fees.
As the new feature overlapped the old "Auto-void booking charges on booking cancellation" functionality, we have removed the old one and migrated the setting. See "Migration" below for more info.
Here is the organisation of the Cancellation Policies:
- You can create one or several Cancellation Policies, each with its own rules and cancellation fees. Select "Settings" - "Cancellation Policy".
- You should link each of the Cancellation Policies to a Guarantee Option.
- Upon booking cancellation (Cancelled or No-show status), the respective Cancellation Policy is applied depending on the selected Guarantee option in the booking. This is ALWAYS done upon booking cancellation regardless of how or from where the booking has been cancelled. In other words, the automated process can be triggered upon cancellation from the Self Service Portal, Channel Manager, API or made by a Clock PMS+ user.
What can be automated through the Cancellation Policy?
The Cancellation Policies are flexible and can be set in accordance with your needs. Here are some features:
- Automatic cancellation fee calculation and charging. To do so, select a charge template to be used for the basic details of the charge, and the amount will be calculated based on the Rules.
- You can define multiple rules for cancellation fee calculation depending on 'days before arrival'. Here are several examples of how rules are applied depending on how many days before arrival the cancellation is made. To make the necessary settings, click the "Cancellation Fee Schema" button next to each policy:
- Let's examine a case with two rules – one for 3 days before arrival (Rule 1), and another for 14 days before arrival (Rule 2).
- Cancellation made 1 day before arrival - Rule 1 is applied.
- Cancellation made 3 days before arrival - Rule 1 is applied.
- Cancellation made 10 days before arrival - Rule 2 is applied.
- Cancellation made 20 days before arrival – no cancellation fee is charged.
- For each Rule, you can define how the cancellation fee to be calculated - as a fixed or relative amount. Both amounts will be collected. The relative amount is calculated based on the selected revenue group. The amount can be calculated as per cent of this value or as a certain number of nights. The amount for one night is the average night price. The calculation functions the same way as the deposit calculation. If you wish more info, you can also see the deposit calculation examples.
- Cancel existing charges. If you choose this option, the existing booking charges (nights, packages, extra services) will automatically be voided.
- The charges will be voided, even if they have been transferred to another folio.
- If the folio containing the charges is already closed, it will be impossible for these charges to be voided. In this situation, the system will create a To-Do regarding the issue.
- Close folios. Select the 'Close folios' option to close the booking folios. Empty folios (folios without any charges or payments) will be voided as they can't be closed.
- This, in turn, can lead to the sending of a folio email to the guest (the 'Auto send folio email template with folio closure' setting ). Soon we will add a Guest Mailer option to automate other emails upon cancellation.
- Note: Folios will not be closed if they contain charges transferred from other bookings, for example. If such an issue occurs, the system will leave the folios open and will create a To-Do regarding this situation.
Migration
For those of you who have used the old Automatic cancellation fee calculation and charge feature, we have created the following automatic migration.
- We have created a Cancellation Policy in which both options are selected: "Cancel existing charges" and "Close folios".
- We have added this automatically created policy to all Guarantee options.
This way you can keep the old functionality. You can also create new policies and select them in the corresponding guarantee options.
Please note that if you have not used guarantee options yet, you will need to create at least one, so that you can choose it in bookings and take advantage of the automatic void of charges and the other new features.
Other improvements and changes
- In the POS, you can easily fill in the data of a company before closing the bill. You can create a new company or choose one of the existing companies. On the bill closure screen, select "Billing To / Invoice", then click "Select Company" to choose from a list or use the "New" button. Click "Select" to confirm.
- If you use the API and have settings for the recognition of individual customer folios, please note that we have made certain changes and now these folios have Person as payer instead of Account. Please contact us for more info.
Fixes:
- In the fiscal module for Sweden, we have removed the VAT error
- During the execution of the Profile "forget" feature, not all old archived profile data in the registration cards were deleted.
- Tax Settings - in certain cases, the saving of settings led to the appearance of Surcharge saving error.
- Block Pickup Report - when generated for longer periods with the Summary option selected, the report showed some columns with details.