Product Release - 21.5.2019

This feature update introduces the new Booking Engine to all HOP customers. We’ve send out information on this last week, the feature release notes below will focus on changes to the booking engine settings in the PMS. We’ve also included several features that were requested by members of the HOP Community, like the ability to split charges and payments, serialising group bookings and excluding services on a room type basis and have updated.

Contents

• NEW Booking Engine
• Split Transactions
• Serialised Group Bookings
• Service exclusion
• Add multiple Extras to RESX
• Yield Management update
• Cancellation Number
• Print Function sheets individually
• Accounting Manager adaptation
• Snapshot report adaptation
• Occupancy report adaptation
• Housekeeping status – mobile view
• CRM Enquiry Notification

New Booking Engine

This release includes the launch of the new HOP Booking Engine, it will be rolled out tomorrow for all members of the HOP Community. You can read the online version of the newsletter we sent out last week here (click this link >>).

Further to the information on this newsletter: You can find the configuration of your booking engine in Administration, Booking Engine. All your settings will stay as they are, you won’t need to take any action to your same day restrictions, GTM code, or other sub settings. However, there are three additional fields for your consideration: Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy will need to be provided by yourself (Administration, Booking Engine, T&C, respectively Privacy Policy). You can either upload a file, or enter a URL.

Underneath it, on the bottom of the page, you can set a label text for the occupancy pop up (Adults, Children, Infants), generally, this should contain the age restrictions in line with your policies (for example Infants 0-2 years, children under 12). Please don’t forget to click “update details” after filling in the fields (you can also leave them blank or state that you do not allow children/infants at all).

Split transactions

We have had the request by several members of the HOP Community to add the ability to split charges and transactions, this release introduces this feature. You can now split a transaction (charge or payment) on any transaction screen (for Reservations as well as for House Accounts). On the transactions screen, in the “Payment” column, simply click the drop down menu, indicated by the arrow pointing down, next to the transaction and click “split”. If you split a logged payment, you can select the payment method for the split amount (if a guest would like to pay in part by cash and in part by bank transfer, for example). You can either split an amount by percentage of the original amount, or enter a split transaction amount in the respective field. Please be aware that splitting transactions can impact historical reports and ensure your accounts department is aware of this. You cannot split Credit Card transactions.

Feel free to try this (and any other) new features out in the HOP Hotel and don’t hesitate to reach out should you have any questions.

Serialised Group Bookings

We’ve further improved the Group Bookings functionality in this release to make it easier for you to enter recurring group bookings. You might have a tour company, which takes a certain number of rooms every month for several months. To enter all of those at once, please go to Reservations, Group Reservations. Click on “Create New” and enter the number of nights, arrival date, number of rooms as well as a booker. Next, click “Create Series Booking”, a pop up will appear, here, please enter the frequency (every week, every 2-, 3-, or 4 weeks and provide a start and end date. Next, click save. The pop up will show you the full list of dates and indicate if you have sufficient availability. The column on the very right allows you to delete single instances of this series right away.

Feel free to try out this new feature on the HOP hotel and please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have.

Service exclusion

We’ve had a request from a member of the HOP Community regarding not allowing all room types to receive bookings with pet charges – some rooms can have guests with pets, others should be excluded. We’ve now developed a feature by which can control this. To set this up, you’ll first need to set up a service (Administration, Services), like a pet charge. Next, go to Administration – Excluded Services. Click Add and select a room type from the drop down. Underneath, select the service that should not be available for this room type (like the pet charge), click save. Going forward, guest who book online and staff entering a reservation manually will not be able to select this combination of room type and service.

Add multiple Extras to RESX

For existing room reservations, you can now add the same article multiple times. You can use this, for example, if a guest has people join them for breakfast. Just click on the RESX number and then go to the “Extras” tab. Here, select the article you would like to add and specify the quantity (default set to 1), you can also override the price of the Extra/Article on this page.

Yield Management update

We’ve excluded all derived rate plans from yield management drop down. This is now in line with the rate bulk update function – only standalone rates (not derived ones) can have bulk updates to their base rate and yield management rules applied.

Cancellation Number

Some members of the HOP Community send out detailed cancellation Emails to guests who have cancelled their reservation. We’ve now added the custom field “CancellationNumber”, which you can select in the Email Template (Administration, Email Templates) “Reservation Cancellation”.

Print Function sheets individually

We’ve changed the way “print all function sheets” on the manage Events screen works – now, when you select this option, all function sheets will be printed individually, there’s no longer an overlap by which a successive function sheet will be printed on the last page of the previous one in the queue.

Accounting Manager adaptation

We’ve updated the Accounts Software codes with a new field – Debtor Control Code. Following the recent introduction of the CSL (Customer Sales Ledger), we’ve now added this to the accounts daily download, please provide the respective code from your accounting software (Sage, for example) in Accounting Manager – Account Software Code, this will then show in your daily (weekly or monthly) Accounting Download file.

Snapshot report adaptation

We’ve included a new field on the Report under Management – Snapshot report. You can now set a specific day in the search field, the report will then show you exactly where you were in terms of RevPAR and other metrics on this day. Please note this will only work correctly if you have respective data on the system, which will be the case when you’ve used HOP for more than a year.

Occupancy report adaptation

Going forward, the occupancy report will also include charges and payments logged against House Accounts. Previously, only transactions logged at RES and RESX level were reflected here.

Housekeeping status – mobile view

We’ve updated the view of the Housekeeping Status page for mobile devices – due to the small screen and high amount of information already available, the Room Layout was not included – we’ve now added this to the mobile view, so it’s consistent across HOP and gives your housekeeping staff all information they need right away.

CRM Enquiry Notification

In this release we’ve extended the functionality of CRM Enquiries. As previously, you can log any incoming enquires (about events, bookings) via CRM – Enquiry. If the user you assign the enquiry to has an Email address entered (to check, go to Users, Manage users and click on a username), they will receive an Email about this, so they can follow up on this task.

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