Online Training Course - Reception

Hello and Welcome to the Online Training Course for the Reception Department.

This course will give you a good look into the Reception Side of HOP.

The Main Topics we will talk about are:

• Reservation (Check-in and Check-Out, Manage Reservations, etc.)
• Night Audit
• Transactions
• Confirmations and Registration Cards
• Front Desk Reports
• Housekeeping

To start, please login with your username and password.

Before we have a close look into the system, I will show you where you can get some help if you are stuck somewhere. On every page you will find the 'Info' and the 'Help Desk' Button on the top of the page.

The 'Info' Button will give you a closer description of how to use HOP and you will also find some Video Tutorials there. If there are still some questions open, please press the 'Help Desk' Button and this will direct you to your personal Help Page. From here you can have a look into some frequently asked questions, some Video Tutorials and you can also create a personal ticket, if your question is more specific.

Let's go back to our HOP system and start there.

Our Dashboard gives you good overview over your property.

It shows you how many Check-In and Check-Outs you have, it also gives you some daily details like Weather and Average Room Rate and many other things. 

The most important area for your Reception Duties is our 'Reservations' Tab.

Let's start with our 'Availability':

Under 'Availability' you can see a live calendar which shows you the availability in your property by room type. You can also filter this by dates by selecting from the calendar table or by using the forward by day, week or month buttons above the calendar.

'Room Schedule':

Under 'Room Schedule' you can also see the live table of your availability showing every reservation allocated or un-allocated to a room. The un-allocated section shows you any reservations that are still yet to be assigned to a specific room, for example some venues like to allocate rooms upon check in so if this is the case with your venue then the rooms will show in red at the top of the room schedule (shown in the image above). 

You can group the schedule by room type or by room group for a more specific view, for these options you only need to tick the respective boxes. You can also select a specific date from the drop down calendar if you are looking for a specific date in the future or even in the past you can do this here.

Bookings in this area are interactive. If you move the cursor over a reservation it will give you a quick overview of the reservation details and if you double click on it, it will open the admin options for the reservation where you can amend the reservation among other options including checking the guest in. You can move reservations in here directly to another room or even move the reservation to another date. To do this simply drag the reservation in question to the place where you wish it to be and drop it into position, please make sure to click SAVE after any amendments made from this view!

Let's move on to the 'Sales View':

The 'Sales View' will be your main page to book reserve rooms from. The upper Table shows you all current selling rates by room types and rate plans. On the top you can search for dates and booking criteria and it will display the available room types with the rates attached. The green colour means you are able to book this room and the red boxes indicate that you are sold out. The red circle symbol means that that particular rate is unavailable for the date/room type selected, this may be if there has been a specific rate plan created that is only applicable to certain dates or days of the week etc. To create the reservation simply click on the rate and the room type and you will be directed to a new reservation form. Please note, if you are reservation a room for more than one night then select the FULL RATE from the sales view as opposed to the ARRIVAL RATE as this only shows the first nights cost.

Once you have select the chosen rate this will take you to the below screen where you can begin to enter in the appropriate guest details;

The arrival date, departure date, number of guests (Adults, Children, Infants) and chosen rate plan will transfer from the sales view into the reservation screen automatically.

Once you have entered in the reservation details and clicked next it will take you to the next stage of the reservation 'Rooms'. From here you can directly allocate a room and also lock it if you don't want anybody to move this room from the room schedule view. For this, simply click the little lock symbol and the room can't be changed anywhere apart from coming back into the reservation  and amending the reservation as a whole. 

Click 'Next' to move on to 'Charges'.

From this stage you can amend the final charge details for the reservation. As you can see from the top of the screen there are two tick box options, 'Edit Rates for Individual Rooms' & 'Hide Reservation Rate'. If you are reserving more than one room the 'Edit Rates for Individual Rooms' can be a useful tool if for example one room had agreed to pay a different rate to the other. Hiding the reservation rates will hide the rates on the guests confirmation email and registration cards when the guest checks in. An example of this could be when a stay has been booked as a present for someone and the booker doesn't want the guest to know how much they have spent etc.

Here you can also amend the base rate of the reservation if it needs to be changed and you will also have an overview of all the charges including any extras or services that have been added at the time of booking. You can also tick the box if you want the charges to be posted to the room individually or not from this screen by selecting the 'Charges to rooms' tick box, this will then show up an expanded screen for this option;

Once the above is completed click 'Next' and it will take you to the final tab called 'Summary' and this gives you a complete overview of your booking.

If your property has selected to automatically take payments then this option will be pre-selected however you can also add a deposit by chosen payment type or even just store a card at this stage by selecting the 'Add Deposit' option and following the steps from there;

After confirming the above details, you can then either click 'Create Confirmed Reservation' if you want to confirm the reservation straight away (which will automatically send the confirmation to the guest) or you can also create a provisional reservation by using the options in the bottom right hand corner. If creating a provisional booking select a 'Provisional Expiry Date'. If the booking is not confirmed by this date then the reservation will automatically cancel from the system and become available to book again. 

Once confirming, if you are a venue that uses ResDiary and has restaurant facilities then the option to reserve a table will appear and a table can be reserved straight away for the guest at the time of booking. 

Your reservation is now confirmed and you will be able to either 'view in room schedule' or select 'manage reservations' and this will take you to our 'Manage Reservations' section.

'Manage Reservations' gives you access to the database and will show you all of your reservations, past, present and future. You can search for a specific reservation via search box or by using the date options. You can also choose to just show historic bookings, cancelled bookings and also group the view by reservation.

To open the Room Reservation just click the '+ Button' next to the Reservation Number, this will give you a wider view of the reservation and will also show any other rooms that have been reserved under this reservation, for example a group booking. By having this option it allows you too make changes to just the room/s and not just the reservation as a whole. However selecting the drop down arrow on the right (shown circled below) this will produce a drop down list of options to choose from. 

To edit your reservation please click 'Edit Reservation' in the drop down menu. In her you can amend any details of the reservation as a whole including changing the arrival date, departure date and number of occupants. You can also add or amend notes for internal use, for example you may want to go back into a reservation after the guest has booked to amend notes regarding room or dinner requirements etc. Please make sure you save the changes before you leave this page at any point.

The next option is 'View Transactions' where you can access the reservations payments screen and add deposits, payments, charges and refunds from here.

To put it simply it is basically a record of all finance transactions and auto-room charges in relevance to the reservation will show here.

Payments, Manual Charges or Discounts are all added here by selecting the '+Add Transactions' Button and entering details like payment method and amount.

Refund or Void transactions by selecting tick box, subject to user rights.

The Button 'View Table Bookings' gives you a quick overview of when and where the guest booked a table with you, this is only if your venue is linked to ResDairy.

The 'Print Invoice' and 'Email Invoice' do what they say on the tin and either email the customer a copy of their invoice, which will happen automatically once selected, or if you select print it will print a copy of your invoice for you. 

The Button 'Get Registration Cards' will open the registration card straight away and you can print it off directly from here. However if you prefer you can print all of the reg cards off at once by going to 'Bulk Check In' and selecting all reservations that arriving on the selected day. See example of registration card below which will download as a PDQ to your desktop;

When you select 'Check-In' this will open in a separate window, where you can amend all the details, add address, preferences etc. After you press save, the guests is automatically checked-in. You can only check somebody in, if the Room Status is under 'Vacant Clean' or 'Vacant Clean Inspected'. You will be able to find this under 'Housekeeping and 'Room Status', see the image below for a snapshot of this screen. Simply click the drop down menu and change the status. I would advise that you always make sure to check with your housekeeping team that the room is in fact clean before amending this and checking anyone in. If you are trying to check in a room that has status of 'Dirty or Occupied' etc then HOP will give you a warning message so don't worry you wont be able to do it by accident we will always tell you!

After you have checked somebody in, the room will now show as occupied in the Housekeeping > Room Status section.

The 'Self Check-In' Button requires a second device. This will be mainly used for Hotel, they want to go paperless and they have screens or tablets on their reception desk. To learn how to use the Self Check-In, please go under 'Online Training Courses - Self Check-In'.

The Button 'Re-send Confirmation Email' gives you the opportunity to Re-send the Confirmation Email to the email address provided in the system

The Button 'Cancel Reservation' gives you a quick possibility to cancel an existing reservation. Please fill out the reason for your cancellation and if you still want to charge the remaining amount or not, this will depend on your venues cancellation policies.

We have an option to select a reservation and set the status to 'No Show' Button if a guest has not arrived, this will also prompt you to select whether or not this customer should be charged to remaining balance, again this is dependent on your venues policies.

You can also create a new reservation directly under manage reservations, simply press 'Create New' or 'Room Group Reservation' to book in a group however I would always recommend that you reserve rooms via the sales view as you can clearly see the hotels live availability.

The 'In House' area is a live list of all reservations that are currently checked in. The table displays a number of details about the items, Balance, Price, arrival date and type of room among them. You can access Transactions and edit the reservations from here by selecting the v next to the reference number. From the same drop down, you can perform “check out” or “undo check in”. Under 'Export' you can also print off a list with all the In-House Guests.

The next really important step in order to have the system running is the Night Audit.

For this, please go under 'Administration' and 'Property'.

The night audit always has to be on the current date, because otherwise you can't check guests in and out. You can either do this manually every night or you can also set an automatic time. For this option please make sure you tick he 'Enable' Button.

The night audit can only run if all the guests are checked in. If you set an automatic night audit and there are still guests to check in, you will receive an error message that the night audit could not be completed and you would need to run it manually.

After the night audit ran, all reports such as Payments, Revenues and Trial Balance will be available for the closed day.

Another really important feature are the Confirmation Emails. Luckily you only need to set them up once and they will be sent automatically once a reservation has been created.

To set up a confirmation email you would need to go under 'Administration' and 'Email Templates'. Here you can set up your own personal Confirmation Email with your company logo and all required details. Under 'Custom Field' you have the option to insert specific data automatically (for example the guests name). This would generally be done before you go live with HOP and probably done by someone from the management team or the owner but in case you ever need to make any amendments this is where you come to.

After you set everything up and saved it, this will be the email you send out to your guests.

Let's move on to the last big part in our Reception Training, the 'Front Desk Reports'.

This area allows you to print of reports for arrivals, stay overs, departures, services, cancellations, provisional reservations, reservation articles and in house guests. You can select the required date within each of these sections and then either download as a PDQ or CSV file and print out the relevant list/s.

One of the most important areas in here is the 'Arrival' sector. In here you not only have the possibility to download the arrival report, from here you can also print off all the Registration Cards in once. For this feature please select the required date and simply click 'Download Registration Cards'.

This are the main areas for the Reception Department. If you need more help, please feel free to also look into our 'Help' area where you can find closer descriptions about every area and also some Video Tutorials.