Newsletter 4/2/2014

Member Priority Bookings

Different clubs have different ways of handling the release of bookings for a Winter season.  Some clubs open the bookings at a set date and time, while others allow requests to be made and then arbitrate the conflicts to produce a fair allocation.  The latter approach results in a major piece of work shuffling all those paper applications and entering the results into the booking system.

The new feature allows you to specify, season by season, a period for Priority Bookings (actually you just specify  the last date priority bookings can be made).  During the Priority Bookings period, a number of things change:

• members can book over the top of existing bookings and are waitlisted without prompting
• the booking matrix (on mouseover) informs members of the Priority Period
• payment options are not offered at the end of the booking screens (step 4)
• the email to the member is specific to Priority Period bookings, typically is not set up as an invoice but informs members of the process and the date on which bookings will be finalised

At the end of the Priority Period, you only have to deal with the waitlisted bookings, and bump TENTATIVE bookings out if necessary.  You will probably find that most people slot into available rooms and the number of conflicts is small.

Get in touch if you would like to use the new Priority Period facility.  When you are creating new seasons, just leave the “Priority Period” field blank if you aren’t using it.

Members updating their info

Can now see the contents of, but not edit, the “custom” fields that you can create for your member records.