Getting Ready for the Season

A new feature allows you to enforce a minimum number of empty nights between bookings in each room or bed. This is only for book-by-room lodges (see below). If you have beds presented individually on the matrix (one row each bed) this will only ensure each individual bed is left empty, not the whole room.

How to tell if a lodge is book-by-bed or book-by-room:

If the first booking step matrix has multiple rows, the lodge is book-by-room (even if the rows are showing individual beds - each bed is pretending to be a very small room).
If the lodge shows a single row on the first step with numbers in each cell, that lodge is book-by-bed. Plus there is a field below the matrix
Another way to find out is via your admin menu, go to Site Config, and filter the Variable Name field on "booking_by_bed" (without the quotes) and if the value is "NO", the lodge is book-by-room.

To turn on the new feature, go to Site Config, find EMPTY_DAYS and enter the number of empty days to enforce before and after each booking.

N.B. one very small caveat: if you edit the dates of a booking (i.e. Edit via Matrix) the check isn't performed until you are back on the edit screen, by which time the booking has been saved. So you see the message then, but we trust our admins to do the right thing.

Documentation

We have made a start on providing answers to Frequently Asked Questions. You will see either next to a field, or in a button at the top right of a page, click to open in a new tab/window. This will be expanded in the near future. The whole help database is searchable and can be navigated using the menu, breadcrumbs and parent-child pages.

HOURS_ADVANCE

This is a new Configuration Item you can use to prevent last-minute bookings. It specifies a number of hours prior to midnight on the arrival date, after which a booking cannot be made (except by admin). For example, 36 would prevent bookings for Saturday night, after midday Friday.

Room Occupancy and Arrivals/Departures

On-screen printable reports that used to be found on the same page as downloadable spreadsheet data are now migrated to the new software framework and are provided as PDF downloads, so you no longer need to screen print these. The content has not changed from the old software. Find these at admin menu → bookings → booking reports which used to have all reports, now only has the PDF downloads. As per previous newsletter, spreadsheet data downloads have moved to the Download tab of your Manage Bookings screen.

Member Pages

Member's view of their own bookings has migrated to the new software framework (their personal details page migrated earlier). When viewing a booking, eWay payment buttons appear if appropriate. So far only eWay is implemented and uses a more modern version of eWay's interface. This enables us to follow up if members don't complete the process properly and as a result a payment is not shown in the ledger. Our follow up will find the payment and update the member's transactions automatically. We are now working on Paypal buttons with an update to the software and these will appear soon. For the moment, for clubs that use Paypal, members wanting to pay need to click on the "old page" button.

Members now see up to three icons, indicating (a) payment is possible, i.e. booking not fully paid yet, (b) booking can be cancelled (i.e. it's not in the past and is either CONFIRMED, TENTATIVE or WAITLISTED) and (c) vouchers apply.

CBDWeb Booking Service

6/165 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Victoria Australia

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