Office change
I will be working from Tokyo for the next three months as it's a nicer place to live. For our Melbourne clients that means the luxury of being able to drop into the office won't be available, but email and phone contact are the same, with one exception - the mobile phone won't follow me, and you should call on our (03) number, 03 9948 4039. This number follows me and you can leave messages there too. If you haven't installed Google Hangouts this is also a great way to work together, particularly by using the screen sharing, so get in the habit of getting support that way as your first choice. If you haven't yet installed Hangouts, do so and invite me on nikdow@gmail.com.
BTW one of the best things about living in Tokyo is being able to get around by bicycle like everybody else and not be treated like vermin. Also not having to wear a helmet. さよなら。
Confirming a waitlist booking
When you edit a waitlist booking you now see a button, with either "make TENTATIVE" or "make CONFIRMED". Which one appears is determined by the member having sufficient credit to pay for the booking. Click on this button to change the booking status and update the admin price, to trigger the invoice. Then click on "save and send email" and your work is done. You can't change or allocate rooms to a WAITLIST booking, so make those changes after you take the above steps.
Codes for your admin emails
In your guest emails the code %STAYDURATION% gives the number of nights, but that code hadn't been added to your admin emails. It's there now if you want to add it, at least it will be in the next few days, while we wait for the early adopters to test it.
We have also invented a new code designed to go in the subject line of your admin emails for TENTATIVE, CONFIRMED and WAITLIST bookings %HAS_CUSTOMER_COMMENT% will translate to "Special Request" in the email subject line. This one will also operate for you within the next few days. You can add this code via admin -> site config -> email formats. Search on "admin".
We removed a feature!
You can no longer change a guest's room using the drop-down selector in your admin booking edit page. That is because it's better to click on "Open in Room Allocation" and do it there. The old drop-downs had problems now that book-by-room clubs have the ability to share a room between multiple bookings. This page is probably the most advanced page on the site and requires a top-class browser to operate correctly. If you are using Internet Explorer, then don't. We test your admin screens on Chrome and Safari, so use one of these, preferably Chrome. Members of course can book using any old browser, but to bring you better admin tools we had to choose the best browser.
Sharing member contact details
Come clubs use our facility for members to view other members contact details - this page can be turned on or off via admin -> site config -> site details -> Member can view other members' information. You can turn this on or off yourself but you need to get us to add/remove the page from the members' menu. This facility has been enhanced so you can decide which member classes will show up on this page. For clubs that include family members in the member database for example, you can prevent those entries from showing. Look for this on admin -> member & transaction -> member classes. By the way, the member class page is one of your admin pages that has been upgraded to our "web 2.0" format, there is no edit icon! Just click on a row and edit it in situ. No save button either, each field saves as you move away from it. We've modelled this behaviour on Google Docs. It's a taste of more upgrades that we are working towards having ready for Winter 2017.
Accounting
Not as much fun as skiing, but we can help a bit. Most of our clubs are using an accounting package such as MYOB or Zero. Most are also taking advantage of the sub-ledger provided by the booking system for business intelligence, reporting and analysis. If you are still entering individual booking transactions into your accounting package then you are spending too much time on accounting and not enough on skiing. You only need to transfer your total receipts from the booking system into your accounting package, perhaps once a quarter. You get this number from the booking reports, so call or email for help if you would like to spend less time on accounting and more time skiing.
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