More V3 Enhancements

The following enhancements have been made to iBex V3 and are scheduled to go live tomorrow noon (Wednesday 5 May, NZST).

User ID for Back End Bookings

When a booking is made in the back end by your, it will now be your personal ID (not the operator ID) that will be displayed in the 'made by' field so that you can better identify who made the booking. You need to have set up individual staff logins for this to work.

Adding Extras to New Back End Bookings

When making a back end booking, you had to go through the extras screen and in most cases, extras were not being added resulting in an unnecessary extra step. Now, after you have selected the room, you can choose extras by clicking on the extras button otherwise just click 'Next' to bypass extras and go straight to the final screen.Note also that the extras now display all categories rather than just those from the first category in the list. This is much more appropriate for those with few extras. Those with large extras can then filter by category to reduce the display.

Use No of Nights as alternative to Date Out

When making a back end booking you can now enter the number of nights or date out when making, or editing, a booking in the back end. You will clearly see this in the Book Edit screen.

Adding Extras to an Existing Booking

If you click on the extras button in the Edit Booking screen, it will list any extras that have been raised against the booking as a whole but you cannot add extras in this screen - the wording has been updated to make this clear.When adding an extra to a booking, you first need to select the room that the extra is to be added to. This is important for multi-room bookings because the extra should be charged to the room rather than the booking as a whole. When clicking the edit button of the room you want, you then click the extras button and the list of available extras will show for selection.

Taking a Deposit when Creating a Booking

You have always been able to enter a deposit amount when creating a back end booking but not set the payment type. This has now been added.

Arrivals/Departures Screen

You will now be able to mouse over the comments and notes to see them rather than click the link to bring up a popup which was more time consuming. To change the comments you will need to click through.You will also be able to create an invoice on any bookings marked for departure without needing to open the booking first. Just click on the invoice link to open up the invoice screen.A guest registration link is being added to the bookings marked for arrival which will print out a guest registration form. The form is currently being designed and while not ready at the time of the upload but will be implemented shortly.

Multi Booking vs Single Booking Invoices

As part of version 3, the invoicing was enhanced to allow for registered users/agents who prefer a single invoice at the end of the month for all bookings raised during that month rather than one invoice for each booking. A number of users have been confused following this change when raising an invoice only to find that it brought up a previous invoice.This is due to a previous invoice to the same registered user/agent not being closed to new bookings and so displayed the current open invoice with other bookings listed and prompting you to add the selected booking.In this release, the invoicing system will revert back to single booking invoices by default. If you want to continue with the multi booking per invoice functionality, you will need to activate it for each registered user that is to be invoiced in this manner. This is done by setting ticking the new field labeled Multi Booking Invoices (User Maint / Regd Users).

Split Bookings for Same Unit

In creating a back end booking, when you select a unit, it drops from the available list. The problem is that it would stay dropped even if you selected another date range which was outside the range of the first date range for when the unit was first selected – even if it was available over that new date range.This has now been fixed so you could for example choose unit one for say 1/5 to 3/5 and unit one would become available again if you change your dates to say 4/5 to 6/5 and add it again to the booking. This is an important capability for some operators such as holiday parks.

Adding Payment Types

If you wish to add a payment type, then previously you could only do this while entering a payment in the payment screen. Now you can enter a new payment type in the 'enter new Pay Type' field (click Payments button to access)and click save without entering a payment record and the new type will be added.

Reporting Groups

A new reporting group capability is being added to iBex starting with the Registered User screen but will be added to other multi item entities such as rooms, rates, extras etc. The purpose is to allow reporting to be done on records in a selected group.For example, in the registered users screen you will see a new field labeled Grouping with a link below it. Click on the link to open up a popup that allows you enter your first reporting group for registered users. It might be 'Travel Agents' and a second group might be 'Onlie Agents'. Once you have added them, close the popup and refresh the Registered Users screen and you will see tick boxes appear for the groups you have added. Now tick the box or boxes of the relevant group(s) for each registered user record.Tthe reports are not yet structured to make use of this but that will be revised shortly allowing you to report on all registered users that belong to a nominated group.

Important Explanation for those using Invoicing

Prior to an invoice being raised, all the payment information is kept at the booking level. Assume we have a $100 value booking and no payments resulting in a balance of $100. When an invoice item is raised, it will be treated as payment against the booking so if you raise an invoice for $100, it will pay off the booking and leave the balance as zero. This is because raising an invoice transfers the responsibility for payments from the booking to debtors. You cannot pay both the booking and the invoice or you would end up with a double payment. Note there is no requirement to raise invoices if you prefer to manage balance due by bookings rather than by debtors.