Updates on Features and News

Thanks to suggestions from users, we've added a few new small features to the system.  And scroll down to read some news about things we are working on.


Rate Adjustment Shows in Room Listing Price

If your room/unit price is being adjusted downward by a Rate Adjustment, we are now showing the original price, plus the Adjustment name, and then the adjusted price.  This is a good way to let your guests know they are getting a discount. 

Since Rate Adjustments can also be used to increase prices, we are making sure only to show this section when the price is decreased.  We have added ID's to both the original price section and the discount name, so the look and feel of both can be adjusted with CSS in your theme (or hidden if you don't want to use this feature).  The tag information is:
#span_originalprice {text-decoration: line-through;}
#span_rateadjustmentname {color:red;font-weight:bold;}

Select Days of the Week For Discount Codes

You can now select which days of the week a discount code can be used.  This makes it now possible to use discount codes to run specials such as "Stay 2 nights or more during the week and receive a $100 discount."   By setting the code validity to only Sunday through Thursday, the user will see an error message if they try to use the code on other days of the week.  If no days of the week are selected, then the discount code is valid for all days. 

Email From Address is User Address

For the past year or so emails sent from our system have had a From address of digital-no-replay@reservationkey.com and the Reply-To address was the user's address.  We recently switched this back to having the From address being the user's address.  This makes the emails look like they came from our user rather than from ReservationKey.  We also removed the message at the bottom about replying to emails.  We are hoping this doesn't cause too much of an increase in our emails being blocked by spam filters.  If it looks like lots of messages are being blocked we might have to switch back, but for now we are trying it this way again.  We made some additional changes to the email system which we hope should help our messages get past spam filters.

News

We recently completed a new integration with the credit card processing company 1stPayment.  We hope this will give our users another good option when it comes to deciding which credit card processing company to use.  And we are still working on an integration with Heartland Payment Systems, which we hope to have completed fairly soon.  Once this is done we will have more information about the various credit card processing companies we support.

Some users have expressed interest in GDS capability, and the ability to show availability on sites such as hotels.com, kayak.com, and expedia.com.  We have just begun the process of looking for a company to work with to make this happen.  One good possibility we may use is the system at siteminder.com. 

Another feature high on our list is to create a version of our Reservation Pages that works well on mobile sites.  We plan to do this by rearranging the main sections of our existing Reservation Pages so that everything is in a vertical column (instead of two columns as we currently have).  Because our system was designed to be modular, this should be a fairly easy and quick task to complete.  We hope to start on this within the next few weeks. 

Tips on Authorize.net Integration

Using Authorize.net as your payment processor with ReservationKey is easy.  Here are a few tips to help with some of the settings in both systems.

Turn Test Mode Off

Even though you might be tempted to leave Test Mode enabled, disable it.  When your authorize.net account is in Test Mode it will not work with ReservationKey.  You can always test the connecting by running transactions that are for just a few cents.  For testing online reservation payments, do this by temporarily changing your Payment Schedule to require just a $0.02 deposit at the time of reservation.  For testing internal payments, you can just type a small amount into the payment field before clicking Charge Card.

To turn Test Mode off, click the link in the red bar, Test Mode.

Then click the button, Turn Test OFF.

To Use CIM or Not To Use CIM?

If you want to be able to charge cards within ReservationKey with the click of a button, CIM must be enabled in your Authorize.net account AND in your Payment Method setup in ReservationKey.  If you only need to automatically charge your guest a deposit at time of reservation, you do not need to use CIM.  We will store the last four digits of the credit card number and email you the remaining digits.  You then can combine those pieces to use charge the card using your existing equipment, just like the Offline Credit Card method works.  If you do a lot of transactions, we highly recommend using CIM, since it will make your life much easier since all you have to do is click a button to submit a charge.  The downside is that Authorize.net charges an extra $20 per month for this service.

To turn CIM on, go to the Account Tab, and click Merchant Profile on the left side.  Then click Sign Up on the line for Customer Information Manager.
   

You will need to agree to some Terms and then click the button I Agree.

Locate Your Login ID and Transaction Key

You will need the API Login ID and Transaction Key in order to link Authorize.net with ReservationKey.  Once logged into Authorize.net, click on the Account Tab at the top, and then select API Login ID and Transaction Key. 

Then note your Login ID, and enter the answer to your Secret Question in order to generate a new Transaction Key.

Add Payment Method in ReservationKey

Now, go to ReservationKey, under the Website Tab, select Payment Methods.  Click Add Payment Method, then select Authorize.net as the type to add and click Continue.  Now, copy and paste your API Login ID and Transaction Key into the fields on the Payment Method screen.

Show for Internal Reservations - whether to show credit card fields in the Reservation Summary, inside ReservationKey.
Use Authorize.net CIM - whether to use CIM.  Set this to Yes, ONLY if you have enabled it in your Authorize.net account (see above notes on that).
Show Country Field - whether to ask user to also select their country.  If you guests from outside the United States we recommend that you set this to Yes, so that the address verification system works properly.

Link Authorize.net to Your Reservation Page(s)

The final step is to select Authorize.net as your payment method for the Reservation Page(s) where you want to charge cards using Authorize.net.  Under the Website tab, select Reservation Pages, and edit the page(s) where you want to use Authorize.net.   Scroll down a bit and find the section for Online Payments and select the Authorize.net method you just added. 

Save changes, and now your page is linked with Authorize.net.  We recommend that you run a few small transactions both on your public Reservation Page and internally (if using CIM) to make sure that everything is working properly.
 

New Yearly Comparison Report

For users that have been on ReservationKey for several years, now there is a report that makes it easy to compare one year to another.  At the bottom of the reports list, select Booking Date Comparison.  The report shows you how many bookings you have for the future, as of a certain month, based on the date on which the reservation was made. 

The report will show you bookings by month for the period of one year, comparing the two years you select.  You can find out something like "As of May 2012, I already have 643 room nights booked for February 2013.  As of May 2011, I had only 569 room nights booked for February 2012, so it looks like my sales are running much stronger this year for February 2013 than they were last year."



For example, you can look up statistics such as "As of April this year, how many reservations do I have coming up, compared to how many I had coming up as of April last year?"  With this you can easily see if how your bookings for this year compare to last year at the same time, for example.  You can also compare years that are both in the past, such as "How many bookings did I have as of January 2011 compared to January 2010?" 

The top part of the report shows you the numerical data as a side by side comparison of the two years selected.

More Ways to Find Reservations

Two new features make it easier than ever to find reservations.  In header section, in the upper right, we now have a link for quickly pulling up new reservations, and on the upper left, a link for searching for reservations.


Reviewing New Reservations

As you enter reservations manually, or new online reservations come in, the link will update to show how many new you have for the current day.  If you have at least one new reservation, the link will show in bold yellow.  If you don't yet have any new reservations for the current day, the link will show "0 New" in white. 



Clicking on the link defaults to bring up your new reservations for the day, but you also can search for new reservations from the last 7 days, 14 days, this month, and last month.  From the list of reservations you can either click to go to the full reservation information, or click the Quick View option.





Searching Reservations

Clicking the Search link brings up a search box.  In this one box, you can search by reservation ID, any of the guest name fields, any of the other contact fields, and also the reservation and contact notes. 



The results of your search appear in a new box, where you can run another search, or click on a reservation to go to the full reservation details.

Two New Income Reports

We now have two new reports for quickly seeing how much income you have generated. One is useful for seeing income by month, over the span of a year, and the other report shows income by unit.

Here is the current listing of all the reports we currently offer, with the new reports noted:

  

Income (Summarized by Unit) 

You can select the date range to search, and which units to show.  The report shows number of nights booked in this period, the occupancy rate, average room rate, and total room charge.

At the bottom of the report, you can easily see totals and averages.  Below the numerical information, we also create bar graphs for room charges, and for number of occupied nights.

Income By Month

This report summarizes your income by month, for the period of an entire year.  You can select which year from the dropdown, which is populated with the years since you first joined ReservationKey.  The left side of the report (units per day, unit days, average charge, total charge) is based on room charges for for each day of the month searched.  The right side of the report, is not exact to the month, since some reservations may span multiple months.  We are using the checkin date to calculate which month these items show in.  While it may not be completely exact, it should be close enough to give you a good idea of your financial situation.

Below the numerical data, we have included three bar graphs, Room/Unit Charges, Payments, and Unit Days.  These give you a quick graphical representation of how your income is spread throughout the year.