Built-in Discount Calculator, Auto Pilot Beta Features

We wanted to inform you of the upcoming Reservation Nexus release that will be in effect on Thursday, September 7th. There are some incredible new features in this release. Continue to read for further details. If you have questions or would like to schedule a training session, please contact your Red Carpet Professional.

SUMMARY

Classic Edition Improvements:

• Built-in discount calculator
• Improved cancellation process

For Auto Pilot volunteers, the following new features are now available:

• Reservation sources - How did you find out about us?
• Group reservations
• Innkeeper improvements for Specials and Packages

IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW

• If you receive a copy of your confirmations on your cell phone, please give your Red Carpet Professional a call. We felt it best to separate confirmation emails on your computer from your mobile phone for better compatibility. There is now a new field just for mobile phone notifications in Settings -> Phone Reservations.
• We have improved how we display reservation information in confirmation emails, on the reservation summary page, on the print receipt, on your daily backup emails, etc. in order to be more uniform and for Special and Packages available to Auto Pilot volunteers.
• If you pay monthly for Reservation Nexus, we now charge your card the last day of each month.
• Congratulations to K3 Guest Ranch and West Hill House B&B for being featured in the Bed & Breakfast America Magazine, Fall 2006 edition.

CLASSIC EDITION DETAILS

Built-in Discount Calculator

Reservation Nexus now calculates percentage off discounts for you. This means that you can offer 10% off a room or even 10% off the entire reservation, and the discount amount is calculated for you. To view the changes, please visit the "Discounts" tab on any reservation.

Improved Cancellation Process

You are now required to enter your initials in order to cancel a reservation. We now allow you to record cancellation notes. You can no longer add rooms to the reservation once it has been cancelled, but will need to create a new reservation.

On the "Summary" page, we now display that a reservation has been cancelled along with who cancelled the reservation and the date and time it was cancelled.

We HIGHLY recommend having separate logins for each staff member at your inn for PCI compliance as well as for tracking purposes. Unlike many of our competitors, additional logins are free of charge and you are in control of them.

Miscellaneous Improvements

• We have improved the reservations grid to show, for the current month, today on instead of from the first day of the month. There is check box at the bottom that allows you to see all of the current month at your leisure.
• We fixed an issue with regards to pop up text not displaying on Mozilla and Mac. This means that in the reservations grid, on all computers and in all browsers, you should be able to hover over the reservations and see the guest information. Special thanks to Peter MacLaren at West Hill House Bed & Breakfast for bringing a solution to our attention.
• On phone reservations, at the bottom of the "Summary" page, we now display which staff member booked the reservation.
• In Settings -> Guest Reservations we highly recommend turning on the new setting: "When a guest is booking for multiple nights, if there are any ‘vacancy holes', display ‘Call Us'." Basically, if a guest is trying to stay for multiple nights, let's say three nights, if there are any rooms available within that period, it will display "Call us" instead of "Occupied". This helps you fill spare rooms as well as gives you the opportunity to put them in a different room.
• We included the reservation number on the print friendly version of a reservation, available on the "Summary" page.
• We fixed an issue on the Payments report where only the first check was displayed.
• We now include retail items in the Revenue report.

UPCOMING CLASSIC FEATURES

• Guest History

AUTO PILOT DETAILS

We want to thank all Auto Pilot volunteers for your feedback, input and time, especially with regards to Specials and Packages. We have taken your observations and made changes and improvements that will be available this Thursday. Specials and Packages is the most advanced and innovative part of Auto Pilot, and we will continue to polish it according to your input.

Not this release, but the mid-October release will have credit card processing, where you can charge your guests immediately through Reservation Nexus when they book online or call by phone. After this next major release, we will make our Auto Pilot edition available to everyone. Auto Pilot is an additional investment that will help increase your guest return rate while saving you time, effort and energy. After the mid-October release, only automatic birthday and anniversary emails remain to be available, which is under development.

CREDIT CARD PROCESSING & AUTHORIZE.NET PREPARATION

For charging credit cards through Reservation Nexus, you will need to set up an Authorize.net account. Authorize.net allows us to charge your guests' credit cards and deposit the money into your bank account through your current credit card processor. You don't need to switch credit card processors; simply add the Authorize.net service to your account.

We became a reseller with Autorize.net to see discover what a fair price for Authorize.net would be. The best deal they established with us was:

$99 setup fee
$10 per month access fee

$0.05 per transaction fee

As you work with your credit card processor, please use these Authorize.net rates to ensure that you get a fair deal. As a reseller, your credit card processor will normally try to add on a little to these fees.

If you use Intuit, makers of Quickbooks, as your credit card processor, we have plans to integrate with them as well as Authorize.net. That will allow you to integrate with Quickbooks. Further details are forthcoming.

Reservation Sources - Available Now

You can now track where your reservations come from. It is completely customizable to your needs. How does it work? When guests book online, they are asked how they heard about you. When they call by phone, you ask and record how they heard about you. In addition, on your directory and association listings, you can pass in a code to Reservation Nexus to automatically track that source. We now support Google and Yahoo scripts on the confirmation page for tracking reservations from your pay per click sources. Call your Red Carpet Service Professional to schedule training and setup.

Group Reservations - Available Now

Group reservations allow you to manage small to very large parties in the same reservation. You add additional guests to the reservation and assign rooms, retail items, packages and discounts to these guests. Subtotals for each guest allows them to pay separately as well as all together. Call your Red Carpet Service Professional to schedule training.

Sincerely,

- The Reservation Nexus Team