RezOvation GT Winter 2009 Update Release Notes

New Features & Improvements

Windows 7 compatibility

RezOvation GT is now certified as Windows 7 compatible. Click here to view compatibility information in the Windows 7 compatibility center.

Group Reservation enhancements

We've added a new group reservation interface, which links together individual reservations within a group and allows you to easily manage payments and reservations for a particular group.

Enhancements include:

• Book a group quickly and easily, with individual reservations for each guest in the group
• Apply payments to the entire group, or a single payment to an individual reservation in the group
• Easily add a reservation to an existing group
• Print separate invoices for different guests on the same reservation (e.g. if you have a single reservation with multiple rooms / guests and don't want to put them under a group -- this is an easy way to split out charges / payments)
• Run reports on your group, see group revenue, etc.
• For a walk through of these new features, please click here.

Occupancy Map improvements

• The click & drag feature has been improved to allow for multiple selections without using the "CTRL" key. To make a selection on the occupancy map, simply click and drag the room / dates you wish. Make as many selections in different rooms / days as you wish, and then press ENTER on your keyboard, or right-click on a selection and click "Book".
• Out of service rooms can now be created by clicking and dragging on the occupancy map. Simply click and drag to select the rooms / days you wish to put out of service, and then right-click on the selection and click "Out of service".
• For a walk through of these improvements, please click here.

Improved booking process

• We've made significant improvements to the process of selecting rooms, applying packages to rooms, applying discounts, editing room assignments, and managing multiple room reservations.
• For a walk through of these improvements, please click here.

Tax effective dates / tax scheduling

You can now schedule a tax change for a future date, and have the system automatically update future reservations to reflect the new tax rate.

QuickBooks Accounting integration

We are now offering an open beta of this new feature, which allows you to synchronize your reservations and guests automatically to QuickBooks, and use the powerful automatic reconciliation features in QuickBooks. For more information or to sign up for the open beta, please contact beta@rezovation.com.

Booking Engine improvements

• Book packages only option. You can now set the Booking Engine to only allow room / lodging packages. To set this option, go to the Configuration screen, click the link on the right side for "Booking Engine", and check the box for "Book packages only".
• Compact availability calendar. We've added some settings under Configuration > Booking Engine which allows you to hide photos and minimum night stay information on your availability calendar. This is especially useful for properties with a large number of rooms
• Sort rooms & packages by price or name. You can now choose how your rooms and packages are sorted by going to Configuration > Booking Engine.
• Trip insurance. This feature was released in September, and allows guests to optionally purchase trip insurance while booking a room. You can read more about this feature here.

Emails and letters

• Preview any emails and letters right from the template configuration screen. Just click the "preview" link, and you'll see a sample of the template with real data.
• Follow up and reminder emails can be configured to ignore the "Marketing OK" flag, so your follow up and reminder emails will always be sent.
• Marketing OK enabled by default setting. Set the "Marketing OK" flag to "on" by default from the Configuration section, from the "General Settings" link on the right side.
• Bulk update guests to "marketing OK". From the Customer List, select the guests you wish to update, right-click on a selected guest, and choose "Enable Marketing OK", or "Disable Marketing OK".

Customizable columns in the reservation list & customer list

You can now customize which columns appear in the reservation list and customer list by adding / removing columns, and reorder the columns.

Other improvements

• You can now hide rooms that are no longer in use, so that they do not display on the occupancy map, in reports, or online. To disable a room, open the Configuration section and click the Rooms link. Edit the room you wish to disable and uncheck the "enabled" box.
• The QuickBooking screen has been improved as follows: if arrival date is set ahead of departure date, the arrival date is automatically changes; rate selection and filters are remembered so that closing and reopening the window does not reset filters; per-night right is displayed by double-clicking on a rate / package in the list; you can now choose between directly booking the reservation or editing rates / adding multiple rooms.
• Reminder and follow up emails can now be sent up to 365 days before / after a reservation.
• When you enter a credit card # in the payment screen, the credit card type will now be automatically set.
• Additional information is displayed on the status bar at the bottom of the Reservation List.
• Added a Total # of Guests code to the Housekeeping report.
• QBMS Payments can now be taken for reservations greater than 99 days.
• Added a progress bar which appears when sending multiple emails.
• Added "pay in full" buttons for cash, check and other payments
• You can now search by "Other Name" from the customer list quick search.
• Added codes to the Summary report to break down liabilities by "in house reservations", "departed reservations" and "future reservations".

What's next?

Here are a few features that we're working on for the next update, due out in early 2010:

• An improved wait list feature, which automatically notifies you when a guest is on the wait list
• Additional reports, including tax exempt reports, daily sales reports, and more
• Customize the default subject line for each email template
• More colors on the occupancy map for online reservations, groups, and more
• A lot more! Please check our feedback forum regularly to see what features are in progress, and subscribe to our blog for regular updates and news.

Please read the in-program help document for more details on each feature. To access the help document, click the ? icon on any window, or select Help > Index from the menu.

Bug Fixes & Stability Enhancements

• Minimum night stay warning now displays properly for all rate management options (RMO 2, 3)
• Fixed an error that would occur in some cases when adding a payment to an invoice.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when clicking the send email button on the toolbar.
• Fixed a bug with the gift certificate list that would sometimes cause a "unable to refresh list" message.
• Multiple letters can now be printed at the same time using Open Office.
• Fixed an intermittent error that would occur when printing to Open Office.
• Fixed an issue with the gift certificate increment which would cause the GC number to restart if the number were edited manually to be lower than the last used GC number
• Fixed the Reservation by Booking Date Detail report to correctly report all bookings made during the report date range.
• Fixed the The Reservation by Booking Date Summary report to correctly report potential revenue for reservations booked during the report date range.
• Fixed the QuickBooking screen to properly respect minimum night stay settings.
• Fixed an error in the QuickBooks screen which would occur if a package had a seasonal restriction ending on 2/29
• Improved the installer to properly run on Windows 7 systems with UAC enabled
• Improved error handling in the Housekeeping report
• The QuickBooks IIF export now properly exports cancellation fees.
• Fixed a bug with the mobile booking engine where some room rates with extra guest fees were not calculated properly.
• Fixed a bug with the Reservation Balance report which was causing it to fail when Departed guests were included
• Fixed an issue where some QBMS voids were counted as refunds in the Edit Reservation window, causing the total payments amount to be incorrect.
• Fixed some broken images in the help file Configuration article.
• Security badges are now properly displayed on the gift certificate checkout.
• Fixed an issue with the Booking Engine login where some customers could not reset their passwords.
• Gift certificates are no longer saved when a gift certificate invoice is cancelled.
• Improved the update / download process to handle corrupted download files.
• Fixed the Guest Forecast report to properly respect the "include out of service rooms" configuration setting.
• Fixed a program hang that would occur when unchecking the "does not expire" box when creating a gift certificate.
• Fixed an issue with the Booking Engine checkout where using the Back button after logging in would cause an error.
• Improved the Gift Certificate report to show the balance of a GC as of the through date of the report, and disabled the "From" date.
• Fixed an issue with the Reservation List "amount due" field that would cause the amount due to sometimes appear as a negative value.
• Fixed an issue with the database restore where credit cards were not always deleted.
• The cancellation fee can now be edited.
• Fixed a crash that would occur in the Booking Engine if no credit card payment types were enabled.
• Fixed the report timeout setting so that the timeout value is properly respected.
• Fixed a error in the Reservation List that would occur when using the "Balance Due" custom filter.
• Fixed the QuickBooks IIF export to properly export when revenue is set to "Departure Date"
• Fixed the Help document to correctly label rDate as reservation date
• Fixed an issue with QBMS payments where processing any payment type other than Visa would reset the Card Type to Visa.
• Fixed an issue with the Booking Engine which would prevent the form from being submitted again if QBMS was enabled and invalid credit card data was entered.
• Fixed the Booking Engine so that two rooms of the same room type can be booked for RMO 3 properties (book by room type).
• Improved the error handling for the Booking Engine confirmation page when bad data is submitted in the Questions field.
• Fixed the # of adult / children counts on the occupancy map to report correctly for multiple room reservations.
• Fixed the tax calculations for "per day" taxes to distribute properly across each day.
• Fixed the Room configuration screen so that revenue account setting changes properly persist to the Rooms list.
• Disabling or deleting rooms will now close out availability for Expedia.
• Invoices that contain Gift Certificates can no longer be deleted.
• Performance of loading rooms on the Add / Edit Room screen has been improved significantly.
• Fixed an issue with the Booking Engine that was causing a redirect loop when selecting a room type that does not have a single room available for the selected dates (i.e. a split).
• Fixed the Advance Deposit liability report so that it no longer includes direct deposits.
• Fixed an issue with the Housekeeping report which was causing the guest name to be duplicated when using the [sGstNameRm] code.
• Fixed the RezOvation Desktop import to better handle gift certificates with null values.
• Fixed the Property Configuration screen to all the State value to be changed when a country other than USA is selected.
• Fixed the Customer List export to include custom fields.
• Gift Certificates can now be refunded even if the face value is 0.
• The system generated "arrival time" and "departure time" timestamp will no longer display in the reservation notes field for Booking Engine reservations.
• The Gift Certificate custom filter will no longer display deleted GCs.
• The QuickBooks IIF import has been fixed so that third-party GC payments are properly added.
• Contacts that have invalid email addresses can now be deleted.
• Fixed the Payment Detail report to correctly show the time for record only credit card payments.
• Fixed and issue where the credit card hold selection color was getting swapped in the configuration.
• Booking Engine confirmation emails have been fixed to use the correct customized subject lines.
• The Last Update date is now properly updated on the Customer record when a record is changed.
• The Purchase History on the Customer record will now correctly display GC and Prepaid sales.
• Fixed an erroneous check in warning that would display if payments did not meet the deposit policy.
• Improved the network install so that users with limited permissions can properly start the network client.
• The Gift Certificate date of sale has been corrected to match the date of sale on the invoice.
• Fixed some erratic behavior with the up / down buttons on the Rate Seasons and Adjustments screen.
• The Country is now displayed in the Primary Guest section of the Edit Reservation screen.

Released on December 16, 2009

Latest Version: 5.11.1.307