We have an update for you today to the preview release, which can be downloaded here: http://downloads.rezovation.com/preview/rezovationgt_update.exe.  The new version is 5.8.1.162.

This update includes the following fixes & enhancements:

• Added a new room / room type restriction to the Discounts configuration.
• Added a revenue account field to the Discounts configuration.  NOTE: if you have already created discounts, you will need to edit those discounts and set a revenue account, in order to ensure that your revenue reports correctly reflect any discounts given.
• Discount amounts are now properly displayed with tax adjustments on the Edit Reservation screen.
• The occupancy map is now correctly showing previous days when you click the "Show Today" button.
• # Used count (displayed on reports and in the discount configuration) is now properly decremented when a discount is deleted.
• The QBMS / Intuit Payment batch close time is now properly stored in UTC.
• Some discount template codes which were not working have been fixed.
• Fixed a bug which would prevent certain invoices from being edited when the same customer existed twice in the database.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when generating the Housekeeping report.
• Fixed a bug with the Confirmation letters which was displaying the reservation dates in the room name field.
• Fixed an issue which would cause the QuickBooking screen to crash.
• All missing Help topics have been added.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the preview and provided feedback!  Keep it coming!

All the best -

The RezOvation Team

We're excited to announce the latest version of RezOvation GT, which is now available for any innkeepers who would like to try the new features before they are officially released.  This version is stable, but is still undergoing internal testing.  Please feel free to install and give us your feedback!

Click here to download the preview release of the RezOvation GT Summer 2010 update. Once you downloaded the update file, launch it and follow the prompts.  Next, select Help > Install Updates, or simply start RezOvation GT and you will be prompted to install the update.  The new version will be 5.8.

Here are some of the new features -

Discounts & Promotions

We added a brand-new discount & promotions system. This system allows you to:

• Create discounts of any amount including % or fixed discount on a room rate, free night, free extra, free package, and more.
• Apply any number of restrictions to a discount including blackout dates, min # nights, max # nights, repeat guest only, day of week, last minute, and more.
• Create special coupon / promotion codes and provide those to specific customers, or use them for a marketing campaign. These coupons can then be redeemed through the RezOvation Booking Engine or directly in the software for guests booking over the phone / checking in.
• Set up an automatic discount for the Booking Engine or for phone reservations. An automatic discount will then show up when the guest meets the necessary criteria - incenting them to book.
• Visit the user guide for more information.

Reservations & Customers

• We added a "Possible duplicates" filter to the Customer list to help you more easily identify duplicate customer records. You can then click and select any duplicates (click & drag, or CTRL click), and click the Merge button in the menu to merge them together.
• The Reservation referral source is now auto-populated with the Customer referral source, if the Customer has a referral source entered.
• Customer "Other Names" are now displayed in the contact info on the reservation.

Reports

• We added a new Comparison report, which allows you to compare Unit Revenue from one period to the next. This is similar to the "Unit Revenue Comparison" report in RezOvation Desktop, and gives you the ability to see how you are "pacing" from one year to the next. For example, you can compare how many reservations were booked as of July last year for last year's fall season, to how many reservations were booked as of July this year, for this fall.
• The Housekeeping report can now be grouped by housekeeper name. To create housekeeper names, first add the housekeeper(s) as a User under Configuration > Users.
• We added a report timeout setting, which allows you to increase the time that reports can run before timing out. This is useful if you have a larger database or many reservations and find that some of your reports fail to run.

Booking Engine

• If you don't use Intuit Payments / QBMS to automatically take deposits, but you'd still like the RezOvation Booking Engine to indicate that a deposit is due, you can now configure the Booking Engine to display a deposit due / to be billed and then manually charge the deposit after the booking is made.
• If you have less than 10 rooms, we are now showing larger thumbnails for your rooms on the rooms list display. If you have 10 or more rooms, you can enable this setting from within Configuration > Booking Engine Settings.
• You can now sell room packages when using the Availability Calendar. Once a room is selected from the Availability Calendar, if a room package is available for the selected room, it will appear in the next step of the checkout.
• Online Gift Certificate sales delivery option can now be restricted to "ship only" or "email only".

Credit Card Processing

• You can now customize the batch close time for Intuit / QBMS credit card processing to whatever time you choose. This setting can be found under Configuration > Credit Card Settings.
• When entering a new connection ticket, RezOvation GT will verify that it is entered correctly before saving it.

Packages

• We added a new "must arrive on day" restriction to the packages configuration.
• You can now duplicate packages by clicking the Copy button from within the package configuration screen.

Misc

• You can now sign off from RezOvation GT without closing the application - just click File > Sign Off.

As always, we welcome your feedback.  

Thanks for using RezOvation GT, and we hope you enjoy the new features!

- The RezOvation Team

We're proud to the announce the newest addition to the RezOvation family - the RezOvation iPhone app! You can now look up guests, check availability, book reservations, take payments, and more - all from your iPhone.  The app is completely FREE for customers who already have a Basic Service or Booking Engine package, and streams data in real-time from our online data portal - so you're always up to date wherever you are!

Some requirements:
- RezOvation GT or RezOvation GTO software with Basic Service or Booking Engine package
- iPhone 3G or 3GS, or iPod Touch
- Wifi or 3G data connection (EDGE not supported)

Once you have downloaded and installed the application, please contact support@rezovation.com to receive your username and password.

If you need help using the app, a user guide can be found here: http://www.rezovationwiki.com/index.php?title=IPhone_Application_for_RezOvation_GT

Check it out and let us know what you think!  We hope you enjoy it.

-The RezOvation Team

Hello everyone,

We launched the latest version of RezOvation GT to everyone last week. Read on for details!

iPhone

We're currently beta testing an iPhone application that allows you to check availability, book rooms, lookup guests, and more. Click here for more information.

Occupancy Map

• Colors, colors, everywhere!  We added custom colors to the occupancy map for special dates, weekends, wait listed reservations, online bookings, and more.  You can set up custom colors by going to the Configuration section and selecting Custom Colors.
• Reservations with a credit card authorization can now be displayed with a unique color.
• We improved the wait list.  The wait list will now pop up if you cancel a reservation for a wait listed date.  You can also open it any time by going to View > Wait List from the menu, and search / view any wait listed reservations.
• When a reservation is moved to a room with different rates, there is now an option to keep the rate or recalculate it.

Reservations & Customers

• Last used filters are now remembered, so you don't have to reselect your filters even time you move between screens.
• We added a Cancellations filter to the Reservation List.
• You can now require a referral source before booking a reservation. To enable this setting, go to Configuration and click the link on the right for "Lists, Occupancy Map, Reservations & Customers".
• We added a blank option to the customer prefix field.

Reports

• You can now compare many of the reports year over year or for whatever date range you choose. This feature is available for all revenue, reservation, occupancy, and summary reports.
• We improved the tax reports to show non-taxable & tax-exempt sales, as well as gross sales.
• Added a code for room extension to the Reservation & Housekeeping reports, as well as confirmation letter, registration card, and all other reservation letters.

Rates & Availability

• Packages can now be restricted to max future days (e.g. no more than 1 year in the future)
• The rate seasons & adjustments screen now displays occupancy % numbers for the entire month, and each day.

Booking Engine

• You can now opt to receive online booking notifications via text message (SMS). To add your mobile #, go to the Configuration section, and click the link under Online Reservations for "Common Settings". Enter your mobile # in the field provided.
• There is now a “email link” button in the Booking Engine Settings to make it easier for you to send your webmaster your online booking links.
• We added more colors for the Booking Engine buttons - about 10 more color options.

A lot more!  Read the release notes for more details.

As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas.   Visit our feedback forum to share your ideas and see what other innkeepers have to say!

 

All the best,

The RezOvation Team

 

We're excited to announce the latest version of RezOvation GT, which is now available for any innkeepers who would like to try the new features before they are officially released.  This version is stable, but is still undergoing internal testing.  Please feel free to install and give us your feedback!

Click here to download the preview release of the RezOvation GT March update.

What's new?  Read on ...

iPhone

We're currently beta testing an iPhone application, the first of it's kind!  Our new app allows you to check availability, book rooms, lookup guests, and more. Click here for more information and to sign up for the beta.

Occupancy Map

• Colors, colors, everywhere!  We added custom colors to the occupancy map for special dates, weekends, wait listed reservations, online bookings, and more.  You can set up custom colors by going to the Configuration section and selecting Custom Colors.
• Reservations with a credit card authorization can now be displayed with a unique color.
• We improved the wait list.  The wait list will now pop up if you cancel a reservation for a wait listed date.  You can also open it any time by going to View > Wait List from the menu, and search / view any wait listed reservations.
• When a reservation is moved to a room with different rates, there is now an option to keep the rate or recalculate it.

Reservations & Customers

• Last used filters are now remembered, so you don't have to reselect your filters even time you move between screens.
• We added a Cancellations filter to the Reservation List.
• You can now require a referral source before booking a reservation. To enable this setting, go to Configuration and click the link on the right for "Lists, Occupancy Map, Reservations & Customers".
• Added a blank option to the customer prefix field.

Reports

• You can now compare many of the reports year over year or for whatever date range you choose. This feature is available for all revenue, reservation, occupancy, and summary reports.
• Improved the tax reports to show non-taxable & tax-exempt sales, as well as gross sales.
• Added a code for room extension to the Reservation & Housekeeping reports, as well as confirmation letter, registration card, and all other reservation letters.

Rates & Availability

• Packages can now be restricted to max future days (e.g. no more than 1 year in the future).  This option is available in Configuration > Packages.
• The rate seasons & adjustments screen now displays occupancy % numbers for the entire month, and each day.

Booking Engine

• You can now opt to receive online booking notifications via text message (SMS). To add your mobile #, go to the Configuration section, and click the link under Online Reservations for "Common Settings". Enter your mobile # in the field provided.
• There is now a “email link” button in the Booking Engine Settings to make it easier for you to send your webmaster your online booking links.
• We added more colors for the Booking Engine buttons - about 10 more color options.

Misc

• There is now a “restart services” shortcut in the Start menu for troubleshooting purposes.
• We added a link to the Intuit Merchant Service website (QBMS website) from the View menu to make it easier for you access your credit card batch information and charge data.
• It is now possible to enter data further in the past when creating a new database. Just select the option when prompted as you are setting up RezOvation GT.

As always, we welcome your feedback.  

Thanks for using RezOvation GT, and we hope you enjoy the new features!

- The RezOvation Team

We posted a number of how-to / training videos to help you get the most of out RezOvation GT.  Topics include:  

• Basic Configuration - how to set up RezOvation GT
• Rooms & Rates Configuration - how to set up rooms and rates
• Front Desk Training - basic use of RezOvation GT
• Advanced Training - more advanced features of RezOvation GT
• Booking a Reservation - how to create a reservation
• Group Reservations - how to create a group reservation
• Editing Documents - how to customize and edit letters & emails
• Automated Emails - how to set up automated emails
• Packages - how to set up room & add-on packages
• Custom Lists and Fields - how to set up custom fields for tracking and searching through data

Take a look here: http://www.rezovation.com/rezovationgt/training.html

We hope you enjoy them! If you would like to see other how-to videos, just post a comment below.

Hello everyone,

We're pleased to announce that the latest version of RezOvation GT is now available.  Updates are downloaded automatically,  so you should see it next time you restart RezOvation GT or if you select Help > Check for Updates from the menu.

New Features include:

Email

• You can now specify an email subject line for each individual document that you send. To do this, go to the Templates configuration, open the specific document you wish to edit (e.g. confirmation), and double-click on the document name. Enter whatever email subject you wish and click OK.

Reports

• Report windows now remember their last used settings, so you don't have to re-select dates or filters every time you want to generate a report.
• The Housekeeping report can now be grouped by Status (e.g. arrival, departure, stay over, change sheets, etc.)
• We added some additional data columns to the default Housekeeping report. The data columns are: arrival date, departure date, and # of guests. As always, you can modify the report to your specific needs.
• We added some additional codes for totals to the Housekeeping report. They are - Total Rooms, Total Nights, Total Guests, Total Adults, and Total Kids. You can view these codes in the in-program help document.
• We added some additional codes to the Occupancy report. They are - # Nights Out of Service, and # Nights Total (the total room nights available). These numbers should make it easier to understand what is being reported, and whether or not out of service units are affecting your overall occupancy numbers.
• We added some additional codes to the Guest Forecast report. They are - # Nights Booked, # Nights Out of Service, # Nights Total, Total Arrivals, Total Stay Overs, Total Departures, Total Guests, # Nights Booked Total, # Nights Out of Service Total, and # Nights Overall Total.

Reservations

• When adding or editing a room, you will now see a small checkmark for any selected room nights. If you edit an existing reservation and remove or add a room night, you will also receive a confirmation message asking if you meant to change the # of nights selected.
• It is now possible to have 0 adults assigned to a particular room. This is useful if you have a room which has children, but not adults.
• If you attempt to move a reservation on the Occupancy Map to a room that cannot accommodate the total number of guests, you will receive a warning message.
• We've reorganized the right-click menu on both the Occupancy Map and Reservations List to make the options more logical, and also added the ability to print and email from the Occupancy Map.

Rates & Availability

• We added a date selection to the Rate Seasons & Adjustments screen.

Configuration

• If you edit the default tax amount for any tax, you will now see a confirmation message that allows you to set what dates the change will affect. This allows you to decide whether or not editing the default tax amount should apply to past reservations, future reservations, or both.

Booking Engine

• The availability calendar navigation has been improved to make it easier for guests to book a room. When a room is selected, "Book" button will appear below the selection, and when the date selection is changed, the availability list is automatically refreshed. 

We hope you enjoy all the new features!

- The RezOvation Team 

P.S. To share your ideas, and to see what else we're working on, please visit the feedback forum.

We're proud to announce the latest update to RezOvation GT, which includes some significant new functionality based on feedback from our users.  The new version is 5.5.1, and these are just a few of the new features:

Windows 7 Compatibility: RezOvation GT is now certified as compatible with Wndows 7.

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.

Email Improvements:

• 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".

For more information about new features and bug fixes, please take a look at the release notes.

Probably the single most important element of your website is your online bookings.   Many savvy innkeepers users include the RezOvation Booking Engine on their site to ensure that they don't lose out on potential guests.

However, if your potential guests have a hard time finding the link to your online bookings, you might be missing some important clicks.  To help you better catch those all-important clicks, we've put together a button pack with a number of different shapes, sizes, and colors.  Click here to get your buttons now.

The RezOvation Booking Engine servers for RezOvation Desktop will be undergoing scheduled maintenance Tuesday, 10/26, and will be unavailable between 12a-3a CST.