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. 

Do you need some ideas for templates, or want a head-start on creating your own custom report and letter templates for RezOvation GT?  We've made it easy for you by creating a package of custom templates, in just about every category.

Follow the directions below to get started.

1. Click here to download the template package.
2. Save the file to an easy to find location such as Desktop or My Documents.
3. Locate the downloaded file, and right-click on it.  Select "Extract".  This will create a folder with the template files.
4. To edit a template file, just open it -- it's in Microsoft Word (DOC) format. 
5. When finished editing, close the template and upload it to RezOvation GT by doing the following:
* Go to the Manage Reports and Letter Template configuration section (click the button next to the gear icon in the toolbar, or select View > Template Configuration). 
* Click the link for the template category you wish to edit, e.g. "Confirmation Letter".
* Select the specific template you wish to edit, and click "duplicate".
* Select the duplicated template, and click "check in". 
* Locate the custom template, and select it.  Word may open and close a few times -- this is normal. 
* Select the custom template, and click "set to default".

Click here for more information about editing templates.

 

Looking for more useful articles?  Click here to visit the RezOvation Wiki.

Today is a very exciting day for Microsoft Windows users, as Windows 7 has finally launched!  Here at RezOvation, we've been using Windows 7 since the beta was released earlier this year, and we're happy to say that RezOvation GT and RezOvation Desktop both work without a hitch.  In addition, RezOvation GT has passed the official certification testing for Windows 7.  You can view more information in the Windows 7 compatibility database, which you can view here. 

RezOvation GT is compatible with Windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit editions, and RezOvation Desktop is compatible with Windows 7 32 bit edition.  Nothing is required from you to maintain compatibility -- simply install the latest version of RezOvation software.

For users of Windows Vista, upgrades to Windows 7 are available from Microsoft; for users of Windows XP, a full Windows reinstall is required.  Expect to see most new computers from Dell, Gateway, HP, and others ship with Windows 7 preinstalled (or with a free upgrade from Vista). If you purchased a copy of Vista or a new PC after June 26, 2009, you may be eligible for a free upgrade -- see this link for details.

For more information about Windows 7, visit the Microsoft website.

We've released the latest version of RezOvation GT.  The version is 5.4.1.84 and is available via the auto update feature.  This update includes numerous fixes, and details can be found here.

*UPDATE 12/16/2009*

The QuickBooks integration beta has been officially released as part of the December update and is now in open beta.  If you are interested in participating, please contact beta@rezovation.com for more details.  You can also visit our wiki for more information about the QuickBooks Accounting integration.

 

We're getting close to a beta test of our new QuickBooks automatic integration for RezOvation GT, and we're looking for a few beta users.  Please read the info below, and if you're interested, email us at beta@rezovation.com.  We appreciate your help!

What is the QuickBooks integration, and what advantages does it offer?

The integration offers synchronization of invoices from RezOvation GT to QuickBooks, at whatever interval you specify.  This avoids the need for any manual updates or manual exports, and allows you to use all of the reporting capabilities in QuickBooks.

You will also be able to link RezOvation GT to any QuickBooks database regardless of location (for example, if you manage your accounting from another location or computer that does not have RezOvation GT installed, you can still synchronize to that location).

QuickBooks also provides an automatic reconciliation with QuickBooks Merchant Service credit card processing as part of this integration.  You must be using QuickBooks Merchant Service (QBMS) through RezOvation GT to use this feature.

What is involved in the beta test?  Anything I need to know?

You must be using RezOvation GT, and you must be synching to the data portal. (If you are using the RezOvation Booking Engine or Webervations, then you are synching to the data portal.)

You’ll need a copy of QuickBooks 2008 or 2009.  If you do not have QuickBooks, but you would like to start processing credit cards through QBMS via RezOvation GT, then you are entitled to a free copy of QuickBooks.  More information here: http://www.rezovation.com/rezovationgt/QBMS-features.html

You should only work on a backup copy of your QuickBooks database.  As such, it is probably best to install QuickBooks on another computer and use the synch from there, as it is not possible to have two databases in one QuickBooks installation.  If you do decide to work with your actual QuickBooks data you should backup your database before enabling the synch.  During the beta test it may be necessary to resynch your data from time to time.

Due to limits in the non-enterprise versions of QuickBooks, you cannot synch more than 14,500 contacts to QuickBooks.  Because RezOvation GT must synch *all* contacts in your database to QuickBooks, if you have more than 14,500 contacts the synch will not work unless you purchase the Enterprise version of QuickBooks.  If you have more than this amount of contacts, you should either archive or merge the contacts first.  (To archive contacts, use the Customer list to filter the contact list, select File > Export List from the menu, and then delete the contacts from RezOvation GT.)

What do you need from me?

Your feedback!  You’ll have direct access to the beta team to share any bugs and suggestions, and your feedback is vital to the efficient, successful completion of the beta phase of this exciting new feature.

Who should I contact?

Please email the beta team at beta@rezovation.com to let us know your interest.

Thanks!

- The RezOvation Team