How To Create A New Booking Within Hotel Systems Software

One form is all that is required to make a booking. The booking form covers selecting booking dates, checking availability, entering customer details, selecting rooms, selecting extras and finally entering payment details.

There are three ways to access the booking form to make or edit a booking:

• Double clicking or selecting a room on the available rooms form.
• Double clicking or selecting an empty cell on the bookings calendar form.
• Selecting the menu option, "Reception, New Booking".

Making a new booking by using either the first or second option will automatically add the selected room to the booking form. Once an available room has been added to a booking, it will then appear as booked, stopping the room being chosen by another user on another computer in a multi-user environment.
Whenever the booking form is opened for a new booking, a new booking reference will be created and appears at the top left of the form. When viewing an existing booking, the existing booking reference will also appear in the top left of the form.
The asterisk's after certain field names indicate that those fields are mandatory and need to be completed to make a booking.

The booking status field has four settings, provisional, confirmed, un-available and completed booking.
When a new booking form is opened, the status by default is set to provisional. This state is normally set if the hotel has yet to receive a deposit for one or more rooms confirming a booking. Provisional appears on the booking calendar in yellow. A confirmed booking appears in green and an un-available room appears in red. A completed booking is indicated by a blue colour.
Rooms could be set as un-available if for example, essential maintenance is needed on a room.
On the bottom left of the general information tab is a button named, "Check Availability". Once booking dates have been selected, this button will quickly give a count of rooms and room types available.

The surname field can be used to return an existing customer and saves time entering the customer details again. The principle works as follows: The first time the customer details are entered, they are stored in the database. The next time the customer returns and specifies their surname, the system will bring up a form showing customers whose details already exist in the system. The user has a choice to select an existing customer or to click cancel.

On the booking information tab, the user is allowed to select the rooms and services that will be available to them during their stay.

Finally after booking information has been entered and rooms selected, the user needs to complete the payment section. At the top of the payment section is the season selection. The season is the rate at which the rooms are charged at. The available seasons are whatever has been specified in Settings.
Towards the bottom of the payment area there is a, 'Calculate Price' button. This is used to calculate the total for the customers stay.
The Price Adj button is used to adjust a booking calculation price. For example a booking may come to 123.55. The price adj button could be used for example to set a total booking price of 120.00.