Hey there,

Thanks to all of you for an exciting year. It has been a pleasure working together. You gave us helpful feedback and we did our best to turn it into action. We made improvements that we hope will make your life easier. Check out the tabs below for highlights from 2018.

This year, we want to do more. More improvements and more new features. Stay tuned next week for a new release and more information about what to expect in 2019! 

Cheers,

FrontDesk Master Team 

We finalized our Channel Manager integration with AirBnB, giving you a direct connection to an increasingly important online channel.  

We made it easier to manage bookings from Bed View: Right click to switch beds, cancel selected nights or easily move a reservation. Left click to block or unblock beds.

Plus, we updated Guest View to show you complete guest details (name, email, nationality, etc.) and added a convenient option to export your guest list to Excel.

Reminder: If your property has 100+ beds, enable BedView buffering to keep your calendar opening quickly. (Go to: Preferences > Bed View buffered.)

You can now set multiple Pricing Strategies for the same period of time, and add restrictions for child rates. (Child rates = rates for which prices are automatically derived from other rates.)

You can also Enable/Disable Occupancy Pricing in the Booking Engine. (Occupancy pricing = Selling private rooms for different prices to different numbers of guests.)

We added the Referral Summary Report, to help you keep track of where your guests come from, and the Coupon Usage Report, to show you how your Booking Engine coupons are performing. (Go to: Reports and scroll to find each title.) 

A new permission allows you to choose whether or not your staff can access the system outside of their shift.

(Go to: Property Management > Staff > Edit Roles & Permissions.)

Properties in Portugal can now open the FACT dashboard and create an invoice, all from directly within FrontDesk Master.

For properties in Spain, we’ve improved the DGP Report (DIRECCIÓN GENERAL DE LA POLICÍA) and per-person printouts, which are required in some cities.

If you’re in Chile and using LibreDTE, you’ll see that Point of Sale transactions now generate the respective BOLETA. Plus, we improved the logic for IVA / VAT Automations. FrontDesk Master can now automatically calculate the respective tax, when certain conditions are met (such as a currency or nationality being marked in the booking).

Finally, we now integrate with Tasmal, an invoicing software in Israel.

Happy Holidays

Hey everyone,

We want to wish you and your families a happy holiday. We know this can be a busy period, so we hope you get some time off to relax.
 
Thanks for being part of our community. We really appreciate your trust and loyalty. 2018 has been a year of many improvements, and we don’t plan to stop there. We have even more in store for 2019. We hope you’ll be just as excited as we are! 
 
Sincerely,
 
FrontDesk Master Team 

IMPORTANT: Server Maintenance

Hello everyone,

Due to server maintenance, the system will be down tomorrow, December 11, 2018, from 10pm GMT to 2am GMT. 

During this time, you won’t be able to use the system. However, if you load the Bed view and Reservation view before 10pm GMT, you’ll be able to view your reservations during the maintenance. You can hover over each reservation and view details, but you cannot make changes.  

We understand that this is frustrating, and we apologize for the inconvenience. As soon as the system becomes available, the icon at the bottom right corner of the screen will turn green. You’ll also receive an email. We appreciate your cooperation. 

Thank you,

FrontDesk Master Team 

Don’t forget!

Hey everyone,

Don’t forget! You still have the chance to win $150 USD and a portable party-starter. 

All you have to do is invite a friend to try our system. We’ll give them 10% off, too. Click the tabs below for details about rewards and how to get started!

Cheers,

FrontDesk Master Team 

1) If you refer a friend before December 25, you’re entered to win a UE BOOM 3 speaker.

2) You get $150 USD for every friend that becomes a client.

3) Your friends get 10% off the first 6 months.

*A client is someone who pays for 6 months. A referral is counted when you CC referral@frontdeskmaster.com and send the referral message to a friend. December 24 is the last day we will count referrals for the UE BOOM 3 speaker giveaway.

Just copy, paste and send to friends, but don’t forget to CC referral@frontdeskmaster.com. 

This is an invitation to the system I use to manage my hostel. You can use this link to learn more about it, sign up for a free trial, and get 10% off your first 6 months.

13th November – Release Notes

Hello everyone,

We are happy to inform that yesterday we released a FrontDesk Master update (v.35). Please see below for the release notes and work in progress.

Have a great week!

FrontDesk Master Team

Work in progress (Nov):

  • Passport scanner (ID cards scanning debugging)
  • Housekeeping improvements
  • Online Check-in (contact us for beta testing!)
  • City tax handling in Take Payment & Invoice window

Price Strategies Improvements

First, you are now able to set restrictions strategies also for the child rates (ie. rates for which prices are automatically derived from other rates). Second of all, you can now set up multiple strategies for the same period of time to allow gradual price change.

Example 1 – different time frame

20 – 30 days before the arrival 30$
11 – 19 days before the arrival 32$
1 – 10 days before the arrival 35$

Example 2 – same time frame, different availability

20 – 30 days before the arrival 30$ if availability more than 10
20 – 30 days before the arrival 35$ if av. more than 5 less than 10
20 – 30 days before the arrival 40$ if availability less than 5

Coupon Usage Report

In the report section you can now find the report showing the statistics related to the coupons you were adding to bookings.

Referral Summary Report

In the report section you can now find the report showing the stats of the referrals assigned to the reservations.

Enable/Disable Occupancy Pricing in Booking Engine

You can now decide if you want to use Occupancy Pricing on booking engine. The occupancy pricing allows you selling private rooms for different price to different number of people.

DGP Report (Spain) & per person printouts

We have released some final improvements for a DGP Report (DIRECCIÓN GENERAL DE LA POLICÍA) for Spanish properties as well as per person printouts. which are required in some cities. Please check!

IVA / VAT Automation (e.g. for Chile)

We have implemented improved logic for IVA / VAT calculations which allows  automatically calculating the respective tax if the certain conditions are met, e.g. certain currency or nationality is marked in the booking.

Major Bug Fixes

[DEV-2529] – Strategies not refreshing in A&R Calendar
[DEV-2602] – City Tax, Lisbon – bug
[DEV-2929] – Dashboard – paid bookings appear on the outstanding payments list
[DEV-3249] – Pulling appropriate Exchange Rate when giving change
[DEV-3283] – Can’t add new strategy
[DEV-3347] – Take Payment & Invoice – incorrect invoice template taken
[DEV-3381] – Daily Production – incorrect data in the report
[DEV-3390] – System is taking too long to block beds
[DEV-3394] – Dashboard – cancelled guests counted in Arriving Guests and Guest in House Tonight category
[DEV-3419] – Exported invoice shows weird value on Balance column
[DEV-3472] – Strange nameless user active
[DEV-3524] – Daily Production – table formatting changes
[DEV-3553] – Item Manager – Error when checking “track inventory” radio box
[DEV-3575] – Bug when deleting reservation note
[DEV-3627] – Booking Engine chat does not work
[DEV-3645] – Reports – City tax report is showing incorrect info
[DEV-3707] – N/A information in Postal Cose and address fields
[DEV-3713] – Invoice – error on Save and Print
[DEV-3764] – Guest Demographics Report – Wrong guest number or empty report
[DEV-3799] – Can’t see well the buttons and all expenses categories in Withdraw window
[DEV-3803] – Incorrect Total Due in reservation after cancelling a guest in a reservation
[DEV-3807] – Hostelworld – exceeded quota of API calls for setbeds
[DEV-3815] – Problem when splitting reservation (double split)
[DEV-3820] – Booking Engine – Terms & Conditions don’t look the same as in Email & Printout manager
[DEV-3843] – Reservation View – filtering by dates doesn’t work
[DEV-3845] – Disappearing reservation
[DEV-3848] – Mandrill – Change of sender’s field
[DEV-3865] – All Issued Invoices – owner name not exported to Excel
[DEV-3919] – Inactive emails sent to guests
[DEV-3938] – Booking entered the system with incorrect price
[DEV-3967] – Reservation View – can’t see RATE column on new prod server
[DEV-3970] – Av. & Rate Calendar – the manually edited prices per occupancy reflected incorrectly in child rates
[DEV-3985] – Missing link on the new server
[DEV-4004] – Linked rates not updated in the calendar

Hey everyone,

Guess what? You could win an awesome bluetooth speaker, just by sending an email. Refer a friend before Christmas, and you’ll automatically get entered to win. 

Plus, if that friend does become client, you’ll both get even more rewards. For you, it’s $150 for every successful referral. For them, it’s 10% off the first 6 months. 

Check out the tabs below to get started. 

Cheers,

FrontDesk Master Team 

See You in Lisbon Next Week?

(Also, we’re hiring – Customer Coach for Brasil!)

Hey everybody!

We’re sponsoring HostelSkills Conference #6. It’s next week, October 18 & 19 in beautiful Lisbon.  You can expect useful speaker sessions covering everything from Instagram marketing to revenue-boosting rate plans. Check out the full agenda here, and don’t forget to come get a drink with us! 🙂

Hope to see you there,

– FrontDesk Master Team 

 

Non-Refundable Rate in Hostelworld

Hello everybody!

If you use Non Refundable rate in Hostelworld:

Please do not map the rate in Channel Manager (see here). Hostelworld informed us that they will not roll out direct price updates for Non-Refundable rates until late October and FrontDesk Master must remove this functionality until then. If you keep the rate mapped, the system tries to send updates what results in the error returned by Hostelworld and may affect Standard Rate updates.
We will make necessary adjustments to allow only recognizing Non-Refundable bookings until this time.
In case of an doubts or questions, do not hesitate to contact support@frontdeskmaster.com.

Thank you!

—  Best Regards,
FrontDesk Master Team