Getting started with the reservations module and reception messages

Reservations and messages

The reservations module offers you an overview of all reservations, whether confirmed, cancelled, or on hold. Use the tabs and available filters to find the reservations you are looking for. Click the name on the reservation to view all information of that specific reservation.

Find and edit reservations

To go to your reception messages inbox, click on the envelope icon in the light green bar at the top of your screen. You will receive messages about new reservations, messages from owners, and messages from channels and integrations. Respond to messages or send a new message yourself to owners.

Reception messages inbox

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Developer Portal

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Onboarding

What you need to know before starting the onboarding process

Before you start

Welcome to Booking Experts! Here you can find an overview of what happens next and how to start with your BEX PMS.

Starting with Booking Experts

In Booking Experts, you can login in the following ways: with an email address and password, with a Google account or with a Microsoft account.

Log in to Booking Experts

All organizations with multiple administrations have an Organization overview. In this overview, as an organization manager, you have insight into the bundled data of all administrations.

Overview for organizations with multiple administrations

The light green upper part of the menubar focuses on options regarding the account details, updates of Booking Experts, or reception messages.

Menubar in the BEX PMS

Every employee who uses the Booking Experts system has their own profile within the software. This is setup during onboarding or when a new colleague needs to be introduced to the system.

Adjusting your profile

In Booking Experts, we have several search functions. Search with the general search field, search at organisation level and search by administration name.

Search functions

Tools to help you in the onboarding process

Checklist and Academy

About the safety of your and your guests' data

Privacy and security

Modules

About data transferable from other systems

Importing data

Organization and administration settings

What you need to know about setting up accounts for your employees

Employee settings

Brand and appearance

Central management of terms and conditions

Terms & Conditions

Domains

Setting up objects

Amenities

Individual objects and the types they belong to

Types and objects

Media content

Set up your pricing and business finances

Prices and finances

Important financial settings

Rental prices for various types and periods of time

Price lists

Add cost items for add-ons and separate fees

Costs

Setting up CMS

Switching between BEX PMS and BEX CMS

As a park manager, you can create CMS accounts for employees and manage their rights.

Access rights for CMS users

Tools

Site settings

Website pages

How reservations are made through your website

Search & Book

Brand appearance

Email campaigns

Offering holiday homes for sale on your website 

Sales module

All day-to-day actions necessary at your reception

Daily use of PMS

Dashboard

Planboard

BEX PMS

Settings that apply to your entire organization

Organization settings

A label alerts the user to important matters concerning the various modules and data within the PMS. For example, you could give the label 'loyal guest' to guests who have stayed for the fourth time, or the label 'renovated' to objects that have been refurbished. You can create these labels yourself and give them a desired colour and emoji.

Purpose of labels

Special periods are used in Statistics, Price lists and in the Search and Book. Examples of special periods are public holidays, local events or holiday periods.

Special periods

Creating and editing Special periods

It is possible to make predefined holidays and bank holidays visible on your website, so guests can click on them or more easily search for availability, for example, during the Christmas period. 

Set holidays as selectable on your website

Employees

Manage the amenities of your types, objects and administrations

Brands and portals

Settings that apply within an administration

Administration settings

In the administration settings, you can make various choices that determine how your guests enter their personal data and those of their travel companions for a reservation.

Administration settings for guests

Description of the park and its surroundings

Exclude postcodes

Period groups

Reservation settings

Manage channels through which reservations are made

Channel management

General invoicing and accounting settings

Financial settings

Everything about communicating with guests and owners

Communication

Translations

About types, objects, availability and meter readings

Setup

Whether or not a late checkout is allowed, is determined in the settings of the booked type. 

How to set up and recognize a late check-out

How do you indicate whether or not pets are allowed? This is done per object, in the object setup. In the type settings, you can set how many pets guests are allowed to bring, but this only applies if the booked object allows pets.

Pets allowed/not allowed

In the BEX PMS, you can add media to your types and objects so that guests can get a good impression of the kind of accommodation they are booking.

Add media to types and objects

How to make exports of your types, objects, or object setups.

Export of objects/types

In auto emails and templates, you can add useful information about an object or type that is predefined in the object or type settings.

Attachment text for emails objects/types

If you have a map, you can use it to let the guest choose an object on the map during the reservation process. This allows guests to choose the spot that best suits their personal wishes. This article explains more about creating, setting up and booking on a map.

Booking on the map

Types

Objects

Arrival and departure schemes

Marking types and/or objects as not-available

Blocked periods

About tracking and charging for meter readings

Meter readings module

All about cost items, price lists, deposits and discounts

Pricing

Charge, claim, and refund security deposits

Security deposits

Cost items for anything that is not included in the rent price

Discounts

Packages

Bundle extras that are available independent of stay

Bundles

Finance

If you are a park working with owners, you need to file a DAC7 report. The BEX PMS can provide the necessary data. Read this article to find out which data is required and some of the common error messages concerning the data.

DAC7: What is it and which data is required?

Creating and checking a DAC7 report

To submit a DAC7 report to the Dutch Tax Administration, you likely use Digipoort. Our DAC7 Digipoort Connector app allows you to upload a DAC7 report directly from your PMS to Digipoort, the Tax Administration’s electronic post office.

Submitting a DAC7 report via Digipoort

Invoice management

Payment policies, bulk payments, payment methods, and more

Payments

About VAT, profit and loss, and ledger accounts

Accounting

Reservation management

View channel reservations

Overview nights stayed and tourist tax declaration

Within the reservations index page you can create a list for export using any of the tabs and filter options. Creating exports of reservations may help you anticipate your guest's needs.

Exporting reservations

Create an export file that lists which reservations have cancellation insurance.

Export for cancellation insurance

Reservation

Reviews

Vouchers represent a credit toward a reservation

Vouchers

Open a booker contact page by clicking the name of a booker from the Contacts module. Here, collected personal, reservation, and invoice data for this contact is shown.

Booker contact management

Manage and assign the to-do lists for your administration

Todos module

If your administration works with owners, it may happen that the owner is responsible for all maintenance, but the staff of the holiday park still carries out certain maintenance tasks. You want to be able to charge these todos to the owner.

Invoicing tasks to owners

When carrying out todos, material is used, equipment is replaced, or labour costs are incurred. You can keep track of these by setting costs for todos.

Material costs and hourly rates

Executors and Todo

Task lists

Followers for task lists

With the todo planning within the BEX PMS, you have the possibility to distribute various (not yet) scheduled todos to different executors.

Todo planning

Facilities in the PMS are public or shared places that you want to be able to assign a to-do to, like a swimming pool or playground. Linking todos or periodic tasks to a facility follows the same process as linking to an object.

Facilities in the todos module

Creating and editing various types of todos

Todos management

Contractors

If needed, you can imitate an executor or contractor to view the information available to them or perform an action. You can take over their role from the page where this person's contact information is stored.

Taking over role of executor or contractor

A cash register for the direct sale of products

POS module

The POS module is used to be able to sell and receive payments for products. It is possible to receive payments via different payment methods. You can create multiple cash registers, which is useful if you have other points of sale besides the reception desk. Every day that you use the register, you have to open and close it. You use counts to log the amount of cash and identify any discrepancies.

Getting started with the POS module

You can create one or more registers. It is useful to create a separate register for each point of sale and to reflect this in the name. Once created, the registers must be opened for use.

Create and open a register

Add the products you want to sell to the POS module. These can be organised into product groups.

Add POS products and product groups

Because the price of a POS product is adjustable, it is possible to create a POS product for variable items. However, the linked VAT rate of a POS product cannot be adjusted.

POS product with variable price

Enabling the use of a barcode scanner can make selling items via the POS module much faster.

Using a POS barcode scanner

Register sales can be paid in different ways. Cash is a default method, and you probably have a PIN terminal, or maybe you also want to be able to accept vouchers as a payment method.

Set up payment methods for POS

You can connect a receipt printer to every register that you have created in your PMS.

Connect a receipt printer

In addition to online payments, it is also possible to receive in-person payments via PIN.

Connect PIN terminal to register

Selling POS products isn't difficult once the POS module is set up.

Performing a POS transaction

At the end of the day, you close the register to record and check the sales revenue. You can deposit the cash excess from the cash drawer to the safe, so the register will again have the standard amount of cash for the next day. To do this, you need to perform a count.

Closing and counting a register

Viewing and correcting register counts

It is not possible to delete a register once a transaction or count has been processed by a register.

Can I delete a POS register?

The submenus 'Receipt items' and 'Results' offer, among other things, insight into POS sales and revenues.


Receipt items and results

If you want to refund money to a guest, you have to credit the receipt.

Crediting a receipt

There are three types of receipts in the POS module.

Types of receipts

Every POS transaction is recorded on a receipt, but also in journal entries. In addition, each POS product is linked to a ledger account, where the revenue from this product must be booked.