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

Log in to your Booking Experts account in one of the following ways: with an email address and password with MFA, or via SSO through a Google or Microsoft account.

Log in to BEX PMS or CMS

The user role connected to your account determines how you interact with BEX PMS. You can be an employee working for a single or multi-park organization, an owner who rents out their accommodation, an executor or contractor who performs maintenance or provides services, or even a travel agency booking holidays for your clients. For BEX CMS, there is only one user role.

User roles within BEX PMS and CMS

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

Tools to help you in the onboarding process

Checklist and Academy

We want to guide our users within Booking Experts, whether you are a new employee or intern or just want to learn more about a certain part of Booking Experts. Therefore, we have written several Academies to help you learn more about Booking Experts in a fun and interactive way!

Booking Experts Academy

About the safety of your and your guests' data

Privacy and security

Automatic and manual backups of data

According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a guest has the right to have his/her data deleted. This is also referred to as the right to oblivion. If a guest requests the deletion of the data you have processed about them, you can make sure this data is anonymized. Deleting all information entirely is not possible due to the need to retain accounting data.

Guests' right to anonymization of personal data

According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a guest has the right to know which of his/her personal data is stored by your company. This is also referred to as the right of insight. If guests request access to their data, you must show everything you have processed about them.

Guests' right of access to personal data

The security of your organization's data, as well as that of your guests, is our top priority. We are continuously working to secure our systems, but your own vigilance is a crucial link in this process.

Security tips and safe login

Modules

BEX PMS has several pillars, which are referred to as standard modules. Together, these modules are the interconnected core of BEX PMS. You'll recognize them as the tab headers in the main navigation bar in your PMS.

Standard BEX modules

Booking Experts offers a modular reservation system, which means that you can choose to enable or disable several optional modules. Here, you'll find more information on which modules are available, and how to enable/disable them.

Optional BEX modules

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 module

The meter readings module is a useful tool to, among other things, settle energy, gas, and/or water consumption with owners and tenants. In this article you can read exactly what you can do with the meter readings module and how you can use this module.

Meter readings module

The BEX App Store offers several app integrations with third parties that manage access control, license plate recognition, and barriers. If you enable the license plate module, you can automate access for your guests.

License plate module

The contacts module is a default BEX PMS module that stores contact information for your bookers, owners, and channels.

Contacts module

This module is automatically activated when you have installed an integration that supports chat messaging. It allows you to manage and reply to chats sent to you through channel apps, such as Airbnb messaging. For each chat, you'll see the connected reservation as well. 

Inbox module

In the statistics module, all your booking and financial data can be used to create revenue statistics, track occupancy levels, and more.

Statistics module

About data transferable from other systems

Importing data

At this point, you already have set up your objects, costs, and prices. You're almost ready for new reservations, you just have to enter all existing reservations from your previous system first, for a smooth transition and to prevent double booking.

Importing existing reservations into PMS

To efficiently import reservations into BEX PMS, al kinds of data can be present in the import file. Some types of data are mandatory to be able to perform the import, such as the arrival and departure dates. Other types of data are optional, but can be very useful; such as booker details.

Content of the reservation import file

The import strategy connects the columns in your CSV file to the correct target fields in BEX PMS. If you have performed a similar reservation import before, copying that import strategy can save you quite some time. If it is a new import, you’ll have to configure the import strategy.

Configuring import strategy for reservations

After reservations have been imported, it is possible to import orders for those reservations. These are the invoice items on the guest invoice for the imported reservations.

Importing reservation orders

When you switch to Booking Experts, the import functionality can be used to transfer types from your old system to BEX PMS.

Importing your types

After you have set up types in your PMS, you can import objects per type.

Importing your objects

Add multiple owners to your BEX PMS in one go.

Importing owner data

When you're already using a ledger account system in your accounting software, you can use an import to copy them into BEX PMS.

Import ledger accounts

Upload a new price list by entering data into a template file and importing it. An exported price list can also be adapted and re-imported to update pricing.

Importing and exporting prices

Importing owners' invoices can be useful if you have a lot of open owners' invoices in your old booking system and want to process these invoices in Booking Experts.

Import invoices for owners

When switching to Booking Experts from a different reservation system, you can transfer any existing vouchers by importing them into BEX PMS.

Importing vouchers

Search for any helpful articles to find an answer to your question

www.bookingexperts.com

Updates

Developer Portal

Trust Center

Onboarding

Organization and administration settings

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

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

If you are using both ParcVu and BEX CMS with the sales module, you can connect the two to easily generate prospects out of interested website visitors and advertise ParcVu Vans for sale on your website.

Connect to ParcVu

All day-to-day actions necessary at your reception

Daily use of PMS

Dashboard

Getting started with the reservations module and reception messages

Reservations and messages

BEX PMS

Planboard

Select an available date range directly at the correct object by clicking and dragging, or first create a shortlist of objects using the filters at the top of your planboard.

Making a new reservation via Planboard

The planboard settings are accessible through the 'Settings' button in the top right of the planboard screen, next to your account name.

Planboard settings

The planboard legend is accessible through the 'Legend' button in the top right of the planboard screen, in between 'Hotkeys' and 'Settings'.

Planboard legend: what it all means

The planboard filters can be used to find certain reservations, or to narrow down the availability for a new reservation.

Available filters for the Planboard

Convenient keyboard shortcuts that may make your work easier.

Hotkeys for Planboard

Click on the relevant reservation in the planboard, and the detail view will open on the right. At the bottom of this view, under 'actions', you'll see today's date and time and the button to either check in or check out this reservation.

Checking guests in and out via the Planboard

Using the PMS planboard, you can easily move a reservation to a different object, or make two reservations switch places.

Move or swap a reservation in the Planboard

A cluster is a combination of multiple objects, which are treated as a single object in the Planboard.

Cluster reservation in the Planboard

Planboard - Date selection

Planboard - Order of objects

Planboard - Switching between administrations

Planboard - View reservation

Planboard - Search function

Planboard - Opening and closing

Planboard - Display mode, colours and symbols

Settings that apply to your entire organization

Organization settings

During onboarding, you connect or register your domain(s) to ensure that your BEX PMS works correctly. You might also add a new domain when opening a new park, for example.

Domains: settings for technical website management

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

For each administration separately, financial records can be locked and closed for accounting purposes. In your organization settings, you can prevent them from being reopened across your administrations.

Preventing closed financial records from being reopened

Special periods are used in statistics, price lists, and the Search & Book. Examples of special periods are the often-booked getaways around public holidays, local events or school holidays.

How are special periods used?

Special periods are arrival/departure date ranges that are important to your organization, and that can be applied throughout your administrations.

Creating special periods

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

Employees

Manage the amenities of your types, objects and administrations

Brands

Manage your booking portal and customer portal

Portal settings

Settings that apply within an administration

Administration settings

Description of the park and its surroundings

Exclude postcodes

Period groups are applied to costs, packages, auto emails and discounts, to determine when these items are valid, active, and/or applicable.

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

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

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.