BestRez Features

All of these features are available to all bestrez clients. You can use the ones that you wish.

Overview

All clients must enter property information. Once this is done, the property information can be used in any of the following ways by the client:

Staff Backroom
The staff backroom is used by your front desk to manage and make reservations, manage inventory, etc. Management can set up user logins with limited access to various modules.

Online Booking
Online booking is handled through a web search interface. You can use either a full search of all of your properties/units, or link directly to an availability calendar for a specific unit. This is what you link to from your site to allow customers to make reservations.

Vacation Rentals
For those who manage vacation rentals, a login can be given to an owner so that they can block out dates for themselves and see the activity on their property (and only their property).

Portal Search
If desired, you can choose to be listed in various portals we maintain to increase reservation and traffic rates for our customers. This can be a valuable source of reservation referrals.

Staff Backroom, Maintenance Options

Account Management (administrator)

Manage Users - Main administrator can set up users with their own logins, limiting them to no access, read only, or read/write access to the backroom selections.
Preferences - Set up Company Information and Company-wide preferences
Referals - Accept referrals from BestRez portals?
Company Policy - Enter Company Policy text (for display on online booking page, confirmation page and emailed confirmations.)
Page layout – modify the look of the online booking pages to match your web site. Header image, footer, margins, background color or image, font type, color and size. Or select an easy-to-use default text header.
Merchant Account - Set up merchant account access if desired. Once this is active, it can be used by either staff or online booking.
Payment Options - For online booking, set up payment options:
- Confirmed Reservation: Use Online merchant account for real time billing
- Tentative Reservation: Collect cc info, but do not bill cc in real time; this will be done offline
- Booking Inquiry: Do not collect cc info, only customer info. (Note: if price is set to 0, then no prices will be displayed, in the event that you do not want to publish prices on the web.).
Credit Cards - For online booking, set up types of credit cards accepted.
Online Booking - Turn access to online booking on/off
Account Management - Manage account with BestRez: view invoices, transactions, close account

Reservation Rules, Rates and Discounts

Reservation Rules
- No Check In-Out Days - (for example, prevent start or ending a reservation on Christmas day)
- What comprises a weekend? - (Fri, Sat or Fri, Sat, Sun, or any choices)
- Advance Deposit method – percentage of total, dollar amount, first night.
- Are children free? - If so, under what age? (1 through 18 years)
- Minimum Gap - Minimum gap (in days) between reservations
- Allow same day reservations?
- Minimum Nights
  - Select a default minimum number of nights for weekday or weekend reservations.
  - Override the default minimum number of nights for specified date ranges (for example, require more days for Christmas holiday)
- Earliest checkin time? (for use with Online Booking)
Basic Rates
- Five rate codes: weekday, weekend, and 3 others that can be named, such as holiday 1, holiday 2, ski package. (the rate codes are named in the Account Management section and are used for all of your properties/units.
- Maximum of 10,000 different Rate ID’s. Name Rate ID’s by description, such as 2KBeds, or by unit name such as Rm102 or Wilson.
- Each rate ID has a basic set of rates for each of the 5 rate codes (some only use two rate codes)
- Each rate ID can have an unlimited number of date ranges with different prices for each of the 5 rate codes.(weekday, weekend, etc)
Membership / Special Discounts
- Enter a name for the discount, the % discount
- Make selections to describe how it should be displayed for Online Booking: require ID at checkin?, length of text box (if any), description of text box (if used), is textbox a required field?
- Check when the discount applies: which rate codes and which rate ID’s (weekday, weekend, holiday, etc.)
Multiple Day Discounts
- Set discounts for reservations of specific lengths, for example, 10% off for 3 days and 15% off for 4 or more days.
- Apply discount by date range, rate code and Rate ID.
Rate Codes - Set up date ranges for when rate codes other than weekend/weekday are used (for example, a holiday1 rate code)
View Pricing Grid - Allows viewing prices in a grid . Each row is a unit, and each column is a day. So you can view all prices for a full page of units for any 2 week date range. This is a good safeguard to double check and make sure that prices have been entered correctly. You can tell at a glance that prices are set correctly.

Property and Unit Information

Enter owners - If there is one property, there will be one owner. If you manage private homes as well as a lodge, or only private homes, then there will be multiple owners.
Enter properties - One owner could have multiple properties. The property information contains location based information and property-wide information. Including:
- property name, default rate ID for this property, property description
- Up to 4 room taxes and description for each
- Up to 4 sales taxes (for items such as candles) and description for each (you may have state and county and city taxes, for example)
- Optional photo upload for the property
- Pet charge: per pet, per pet per night, flat rate (if pets are allowed)
- Pet policy
- Optional address for a popup yahoo map on your property page
Enter units - (Note: a private home requires both a property and a unit entry, so that all information is included). Unit information includes:
- Availability date range (either all dates are available, or the unit can be set so that it is only available for a particular date range, such as the summer.
- Security deposit. Type: none, per night, or per stay; security deposit amount; security deposit description (eg, Cleaning & Security)
- Search criteria for this unit, used when a guest is searching for reservations: max occupancy, regular occupancy, children allowed, pets, smoking Jacuzzi, #beds, #bedrooms, #baths, handicap, fireplace, etc.
- Optional: upload unlimited photos.
- Unit name, Rate code ID for this unit

For owners

Owner Logins - Set up Property owner login.
- Allows property owner to view the availability for his property or properties and to block out times for themselves.
- Option to show dollar amount of reservations or not show dollar amounts of reservations.
Owner Transactions – enter owner transactions, such as management fee.
Owner Activity Reports – create a printable Activity Report/Statement for a given owner, properties and date range showing date, category, description, amount and balance.

Misc setup options

Problem Customers - Set “Do Not Book” flag on specific customers
Housekeeping - Set Housekeeping status of rooms (Clean or Dirty)
Guarantors - Create list of Guarantors which can be used by staff to guarantee a room
Referring Sources - Create list of Referring Sources to display on Online Booking form in order to track where your web customers heard about you.

Staff Backroom, Making and Managing Reservations

Calendar Grid – The most popular method to find an available room, which displays a grid of rooms and days showing available rooms, and status of unavailable rooms (confirmed, tentative, occupied, checked out, blocked). Clicking on an available room starts a reservation. Clicking on a reservation, displays the details of that reservation.
Find a Room – Let’s you search for a unit by entering date, # people and required amenities.
Find Reservations – Let’s you find existing reservations by entering: one or more of the following: checkin date, unit, res #, first name, last name, reservation status; checked out reservations during a date range.
List Reservations – shows a list of reservations that have been created within the last week, and also provides a search for reservations by Date Created. This gives quick access to NEW reservations.
Reservation Page – clicking on the Reservation displays the edit reservation page:
- Change room number – allows moving of the guest to another room
- Change checkin date and/or number of nights
- Change number of adults or children
- Change nightly room charges
- Change discount type
- Change reservation status
- Change any personal information
- Change credit card information (only with special access)
- Remove/cancel the reservation
- Print the confirmation
- Email the confirmation
- Add/edit transactions

Staff Backroom, Misc Functions

Contact BestRez Support – this is an online messaging system. It sends the BestRez support staff an alert email that there is a message waiting. You can mark the message urgent or regular. The BestRez Support staff will respond to you, and when you log in, our response will be waiting for you.
Misc Counter Transactions – this allows you to sell and track items that are not associated with a reservation.
Reports - Reports include Cash Report, Customer Email List, Customer Mailing List, Gross Advance Deposits, Guarantors Report, Guest List, Occupancy/Income Analysis, Owners Report, Referral Bookings and Income, Shift Summary and Report, Transaction Totals, Commissions-related Reports. In addition, there is the ability to create custom report lists.
Account Status - Able to review customer account and then set status of reservation to Audited

Online Booking

After setting up your rates and property/units, you are ready to open up your online booking page.

There are two online booking links for your web page. You can use one or both sets of links.
- Link #1 – General Search page – allows search of all units by date, # persons and amenities. The search returns a page with a list of all matching units.
- Link #2 – Book This Now page – this is a different link for each unit (or vacation rental). It shows the availability calendar for this particular unit. The guest selects the date from the availability calendar, then continues making the reservation.
Multiple online booking options, including billing credit cards in real time, or only collecting contact information (for call-back and confirmation by phone).
As part of the reservation process, the guest is required to read and click “Accept” to your company policy and the property and unit description. The company policy should include your cancellation policy, and wording that can be used to enforce credit card charges.
The reservation process is very straightforward and simple for your guests to use. After selecting the room and date range, there are only 4 pages: (1) the policy page (they click Accept) (2) their name and personal information (they fill it out) (3) their credit card information (they fill it out) and (4) the confirmation page (nothing to fill out – ready for printing).
The guest has the option of asking for a confirmation to be emailed to them.
The look (header image, font colors, etc) of the Online Booking pages is very customizable so that it can be made to look very similar to your web site. When users click the Reservations or Book Now links (you can use whatever links or images you wish), it will feel like they are still on your web site.
When an online reservation is made, it is immediately updated so that your backroom staff has access to it.
If the guest tries to book a room that is available but cannot be booked due to rules that you have set up, then a message advises them how to book the room. For example, “this unit requires a 3 day minimum” for this date range.
A special safeguard prevents two online users from making a reservation on the same day and unit. The first person to click the button gets the reservation, and the other user gets a message advising them that the unit is no longer available.
It’s easy to see what reservations have been made through the Online Booking. When you log into your backroom, a message tells you how many reservations have been made during the last day. Or click List Reservations to the new reservations that have been made in the last week.
Reservation numbers are easy to read. They include your client ID, the first few characters of the unit description and the date of the reservation.

Login for Vacation Rental Owner

Property owner logs in with a user name and password assigned in staff backroom
Staff backroom can set it up so that a property owner can view multiple properties with their one login
When property owner logs in, they see an availability calendar for the property or properties. An “X” marks days that are already reserved. They can click on available any available day, specify the start and end date and Block the property for their own use.
Any rooms blocked by the property owner are shown as status = Blocked on the Staff Calendar grid and on the reservation, and an indicator that shows that it was the property owner who blocked it.
Rooms can be unblocked in staff backroom or by property owner.

Portal Search

If desired, you can choose to include your property or properties in portal searches, which can be a source of reservation referrals.
Portals will attract web users who are looking for lodging, but who have come to the portal rather than your web site. Placing your property in portal searches can help them find you and make a lodging reservation with you.
When a web user is searching through a portal, they are presented with a list of all properties that have matching units.
Once a web user begins to reserve your unit from the portal list, then all of the information they see on is yours. For example, they will see your company policy, your referrals list and your discounts.
While all of the text that they see is yours and all of their data is logged to your database as your reservation, the header at the top of the page is the portal header.
If a reservation is referred to you by a BestRez portal, then the “made by” information on the reservation will have the portal ID rather than your company ID.