Stayntouch PMS
Release Notes (v5.7)
Effective: 22 May 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- PMS: Manual Credit Card Authorizations
- Groups: Split Rate for Accompanying Guests
- Room Types Assigned to Future Reservations Cannot Be Changed
- Auto-Lock Functionality Removed from Posting Accounts and Guest Bills
- Sell Limits
- Switzerland: Police Export
- Groups: Country and Nationality Added to Group Summary Screen
- New Invoice Search: Navigate To and From the Stay Card
PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS
PMS: Manual Credit Card Authorizations
This feature is for clients who are interfaced with Merchant Link Payment Gateway—and where a card is presented for which an authorization over the phone is required—or where the connection to the payment gateway is temporarily unavailable. After obtaining an authorization code over the phone, users can now select a checkbox for manual credit card authorization. Upon selection, an additional field will appear, in which users can enter a manually-obtained (via phone) authorization code that will be saved to the card details.
Groups: Split Rate for Accompanying Guests
Hotels can now split group rates evenly among accompanying guests on group reservations. This functionality has been added to the Billing Information section on the Group Summary screen. When enabled, group reservations will be able to split the rate evenly among accompanying guests by creating billing instructions for accompanying guests.
Room Types Assigned to Future Reservations Cannot Be Changed
Users cannot change the room type for a room if the room number is assigned to future reservations. Previously, if room type was changed for an existing room number, and that room number was assigned to a future reservation, the existing reservation held onto the old room type/room number combination. Now, however, users will receive the following message:
Auto-Lock Functionality Removed from Posting Accounts and Guest Bills
Auto-lock functionality has been removed from posting accounts and guest bills. When lock bill is toggled ON by Stayntouch Admin, the following scenarios apply to both posting accounts and guest bills:
Scenario 1: Bills will not automatically lock when a refund is generated to make the bill balance 0.00.
Scenario 2: Bills will not automatically lock when the balance is brought to 0.00 by payment.
In both of these scenarios, select the GENERATE INVOICE button on the guest bill to lock the bill.
Please note, direct bill check-out will remain as is; there are no changes to that functionality. When a guest checks out, the bill will lock by default if the balance is 0.00.
To enable this feature at your property, please contact Customer Support.
Sell Limits
Hotels now have the option to toggle ON an ADD SELL LIMITS button in Stayntouch PMS. Sell limits is currently supported for the following integrations (i.e., Windsurfer, SiteMinder, and TravelClick), and is in pilot release for Synxis. Sell limit is a feature that can be used to set a limit for the selling of physical rooms available on a specific date. We can add this limit for both house and room type level. The overbooking will occur only if we sold all the physical rooms based on the sell limit set in Stayntouch PMS. (Please note, all CRS integrations currently support sell limit on RoomType level only, and if you configure sell limit on house level, it will need to be manually updated on the CRS level, assuming CRS has the capability.)
You can read more about this new feature in the articles below.
COUNTRY SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS
Switzerland: Police Export
Due to Zurich legal requirements, we have added a police export field to the Reports section in Stayntouch PMS.
When activated for a hotel, the following fields will display on the guest card:
Hometown
Place of Residence
Country (select from a dropdown menu)
This report must be toggled ON by Stayntouch Admin, so please contact Customer Support to enable for your property.
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Groups: Country and Nationality Added to Group Summary Screen
From Settings > Reservations > Reservation Settings, when the FORCE NATIONALITY AT CHECK-IN checkbox is selected, country and nationality fields now displayed on the Group Summary screen and can be selected to apply to all reservations in a group. If the checkbox remains unselected, these fields will not display on the Group Summary screen.
These records also display in the Group Activity Log and the Guest Card Activity Log. When country and nationality fields are updated on the Group Summary screen, guests for existing reservations will also be updated. Please note, integrations will fail for properties with an interface to an S&C system unless the system sends this data.
New Invoice Search: Navigate To and From the Stay Card
From Financials > Invoice Search, users can now search for an invoice, select a guest, and then access the stay card by selecting the orange >> button.
This will direct users to the Transactions tab of the parent stay card.
From the stay card, you will need to go back to the Invoice Search screen.
