Applies to:          Stayntouch PMS          

Contracts Functionality

INTRODUCTION

We have redesigned contracts to resolve the mass number of rate cards that were created for every contract in Stayntouch PMS. Contracts will now be separated from Company and Travel Agent Cards, and negotiated rates can now be selected from rate admin. 

Contracts will still be created from the Company or Travel Agent Card using the CREATE NEW CONTRACT button.

When adding a new contract, the contract name must be unique, as there cannot be duplicate contract names for the same property. Each contract will also have an ACCESS CODE, which will be used by Stayntouch PMS to make searching for contracts simpler and more accurate. In the future, the ACCESS CODE will be used by external systems to “access” the contracts and book the reservations against the negotiated rate. The ACCESS CODE can be edited initially when the new contract is created; however, once the contract is saved, the access code cannot be edited by users without the Edit Access Code user permission.  

The contract will have a START DATE and END DATE, which will be the validity period of the contract. The validity date of the contract will not be linked to any of the rate set periods. The START DATE will be from the business date or any future date. The END DATE currently has a 10-year limit.

The END DATE of a contract can be shortened to the last active reservation attached to the contract. Once a contract reaches its expiry date, the contract will be seen as a PAST contract—once the contract is in PAST status, the contract will no longer be editable. 

The contract rate will now be selected from the rates available in rate admin. Any rate type can be linked to the contract in standalone mode and Day Use mode. The exception to the rule will be in Full Hourly mode—only Hourly rates classified as corporate rate types can be linked to a contract. Please note, if a rate does not have configured rate sets for the validity of the contract, you will still be able to link the rate to the contract. These rates should be maintained in order to book reservations against that rate. If the rate is not complete, then during the reservation process, no rate details will be returned. 

Inactive rates will not be available when searching for rates to be linked to a contract, and should you attempt to inactivate a rate linked to a contract, you will get an error that the rate is linked to a contract. The rate will need to be unlinked from the contract before the rate can be deactivated. 

Multiple rates can be linked to a contract, which will return multiple negotiated rates for you to select during the reservation process. 

As part of the contract, the contracted nights can be recorded. This can be edited at anytime. Select the SAVE CONTRACT button to save the contract details. 

Contracts will be saved, and once expired, they will move to the PAST tab. Any current contracts will be listed in the CURRENT tab, and all future contracts will be listed in the FUTURE tab. Please note, there can only be one CURRENT contract active for a Company or Travel Agent Card. 

A master contract can only be deleted if there are no reservation statistics against the contract. In order to delete that contract, the rates must be removed from the contract. Once the rates are removed, and the contract is unused, you will be able to select DELETE CONTRACT. 

CURRENT and FUTURE contracts can be linked to other Company and Travel Agent Cards. You can link an existing contract to a card by searching for the contract by NAME or ACCESS CODE within the Contracts tab. 

When searching for a contract, the list of CURRENT and FUTURE contracts will populate. Please note, when contracts are already linked to Company or Travel Agent Cards, they will not display in the list to be linked. Clicking on a contract will link the contract to the card.

Once a contract is linked, the option to UNLINK CONTRACT will also become available. 

Contract status can be changed from ACTIVE to INACTIVE. A contract can be deactivated at any time, even if there are active reservations attached. An inactive contract will not allow any further reservations to be made with it. You will still be able to edit inactive contracts. 

CONTRACT VALIDATIONS

1. Contract name must be unique and cannot have duplicate contract names for the same property.

2. Access codes must be unique for all contracts within the same date range or with overlapping date ranges. This code will default to the contract name and can be edited initially until the contract is saved, at which point, the access code will be locked down. Users with the Edit Access Code permission will be able to edit the access code after the contract is saved. Only one current contract can be created/linked to a Company or Travel Agent Card. 

3. Contracts can be activated or inactivated at any time. Active reservations linked to the contract will accumulate statistics as normal with the contract, even when inactive. When inactive, the contract will not be able to be sold. 

4. All rate types can be linked to a contract in Nightly and Day Use modes. In Full Hourly mode, there will be a limitation, in which only one Hourly corporate rate type can be linked to a contract. If it is a Nightly contract, all Nightly rates can still be linked. 

5. Contract end date can only be shortened until the last active reservation departure date linked to the contract. Contracts with reservation statistics cannot be deleted; only expired. This is to ensure all stay statistics remain intact. 

6. When creating a new contract from the original Company or Travel Agent Card, that card will be considered the master contract—from this master Company or Travel Agent Card, the contract can be edited. When the contract is linked to other accounts, those accounts will become the subaccounts—no editing can be done from the subaccounts. Subcontracts can be unlinked from the account, but master contracts cannot be unlinked from the account from which they were created. 

CONTRACTED RATES AND RATE SEQUENCING

When a rate is linked to a contract, the rate should not have to be linked to a sequence (when custom sequence is in use) to sell the rate. These rates should display regardless when the Company or Travel Agent Card is attached to the contract used when making a reservation.

ROOMS & RATES SCREEN – RECOMMENDED TAB

If your hotel uses custom sequences for your rate display, contracted rates will always display in the Recommended tab, even if a contracted rate is not linked to a custom sequence. 

GLOBAL CONTRACTS

When an account is marked as a Global Account, all the master/sub relationships for the contracts linked to that account will remain as is, and the account and contracts linked will become available at all properties in the multi-property group. This will be a single account with contracts linked to the account. The Global Contract will have the same access code in all properties. Should there be a contract with the same name or access code in any of the other properties, you will not be able to make the account global. Instead, you will have to create a new contract for that account or find the other account contract with the same name and access code and set that contract as expired. 

RESERVATION PROCESS (CONTRACTS)

During the reservation process, when a Company or Travel Agent with an active and current contract is used, the Rooms & Rates screen will default to the Recommended tab and show the contracted rates. If there are multiple rates attached to the contract, then all rates linked to that contract will display.

NEW FUNCTIONALITY

The access code will be utilized not just for external systems, but as part of the reservation process. You can use the access code in Stayntouch PMS to link the correct Company or Travel Agent Card with the correct contract, or you can continue to use the contract name if you prefer. 

See the below areas of impact where you can use the contract name as well as the access code to book a contract.  

1. Create New Reservation: You can use the access code to find the account and contract.

2. Nightly Diary – New Reservation & Daily Dairy – Reservation: When you create a new reservation from the diary and select a room to book, you will be taken to the Room & Rates screen, where you can search for the Company or Travel Agent name. You can also search using the access code, which will link the correct Company or Travel Agent profile to the correct rate for the reservation. 

3. Stay Card: This is a similar screen as above. Just add the access code to the Company and Travel Agent Card search when linking a new Company to the Stay Card.

4. Link a Group/Allotment to the Profile:

The access code display will be as follows in all of the above screens: 

ADDITIONAL CONTRACT BEHAVIOR

1. When a reservation has a Company and Travel Agent attached, both accounts’ contracted rates will populate in the Recommended tab. You can identify it with the name of the contract that will display next to each of the rates. 

2. From the Recommended tab, you will be able to book different rates from the different contracts using the Show Stay Dates function. 

3. In the event a reservation’s dates overlap with current and future reservations, you can use the Show Stay Dates function to book different contracted rates or consult with the Revenue Manager to update the contract dates to accommodate the reservation. 

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CONTRACTS MODULE

1. Reuse of an access code for future contracts. The initial release will not allow you to reuse an access code for a future contract. New validation will be implemented to allow reuse of an access code as long as the dates of the contract do not overlap. 

Scenario: A current contract was created using ACCESS CODE “RUN777” for the date period 11-01-2019 to 12-31-2019.

You can now reuse the same ACCESS CODE “RUN777” for a future contract on the same account.

Note: Access codes can only be reused for future contracts if the dates do not overlap. If the dates overlap, you will be warned that the ACCESS CODE is in use. 

2. Design change to display additional contracts linked to a contract. With this improvement, you will be able to easily identify the master contract details from the sub contract. 

2.1 New master/sub identification on contracts. Magnolia Road Runners Company Account has the following contracts attached:

• Current: Master contract for the account itself (Magnolia 2019).

• Future: Master future contract for the account itself (Magnolia 2020).

• Linked (Sub): Linked another current contract to Magnolia Road Runners Account (Irene Contract 2019). 

The contract detailed view will show current, future, and past contracts. 

The initial view from the Contracts tab on the account will default to the current master contract on the account. In this view, it will also show to which accounts this master contract is linked (other accounts using the same account). 

Note: The position of the rates linked to the contract moved to the right hand side of the page. This was done so the entire list linked to the contract and can be viewed at one glance. The DELETE CONTRACT button for master contracts was also moved to the bottom of the screen. 

The future contract will display in the collapsed view once selected.

Note: In this example, the future contract is not linked to any other accounts, so the view has no linked to information. 

When expanding the master contract view, you will be taken to the detailed contract view. In this view, when you select any of the contracts, it will collapse to the selected contract’s details. In the example below, the linked contract was selected. 

Note: In the collapsed view, you can easily identify the contract type—in this example, you can see it is a sub contract. You can also view from which account this contract was linked. Should this contract not be linked to this account anymore, you can unlink the contract. However, if there are active reservations linked to this contract, you will not be able to unlink the contract. 

Also note that none of the contract fields can be edited, as this can only be done from the master account, which is Irene Road Runners in this example. 

3. You can now use the contract ACCESS CODE to search for the contract during the reservation process. 

Reservation creation screen:

Stay card account search:

Groups/allotments account search:

4. The contract name used for the reservation now displays in the stay card. 

Note: In some instances, an account can have more than one active current contract. The contract used will be shown in the stay card. 

You can also link another contract to the reservation with the same account.

5. The contract search now shows contract rate and name. 

Note: If more than one RATE or CONTRACT is linked to the account, it will display MULTIPLE. 

6. Group and allotments show Company and Travel Agent rates separately with the contract name next to each of the contracted rates. 

FURTHER ENHANCEMENTS TO THE CONTRACTS MODULE

When creating a new contract, you will be required to save the contract and then link the rates to the contract. If you do not link rates, there will be a No Rates notice to make it clear that you still need to link a rate. 

Master contracts can be linked to other accounts. If they are not linked to any other accounts, the Linked To section will show as No Links.

When viewing a master contract, you will see to which accounts this contract is linked.

From the linked account, you can see from where the contract is linked.

We added an additional icon to indicate whether the contracts are active or not. When the STATUS is set to ACTIVE, it will show an active contract, and if grayed out, then it is INACTIVE. 

Active:

Inactive:

CONTRACTS AND GROUPS

We have added the contract ID and name to the contracted rate for you to identify the contracted rate details when making a group reservation. 

On the group header, the contracted rate will be selected, and when you use the create new reservation process to link a reservation to the group, you will see the contracted rate linked to that group with the rate name and contract name. 

Create new reservation for the Magnolia Group linked to the Magnolia 2019 contract:

The contract name displays next to the rate in the RECOMMENDED tab.

EXTENDED CONTRACT RATE DISPLAY IN ALLOTMENTS MODULE

When creating an allotment and attaching a Company or Travel Agent, then the contracted rates will display in the RATE field. 

All reservations linked to this allotment will inherit the card association and have the contract ID linked. 

GLOBAL ACCOUNTS AND CONTRACTS

Global Account contracts will be duplicated in the other properties in the same chain with no rate linked.

• Contracts created from a Global Account will be a Global Contract in all multi-property hotels within the chain.

• When creating a new contract from a Global Account, it will generate duplicate contracts in other multi-property hotels with the same parameters.

• When updating any fields in a Global Contract, all the Global Contracts in other properties will also get updated.

• When deleting a Global Contract, it will delete other Global Contracts with the same parameters from the same account.

• Link Rate: The same rate name and rate code should exist across all other multi-property hotels.

• Create/Update/Delete/Unlink Rate Validation: This will check all validations across multi-property hotels.

• When a Global Account becomes non-global (by turning off the Global flag), the Global Contract will become a normal contract in all multi-property hotels.

Creating a new Global Contract from an account will replicate the same contracts in all the other properties within the same multi-property chain.

Property 1: New Global Contract Name:

Property 2: New Global Contract Name:

Global Contracts can only be linked and unlinked within Global Accounts.

When linking a contract to a Global Account, then Stayntouch PMS will only show Global Contracts when searching for linked contracts from a Global Account. 

In the example below, we only see one Global Contract in the list (as per the conditions that only Global Contracts can be linked to another Global Account). If the account was not global, you would not have found the Azel Company contract, which is linked to another Global Account. 

• The same Global Contract is visible in other multi-property hotels in the chain for the account.

• You can unlink the contract from here.

• Unlink Validation: There should be no linked reservation/group/allotment in any of the multi-property hotels.

User activities for the Global Account and Global Contract will be tracked from hotels within the multi-property chain.

If the Multi Property checkbox is unselected in Settings > Hotel & Staff > Hotel Details, all Global Contracts will become non-global.

CONTRACTS WORKFLOW ENHANCEMENTS

When altering a reservation by attaching or detaching a contract from a reservation, the reservation either ultimately qualifies for the contracted rate, if linked to the reservation, or does not qualify for the contracted rate, if the account is removed from the reservation. 

In the above scenarios you will be taken to the Rooms & Rates screen to make the correct rate selection. 

Adding an account with a contract to a reservation: 

You will have the option to update the rate or keep the rate the same. If you choose to update the rate, you will be redirected to the Rooms & Rates screen.

Upon selecting the contracted rate, the Company will be associated with the reservations, the contract will be linked to the reservation, and the rate will be updated. 

Detaching the card with the contract from the reservation:

On confirmation of detaching the card, you will be redirected to the Rooms & Rates screen. Please note, if there are no other contracts linked, the Rooms & Rates screen will default to the standard Rooms & Rates screen (will not default to the RECOMMENDED tab).