January 2023 Product Update

Packages provide you the ability to bundle services together to deliver unique and personalized value to your customers. In this release, we delivered some major updates to packages to ensure that they are easy to create and add to quotes. Discover the value of packages  and how to add them to bookings.

The following changes to packages are now available: 

• The max discount field is always set when you add a package to a booking. The max discount will be whatever was set at the package level. If left blank, max discount will be $0.
• When splitting rooms in a package, the total number of guests per day is now calculated correctly.
• Once a package has been added to a booking, removing the items that make up the package can only be done via the package items (package lines) or by deleting the whole package. If the package is not custom, you’ll have to delete the whole package to remove any of the items contained in the package. We’ve added more user-friendly messaging about how to go about removing these items. 
• We understand that many events (meeting rooms) added to packages span two calendar days. For example, an evening reception may go from 9 pm to 1 am. We have added the field “End time on next day” to the package item (line). When checked, the event will automatically be created on the booking with an end date one day later than the start date. We’ve also added the field “Setup” to package items so that when creating events in a package you can specify the setup type and automatically create events on the booking with that setup.
• Inactive products can no longer be added to packages. 
• All package items (lines) have their currency set to the package’s currency, which by default is the currency of the property. 
• If descriptions are entered on a package, they are now copied to the booking package when added to a booking. 

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Note: You may see the word “Booking” used interchangeably with “Quote.” To standardize our product, we have begun to modify labels and page layouts to ensure that Thynk is more user-friendly. One of these changes is to update MYCE Quote to Booking. This change is currently targeted for a February 2023 release.

Quotes contain details about bookings such as the account information, contact for the booking, guest rooms blocked, function rooms, commissions, packages, and more.  Here are some of the latest updates to help you manage your bookings more effectively and efficiently.

One of the major changes in this release is that booking stages can no longer be skipped.

• Although booking stages should be followed chronologically, the reality is that many of our customers skip and go backwards with stages. This can create errors on reservations and other processes, especially if confirmed bookings are switched back to an earlier stage. To prevent these errors, we have added validation to enforce going  forward stage by stage. The only exception here is when closing a booking, where stages can be skipped in order to close the booking with a lost status. This will be enabled by default upon installation of the January release.
• We’ve also added validation to ensure that accounts are selected on all bookings. You’ll see the validation message here when this information is missing.
• Depending on whether a booking is billed to a Company or an Agent, the appropriate account needs to be tied to the booking. We now ensure that if Company is the billing choice, then an account must be selected in the company field. If an agent is selected, then an account must be selected there. This validation applies when creating and modifying bookings.

Guest Rooms

• We’ve added a check to ensure that the arrival and departure dates on all guest rooms are within the shoulder dates of the booking. This ensures that all records added to a booking are within the start and end dates. If you try to set arrival or departure dates on a guest room outside of these dates, you’ll see the following message: “The hotel room dates must be set within the booking’s interval.” If you need to change the dates, use the change dates button first.

Clone Booking

• When cloning a booking with combo products, tax information and budgets are included in the clone
• When booking products are part of an event (meeting room), this relationship is now saved when the booking is cloned.
• If product names were changed on the original booking, the cloned booking will have the unique names of the booking products instead of the generic name of the product.
• The labels that appear in the clone booking view are now available for translation so that your team can best follow along.

Group Booking

• We’ve updated the Room Block Manager (Group booking) to ensure that all labels are the same text size.

Two-way integrations with PMS  providers ensure that your data is always up-to-date and clean. We include integration with Oracle Opera, Mews and StayNTouch. As you share your feedback, we continue to optimize the experience and take advantage of new features that our partners are releasing on their roadmap.  Here are some of the features we have added to the Thynk platform to create a seamless experience where you can do your work in Thynk and trust that data is flowing with your other systems.

Opera Updates

• During onboarding, Opera customers determine at which stage of a booking the PMS block should be created and sent to the Opera. We’ve now automated the process of sending the blocks so that at the specified stage, the PMS Block is automatically sent. If there is no specified stage, then you will have to continue manually checking the “Send to PMS” field on the booking.
• Similar to resending failed reservations, we’ve now added a checkbox on the Booking called “Resend Failed PMS Block” that allows you to resend a PMS block manually. Before checking this box, you should use the errors to fix any missing information.

Mews Updates

• Cutoff (release) date is now synchronized with Mews.
• To accommodate changes made in the Mews Services API, we’ve changed the service value of Reservable to Bookable and Orderable to Additional.
• For Mews customers, we now ensure that after reservations have been created the manual creation of a PMS block is disabled.

The Scheduler is where you can see available function rooms (for all of your properties) along with those that have already been blocked.  You can create and manage events right on the scheduler and change your view to be by day, week, month, or even a custom date range.  

Previously, when filtering by property in the function diary (scheduler), the filter showed only events (quote meeting rooms) where the booking was set for the selected property. However, bookings often are assigned to one property with events at another. Rather than have the filter check for the booking’s assigned property, we now check for the property of each event. This way, the function diary helps prevent overbooking by showing a full picture of the availability at a property.

• Inactive products can no longer be added to combos or packages.
• When creating combo or regular products, the currency is now set by default to the property’s assigned currency.
• When a combo product is cloned, all of the combo items are cloned along with it.
• Currently, when combo products are added to a booking, an analytics record is created for each combo item, but not for the combo itself. While this is helpful for more granular reporting, we have enabled the option to show either combo product analytics only or the individual components. You can work with your project manager to update settings in your org based on your preferences for analytics.

Check out the knowledge base for a refresher on accounts and contracts.

As part of the standard Thynk package, we now offer two fields on the contact for better CRM maintenance: Active and Inactive Reason. The standard set of values for “Inactive Reason” is: Retired, Moved to another department, Left the company, Deceased. These fields will be added to the Contact layout during installation.