From the Dashboard, click Book Now, or from the Booking menu, click New Booking.
1. Rooms
Firstly we configure the parameters we are going to search on. These are all optional. By default hitting search will just show all rooms with availability for a 1 night stay for 1 person arriving today.
Corporate Booker allows you to select any corporate partners you may have configured, so that on subsequent choices in this process we are offering the correct pricing.
From. To. allows you to select the date range for the current room being added to this booking. Note that multiple rooms can be added, and all could have different arrival or departure dates within the same booking.
People sets the occupancy requirement for this current availability search.
Bedding type would enable us for example to select "Double" and return only Budget, Standard and Deluxe Double Rooms, plus a Four Poster in our search results.
Rate plan allows you to only return the rates you have configured like "Bed & Breakfast" or "Room Only" in the results.
Promo code allows you to enter a code if you have a guest on the phone.
After you press search, the rooms meeting your criteria will be displayed below.
You can then tick the required Room Type / Rate row, and select how many of the Available rooms you want to Add to booking.
From here you can then change the automatically selected Room that the booking will be made for - eg from Rm1 to Rm7, and changing the Rateplan or Adults/Children will update the price. If you choose an invalid combination (eg 12 people in a double room) the suggested price will not show anything, but the previously indicated price for the booking would remain.
You'll notice when creating a booking that once they are added, they appear in the right hand side bar, similar to how they do on the web booking engine. It would now be possible to search again with different dates, and add any returned results to form a part of this booking.
Once you have added all your rooms, you can click the orange Next > button.
2. Guests
The first guest's details are entered on the next screen. If the guest has booked before you can call up their details by entering the surname in Search guests.
What you add on this screen determines several possible actions later.
- You cannot email a guest without an email address.
- You cannot send SMS to a guest without a mobile phone number.
It is possible to add guests up to the maximum "booked" in each room on the previous screen.
Express Check In.
The email templates in Caterbook have a special feature. They can send a link to the booking's lead guest where they can complete their own, and each individual guest's, details ahead of arrival. This can reduce the time spent filling in these details on your registration forms in reception on Check In. The email can be scheduled to be sent out 2 or 3 days before arrival.
There can be only 1 Lead guest in any booking.
The Is under 16 years tick box will only store the name of a guest and no other information.
3. Extras
In order to manage group bookings with multiple rooms, some extras can be applied to the booking (eg Cancellation penalty), others to the room (eg Travel Cot).
4. Finance
Here, Caterbook will suggest a Deposit based on the rules you have configured for your rateplans. You can over-ride this by typing in a different amount.
From the Payment type field you can select the payment method.
Caterpay-Sale - will attempt to charge the card in real time via the virtual terminal window.
Caterpay-Verify - can be used for "Card for Security". These are like a £0 authorisation, and go through the banking system to confirm the cardholder's supplied details match those held on file for Address, Postcode & CV2.
Clicking Book will now open the gateway screen, or if a non Caterpay method was chosen, the payment will be recorded and the booking confirmed.
The address you entered for the Lead guest earlier will be pulled through to the Caterpay gateway.