Latest & Greatest Updates August Edition 2023/08/25
We used the summer to look at and implement a lot of things from the feedback from our users. In the summer it is very important not to disturb the everyday office life as much as possible and to react quickly to the things that are reported to us during the high season. Here is the list of notable updates.
β¨ Useful information
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Occupancy status separated by season
Two cards appear on the dashboard. One for the current year and a second for the upcoming year. This allows us to separate the seasons. The start date of the session for classification is decisive. Furthermore, the archive is now also taken into account in the calculation, so that the numbers do not change when you close the season. -
Improving filters for pending payments
The menu item Accounting > Outstanding payments has received new filters. You can now select invoices for offers that start in a specific time range. The background is that you want to ensure that all bills are paid before the participants arrive at the camp. -
Sub-seasonal price adjustment
Previously, after a price adjustment when changing a booking, a discount had to be used in order to keep the original basic price of the session. This is no longer necessary. When changing the booking, you can choose which basic price the change should be made with. -
Edit answers to free questions in the questionnaire
Previously, to edit the answers to custom questions, you had to edit the booking. This is now possible directly when editing the participant questionnaire and is therefore much more intuitive. In addition, the questions and help texts are now also displayed directly on the booking detail page. This innovation also benefits customers, because the summary is also used for printing after the questionnaire has been submitted. -
Discounts with start date
Have you ever gotten up at night to activate a discount? You do not need to now. When entering the discounts, you can choose a start date and time. At this point, the discount will automatically become active. -
Print out participant lists
Lists of participants with the names and duration of the offers are often required for offers, that are funded by the authorities. You can now download this as a PDF for each session. You can find the new feature in the session list under more > attendee list as PDF. Above the table is your logo, followed by information about the session and listing. Furthermore, a column is provided in which the legal guardian can sign. -
Defining the discount calculation
When calculating discounts, the order in which the discounts are applied can play a role. We have now established that all percentage discounts always apply first, followed by all discounts with a monetary value. -
Travel documents sent?
A new filter > Travel documents allows you to find all those bookings that have not yet received the email with the travel documents. These can be sent directly from there. The menu item can also be opened aggregated by session. -
Until when can an offer be booked?
Previously, all offers were displayed as no longer bookable 24 hours before the start. If it is not an organizational problem to allow very short-term bookings, you can now set the number of hours yourself in the account settings. The item is located in the Booking system > sessions section. -
Transfer complete round to organizer
Some offers are managed in a Bookacamp account until the actual tour operator needs to receive the data. So far, the transfer of individual bookings was already possible, which admittedly is not much fun for sessions with 40 participants. Starting this season, entire session can be transfered completely. -
Old invoices in the archive
The archive has been expanded to find all invoices per year from there. This also works if the related bookings have long been archived. This is useful if data is still missing for the tax return and needs to be submitted later. -
Sorting by capacity
Each sesion has columns for the current booking status. The last column of the total number of bookings / maximum capacity can now be sorted numerically in ascending or descending order.
π¨π¨π¨π¨ Group handling
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Accounting
Our group management has received a few new functions for accounting. Open amounts and account balances are displayed in various places and group invoices appear in the list of outstanding payments. The well-known functions for individual bookings are gradually becoming available for groups as well. -
Test booking
Even with groups, it can happen that you have to try things out. That's why the group administration now has the well-known test booking button. Thus, the whole group and the associated bookings are marked as a test and are excluded from the capacity calculations and billing. -
Communication
We have provided email templates for group communication. The new templates are for acknowledgment of receipt, cancellation, change of group booking, invoice, payment and travel information. These templates can be customized via group communication for each session. We recommend using the default settings as often as possible and only using individual templates in exceptional cases. -
Adjustment of payment terms on the invoice
We have placeholders to represent the payment terms for down payment and balance payment on the invoice. For short-term bookings, the down payment target could be behind the final payment. We have changed this so that the date of the deposit can no longer be later than the date of the main payment. If the date of the main payment is before the date of the deposit, the date of the deposit will be "today" with the note (immediately). -
Collected questionnaires
In the case of groups, one questionnaire may still have to be answered for each participant. The questions about medical matters are person-dependent. To make this easier, there are placeholders for group communication to send the questionnaires per person in a single email to the applicant.
βοΈ Emails
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Important changes to bulk emails
Sending a large amount of emails at once can take a long time and often break off. The reason is often that the providers of the sender addresses have a limit in order not to be considered as the sender of SPAM. We have changed our systems so that bulk emails are cached first. From there, a job runs in the background that sends the e-mails one after the other and can therefore also handle a limit. The cached emails are marked as such, so you can see if the email hasn't been sent yet. -
Response to emails
Our emails are sent from the address set in the account settings. So far, the answer has also gone to this address. If it is better if customers reply directly to your personal inbox, you can now specify this in your personal settings and change it for each individual email. That way, the answers to questions get to you directly, instead of getting lost in a bulk mailbox. -
Recipients of emails
When sending individual templates, the recipient is preselected from the booking. Here you can now also enter a different address that differs from the booking. -
Insert agency in feedback mail
Placeholders for information about the agency can now be inserted in the e-mail templates for the feedback invitations. This is useful for naming the tour operator there. -
List answers to open questions in email
The new placeholder (|booking-consents-as-list|) prepares the free questions plus answer in a list and inserts this content into your emails. -
Gender of the participant as a placeholder
The placeholder (|participant-gender|) is now also available for use in the email templates. -
Collective shipping per camp
It has long been possible to send a template to all participants in a session. This option has been expanded to also send to all participants in a specific camp location and thus increase the number of addressees. The button for this can be found under Administration > Camps.
π Teamer-Addon
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non-binary in operational planning
The information about people who identify as non-binary was missing in the operational planning and is now included there. Considering the background of the increasing number of registrations from non-binary persons, it is important to keep an eye on this aspect.
Author: Mathias Methner