Everything about communicating with guests and owners

Communication

Setting up communication by email

You can send emails like booking confirmations, auto emails and email campaigns from both the BEX PMS and CMS. You can customise the email address from which these emails are sent.

Verify your sender email address

Avoiding spam when sending email campaigns and auto emails

Difference between auto emails and templates

Email variables are pieces of code you can use in your emails and templates to customise the message for the recipient. Email variables take data from the reservation and apply it to the message that is being sent to the guest. Here, you'll find a list of the most often used variables.

Email variables for auto emails and templates

BCC / receive e-mail copy

Within BEX PMS, your Bird account is used to send text messages to the executors of your todos. Set up this connection in your administration settings.

Using Bird for your Todos module

Auto emails

With auto emails, you can automatically send emails to your guests via the PMS. This could include, for example, arrival information, which needs to be sent a certain number of days prior to the reservation. By using different filters, the emails can be broadly applied.

Getting started with auto emails

There are different fields and options to help you ensure that this auto email not only reaches the intended audience, but also has the correct content. 

Create a new auto email

When setting up auto emails, the filters determine which of your guests receive the email. The filters are based on different characteristics of the reservation. Here, the ones most often used are explained.

Auto email filters

Test an auto email before setting it to active by sending it to your own email address. 

Testing and checking auto emails

To help you visualize the possibilities of auto emails, look at some detailed examples.

Examples of auto emails

Send your guests a link to their guest portal in an auto email.

Link to the guest portal in auto emails

System messages that are triggered by an event

Templates

In BEX PMS, templates are customizable messages used to send information to guests and/or owners. Most of these templates can be enabled or disabled depending on the needs of your administration, and are automatically sent when triggered.

How to use templates

Invoice templates determine the layout of the various invoices that you send as an email attachment. The customization options are different from a message template.

Invoice templates

What templates are there and when are they sent out

It is possible to create a personalised welcome letter for your guest to provide general information about the park on arrival. The welcome letter can also come in handy when guests arrive after the check-in time.

Welcome letter

If a guest has abandoned their booking in the booking portal, after already having entered their email address, the template 'Guest has left booking portal' is used to follow up on this and entice the guest to complete their booking.

Email follow-up for incomplete booking

If/else tags in Templates

Search for any helpful articles to find an answer to your question

www.bookingexperts.com

Updates

Developer Portal

Trust Center

Onboarding

What you need to know before starting the onboarding process

Before you start

Welcome to Booking Experts! Here you can find an overview of what happens next and how to start with your BEX PMS.

Starting with Booking Experts

Log in to your Booking Experts account in one of the following ways: with an email address and password with MFA, or via SSO through a Google or Microsoft account.

Log in to BEX PMS or CMS

The user role connected to your account determines how you interact with BEX PMS. You can be an employee working for a single or multi-park organization, an owner who rents out their accommodation, an executor or contractor who performs maintenance or provides services, or even a travel agency booking holidays for your clients. For BEX CMS, there is only one user role.

User roles within BEX PMS and CMS

The light green upper part of the menubar focuses on options regarding the account details, updates of Booking Experts, or reception messages.

Menubar in the BEX PMS

Every employee who uses the Booking Experts system has their own profile within the software. This is setup during onboarding or when a new colleague needs to be introduced to the system.

Adjusting your profile

Tools to help you in the onboarding process

Checklist and Academy

About the safety of your and your guests' data

Privacy and security

Modules

About data transferable from other systems

Importing data

Organization and administration settings

All organizations with multiple administrations have an Organization overview. In this overview, as an organization manager, you have insight into the bundled data of all administrations.

Overview for organizations with multiple administrations

What you need to know about setting up accounts for your employees

Employee settings

Brand and appearance

Central management of terms and conditions

Terms & Conditions

Domains

Both BEX PMS and BEX CMS have a staging environment available, where you can safely edit data and run tests without affecting your live settings.

Test settings using Staging

Setting up objects

Amenities

Individual objects and the types they belong to

Types and objects

Media content

Set up your pricing and business finances

Prices and finances

Important financial settings

Rental prices for various types and periods of time

Price lists

Costs

Setting up CMS

Switching between BEX PMS and BEX CMS

As a park manager, you can create CMS accounts for employees and manage their rights.

Access rights for CMS users

Tools

Site settings

Website pages

How reservations are made through your website

Search & Book

Brand appearance

Email campaigns

Offering holiday homes for sale on your website 

Sales module

If you are using both ParcVu and BEX CMS with the sales module, you can connect the two to easily generate prospects out of interested website visitors and advertise ParcVu Vans for sale on your website.

Connect to ParcVu

All day-to-day actions necessary at your reception

Daily use of PMS

Dashboard

Getting started with the reservations module and reception messages

Reservations and messages

BEX PMS

Planboard

The Planboard is the main tool for receptionists. From here, current and future reservations can easily be managed.

Managing reservations from the Planboard

You can scroll left and right to move through the dates in your planboard, but with these tips you might find what you are looking for easier and faster.

Calendar navigation in the planboard

Using the PMS planboard, you can easily move a reservation to a different object, or make two reservations switch places.

Move or swap a reservation in the Planboard

Select an available date range directly at the correct object by clicking and dragging, or first create a shortlist of objects using the filters at the top of your planboard.

Making a new reservation via Planboard

A cluster is a combination of multiple objects, which are treated as a single object in the Planboard.

Cluster reservation in the Planboard

The planboard legend explains the significance of colors, and through planboard settings you can determine what the planboard looks like for your account.

Planboard legend and settings

The planboard filters can be used to find certain reservations, or to narrow down the availability for a new reservation.

Available filters for the Planboard

Convenient keyboard shortcuts that may make your work easier.

Hotkeys for Planboard

Settings that apply to your entire organization

Organization settings

During onboarding, you connect or register your domain(s) to ensure that your BEX PMS works correctly. You might also add a new domain when opening a new park, for example.

Domains: settings for technical website management

It is possible to make predefined holidays and bank holidays visible on your website, so guests can click on them or more easily search for availability, for example, during the Christmas period. 

Set holidays as selectable on your website

For each administration separately, financial records can be locked and closed for accounting purposes. In your organization settings, you can prevent them from being reopened across your administrations.

Preventing closed financial records from being reopened

Special periods are used in statistics, price lists, and the Search & Book. Examples of special periods are the often-booked getaways around public holidays, local events or school holidays.

How are special periods used?

Special periods are arrival/departure date ranges that are important to your organization, and that can be applied throughout your administrations.

Creating special periods

A label alerts the user to important matters concerning the various modules and data within the PMS. For example, you could give the label 'loyal guest' to guests who have stayed for the fourth time, or the label 'renovated' to objects that have been refurbished. You can create these labels yourself and give them a desired colour and emoji.

Purpose of labels

Employees

Manage the amenities of your types, objects and administrations

Brands

Manage your booking portal and customer portal

Portal settings

Settings that apply within an administration

Administration settings

Description of the park and its surroundings

Exclude postcodes

Period groups are applied to costs, packages, auto emails and discounts, to determine when these items are valid, active, and/or applicable.

Period groups

Reservation settings

Manage channels through which reservations are made

Channel management

General invoicing and accounting settings

Financial settings

Translations

About types, objects, availability and meter readings

Setup

Whether or not a late checkout is allowed, is determined in the settings of the booked type. 

How to set up and recognize a late check-out

How do you indicate whether or not pets are allowed? This is done per object, in the object setup. In the type settings, you can set how many pets guests are allowed to bring, but this only applies if the booked object allows pets.

Pets allowed/not allowed

In the BEX PMS, you can add media to your types and objects so that guests can get a good impression of the kind of accommodation they are booking.

Add media to types and objects

How to make exports of your types, objects, or object setups.

Export of objects/types

In auto emails and templates, you can add useful information about an object or type that is predefined in the object or type settings.

Attachment text for emails objects/types

If you have a map of your park as a high-quality image, you can mark your objects on it and use it on your website to let guests select where they want to stay. This map will be shown during the booking process. If desired, you can attach a preference cost to this selection of an object.

Booking on the map

Types

Objects

Marking types and/or objects as not-available

Blocked periods

About tracking and charging for meter readings

Meter readings module

All about cost items, price lists, deposits and discounts

Pricing

Influencing revenue by controlling availability

Availability

Charge, claim, and refund security deposits

Security deposits

Cost items for anything that is not included in the rent price

Discounts

Packages

Bundle extras that are available independent of stay

Bundles

Finance

If you are a park working with owners, you need to file a DAC7 report. The BEX PMS can provide the necessary data. Read this article to find out which data is required and some of the common error messages concerning the data.

DAC7: What is it and which data is required?

Creating and checking a DAC7 report

To submit a DAC7 report to the Dutch Tax Administration, you likely use Digipoort. Our DAC7 Digipoort Connector app allows you to upload a DAC7 report directly from your PMS to Digipoort, the Tax Administration’s electronic post office.

Submitting a DAC7 report via Digipoort

Invoice management

Payment policies, bulk payments, payment methods, and more

Payments

About VAT, profit and loss, and ledger accounts

Accounting

Reservation management

View channel reservations

Overview nights stayed and tourist tax declaration

Within the reservations index page you can create a list for export using any of the tabs and filter options. Creating exports of reservations may help you anticipate your guest's needs.

Exporting reservations

Create an export file that lists which reservations have cancellation insurance.