Manage channels through which reservations are made

Channel management

Channels create insight into how a reservation was made. Your own website and the back office have their own channel, and there are dedicated owner channels as well. Many OTA integrations automatically create a channel for themselves, for some this needs to be done manually.

Create a new channel

It is possible to differentiate the price list rates you send to each channel by editing a price factor in the channel settings. This can also be used to ensure that your own website is always the cheapest option for your guests.

Edit the price factor of a channel 

Standard channel for back office reservations

When a channel is first created, the default payment policy is applied as standard. You can select a different payment policy if desired.

Connecting a payment policy to a channel

Guests pay on arrival

Measuring bookings from unconnected Channels

Determine for each distribution channel how long an unconfirmed reservation can be valid before lapsing.

Validity of unconfirmed reservations per channel

Financial settings for channel settlements

Channel invoicing

For some distribution channels, you send out channel invoices for amounts paid by the guest through the channel. Most channels will collate multiple of these channel invoices into one payment. Use channel settlements to book the received amounts back onto the individual reservations where payment is due.

Processing channel settlements

Language setting for channel invoices

Your distribution partners are usually set up as channels, and to be able to use the partner's platform to market your accommodations, you have to pay a channel commission. There are several ways to deal with channel commission in BEX PMS and your financial administration.  

Dealing with channel commission

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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

General invoicing and accounting settings

Financial settings

Everything about communicating with guests and owners

Communication

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.

Export for cancellation insurance

Open a booker contact page by clicking the name of a booker from the Contacts module. Here, collected personal, reservation, and invoice data for this contact is shown.

Booker contact management

The BEX PMS Booking portal overview provides a centralized list of all reservation attempts made through your Booking portal over the last 30 days.

Booking portal

There are multiple ways to enter a new reservation, and thus support your guests in booking a stay.

Making a new reservation

There are two ways to create group bookings in the BEX PMS back office, and which approach you should take depends on the requirements of your guests. In CMS, you can allow guests to make group bookings themselves via your website.