Rates Setup

 

NOTE: If your rates are uncomplicated, for example just a flat tariff per room or person, then skip over this section.

Rates and Packages can be very simple or they can be very complex, depending on the particular style and policies of each property. If you intend to do deep analysis of the financials generated by guest-flows, then you must have a break down of the components in your rates and packages so that this data can be produced and processed automatically by the system. It must be inherent in the design - naturally you will find all this and more in The-Host Hospitality Management System.

Cashup reports must deliver this information as standard, and it must be possible to extract it into reports on demand. The capabilities of a software package in this sophisticated area can be a very good indicator of it's overall pedigree. Many so-called property management systems have virtually zero capabilities at all in this regard, rendering them suitable only for the most basic of management requirements.

The image below is a cutout from one of the several screens that collaborate in the configuration and management of rates and packages. Notice the full range of component values that can be applied to build each rate. This is not the place to go into full detail regarding the exact meaning of everything on this screen; that is done during management training. Remember also that if you have no requirement for such in-depth financial management, then this part of our software will simply be tucked out of sight for your installation and you can skip over this section.

rates setup

 

Discerning managers will immediately see from just this one screen that there is immense capacity within our software for the generation and extraction of very powerful management information. It should be evident that our system can do both per person (pp) and per rooms (pr) rates, sharing and single rates, non-linear increments for extra persons in per room rates, rejection of pensioners on certain rates(a form of yield management), premiums and discounting (only on bed portion and this is obviously password user-level controlled), minimum nights to qualify for discounted packages, minimum price for per rooms rates etc. And there are several other configurations (not shown here) for further granularity.

Your Rates are an integral part of your hospitality business. Therefore, rates and tariffs are not only at the foundation and heart of our software design, but almost everywhere else too. Just think of some of the places where you need accurate rate information:  while doing an availability query, doing a quotation, doing bookings, and especially when booking groups or using contracted rates, what about seasons? or even more so when bookings cross over one or more seasonal boundaries! All this processing occurs well before a guest has ever set foot through your door. Without the component value parts built into your rates, how can your food and beverage department anticipate the stock levels they should have on hand ahead of time for the expected guest volumes and the packages they are on? They can easily do it with our software.

And after check-in, when accommodation is posted (optionally automatically), you need reports that will reveal the wealth of data contained in the billing transactions regarding amongst other things -the rate breakdowns. It is not enough to only know how much of your billing was for accommodation. You need more than that, you also need to know how much was discounted because that translates to a cost of sale and you simply have to monitor that. You need to know which packages are selling well and which ones are not. That way you can adjust your marketing efforts and trim your prices. You must know for the guests in-house last night, how much of the accommodation billing was for food, how much for transport, how much for housekeeping etc. That is the only way you can manage the various cost centers within your establishment. Our system does it all for you, automatically. No more grinding away at spreadsheets!

Example reports: Z-Cashup Summary,

Read about Cash-up.

There are many other areas in our software where careful design allows for highly accurate powerful management of your hospitality business.

 
PDF Print E-mail