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First Steps - make a test booking

You're ready now to play about with making your first test booking, so let's go to the booking form now (icon 7 on the toolbar above).

Here you'll two slightly different pages depending on your property configuration. If it's an MRP you'll see the booking form with the available rooms listed down on the right (don't worry if you have lots of rooms and don't want to list them all, there's a feature called "Available rooms/tariff limit" you can use to modify that output).

MRP booking form:



SRP booking form:



The two forms work in broadly similar ways except that the SRP form doesn't show available rooms. Apart from that, there's not a lot of difference. 

The form has several different areas. It is designed so that when making a booking the guest doesn't need to change pages to work out how much his booking is going to be, it's all worked out on the same page for him. 

Arguably the most important part of the page is the Booking Particulars area. This is where the guest enters the parameters of the booking they want to make, and the booking engine uses to work out if 1. it has any rooms available (even for SRPs) and 2. how much it's going to cost. Particulars generally are composed of the arrival and departure dates, guest numbers (if configured, they are optional depending on if you charge per person per night) and possibly a smoking option. With this information the booking engine can work out if you have any rooms free.

In the case of an MRP the user is offered a list of rooms on the right, and they can choose which ones they want to book. If they change their booking particulars then the selected rooms list is reset. Note that the rooms list is actually a combination of rooms and tariffs, which means that you can offer several different tariffs for the same rooms, so for example you can offer both "Bed and Breakfast" and "Bed and Breakfast and Evening meal" options which can be priced differently.

In the case of SRPs they only have one room, so if the engine finds that the one room can be booked within the scope of the booking particulars (eg. that the property is free on those dates) then the room/tariff combination is selected transparently.


The MRP's address details input and the optional extras area is greyed out until a room is selected. This is done to help guide the guest through the different steps that they need to perform to make a successful booking. Once a room has been selected then the address details and optional extras will be restored to their normal look so that the guest can enter their details. When the booking form has enough information to proceed then the guest can move to the review phase where they can confirm the details of the booking and (depending on the property's configuration) proceed to pay their deposit.

Feel free now to go ahead and make a test booking. Note that if you've configured a gateway (eg paypal) you will not be given the option to use it, only non-property manager/receptionist type guests are given the gateway.

Well, that's the key points covered. This document includes other information on using the system and we encourage you to read as much as you can. Just don't forget, when you've set your property up to your liking, to press the Publish toolbar button to ensure that the rest of the world can see your property and start making bookings.


Now we will address some other points that will be of interest to you.