Extra Costs Description
Extra costs are
added to base rate and can be used for various purposes, as for example
for the expenses calculation and management of rooms cleaning, for
adding beds or for special offers, making the rates system of
hoteldruid very flexible.
They are divided in two categories: single costs, that are
applied only once for the whole length of the reservation, and daily
(or weekly if you use weekly periods) costs, that can be applied for a
choosen number of days inside the reservation. Each of these two
categories is divided respectively in two more categories, the fixed
costs one, that is with prefixed price, and the percentage costs one,
with price calculated as a percentage of the rate. Besides the
belonging to these categories a cost is characterized by:
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To add a cost to a reservation you can select it manually when
inserting or modifying the reservation, or you can make it
automatically insert itself when a rate to which it is associated is
selected. The cost can be associated to the rate also taking into
account the duration of the reservation, considering if it is bigger or
smaller than a predefined value, or considering the number of days
remaining to the beginning of the reservation or the number of
reservations inserted contemporaneously.
The daily cost can be associated to specific days of the
reservation, this way you can see to which days it is applied from the
table with all the reservations or from the reservation modification
page.
As said before combining the characteristics of a cost you can
use it to manage various demands of an hotel or residence
administration, some examples are shown below.
Rooms Cleaning
Through the rooms inventory it is possible to manage rooms cleaning. It will
suffice to insert in the inventory of each room an item called "cleaning" and to
create an ad hoc extra cost called "cleaning", even with a price of zero, that when
inserted will delete the "cleaning" item from the room inventory.
To the cleaning staff it will suffice to check the rooms where the "cleaning"
item is missing to know which ones have to be cleaned, and they will be able to
restore it once they have finished. Through the hoteldruid privileges system you
can create users that are allowed to see and modify only the quantity of the
"cleaning" item in rooms inventory.
Furthermore, before registering the check-in of a reservation, you will be able
to select for the reservation the "cleaning" extra cost, so that it will be moved in
a room that has already been cleaned, and that room will loose its "cleaning"
item.
If the cleaning is not done everyday it will be useful to use a
daily cost associated to specific days of the reservation, this way
when from the table with all the reservations we ask a report of the
reservations present in one day, the cost will appear in its own column
only if it is associated to that day. You can also multiply the cost by
the number of people so you know how many sheets you have to change. If
for example we have a 2 days reservation in which the "cleaning" cost
is associated only to the first day, selecting the first day (from 1 to
2 of April 2005) from the table with all reservations will show us:
N° | Client_surname | Strarting_date | Ending_date | Cleaning | |
1 | Smith | 01-04-2005 | 03-04-2005 | 1d x3 |
Meanwhile selecting the second day (from 2 to 3 of April 2005)
will show us that the cost is not present anymore:
N° | Client_surname | Strarting_date | Ending_date | Cleaning | |
1 | Smith | 01-04-2005 | 03-04-2005 |
To have a table like this one with only surname, starting and
ending day, and cleaning you can create a user with disabled login
called "cleaning" and set in his preferences only the cleaning cost
column for the table with all the reservations. This way in this table
the administrator user will be able to choose the cleaning profile and
see only desired columns.
If in the price of total rate you don't calculate cleaning costs
you can still insert a cleaning cost with zero as its price.
Special Offers
For example if you want to insert a discount for reservations
taking the entire August month you can insert a cost with negative
value (also as percentage) and associate it, when possible, to desired
rates applying it only to reservations of 30 or more days. After you
set only the August month in the permitted periods of the cost. You can
even give the discount only to the first reservations setting a limit
for the number of contemporaneous costs.
Discounts can be offered also to last minute or early reservations,
thanks to the extra costs ability to be associated depending on the number
of days left to the beginning of the reservation when it is inserted.
Finally dicounts for groups can also be added, taking advantage of the
possibility to associate a cost depending on the number of reservations
being inserted contemporaneously.
Taxes Calculation
You can use a single cost that is calculated as percentage of
total price of the reservation, that is the price that comprehends the
base rate plus the other extra costs and eventual discounts. If in the
cost options you select to keep the percentage value, its value will
change each time that the total price changes when modifying the
reservation.
Minimum stay
To enforce a minumum stay for a rate it will suffice to associate
an extra cost to this rate, even with a value of zero, that is applied
always with a minimum number of days. This way you will get an error
message every time you try to insert a reservation with this rate and a
number of days below the minimum. It is also possible to enforce a minimum
stay only in selected periods by using the option "always in peritted
periods" when the cost is associated to the rate.