Update: New Lodgify Reservation System!

We are happy to announce that we have released the first part of our new Lodgify reservation system!

What are the main changes?

• Complete new design & drastically increased speed
• Improved Bookings & Quotes functionality and introducing Policy & Quote Workflow
• Improved record-keeping of payment and refund transactions

Read our updated Knowledge Base articles about the new Reservation System for detailed instructions.

Complete new design & drastically increased speed

We have completely redesigned our new reservation system, optimizing it for speed, clarity and style so that you can manage your bookings much more easily and quickly!

Our redesigned Reservation System

The inbox that lists all your bookings is now located on the same page as the detail of a booking. This allows you to quickly jump from booking to booking without reloading a new page or loading any popups.

Let’s take a look at the inbox:

Let’s have a closer look at the detail of a booking:

And here are the updated messages:

All email notifications already have all booking, quote and payment details included by default. An attachment icon indicates that the booking/quote or payment receipt have been attached to it.

Improved Bookings & Quotes functionality and introducing Policy & Quote Workflow

You can now add two types of bookings:

• Booking
• Booking with Quote

1) Booking (without quote)

A booking without quote is the simplest and quickest way to block a period in your calendar with a booking status and guest detail. However, a booking has no price associated to it, this means you would need to calculate the price and manage the payments outside of Lodgify.

Example of a Booking without Quote

2) Booking with Quote

A Quote allows you to add a Price, Rental Agreement and Policy to a booking giving the guest a complete and transparent overview about all the core terms of your booking.

Price

A Quote allows you to define the total price of a booking incl. a detailed breakdown of the price. Our system automatically calculates the exact price based on your rates settings, however, you have complete freedom to adjust each Quote that you create “freehand”, e.g. because you want to offer a special discount to a loyal guest.

Whenever you edit a Quote, a new quote ID is generated. This way, you never lose records of quotes that were generated in the past.

Rental Agreement

A Quote stores the information of whether a guest has explicitly agreed to your rental agreement. It also saves a “frozen” copy of your rental agreement at the time the guest accepted your terms. Like this, you keep an archived copy of each rental agreement that was accepted by your guest, even if you change the rental agreement in the meantime.

Policy & Quote Workflow

Whenever you create a Quote, you have the choice to activate or deactivate Lodgify’s Policy & Quote Workflow. For all bookings the guest is making on your website, the Policy & Quote Workflow is turned on by default.

a) Policy & Quote Workflow is turned on (recommended)

If it is turned on, we assign a status, reservation deposit and cancellation policy to your Quote based on your configuration. This allows us to automate the entire booking workflow for you. This is the most time-efficient way to manage the booking process incl. payment collection and cancellation handling. Also it provides highest transparency to you and your guest about the booking process. We recommend using this option. In order to see how a Policy & Quote workflow operates in action, see our knowledge base article “Example of a Policy & Quote Workflow Automation”.

Example of a Booking with Quote and Policy & Quote Workflow turned on

• Quote Status: This provides you with detailed information about where the quote workflow is at right now (see “What is a Quote Status?”).

• Reservation Deposit: The amount of the reservation deposit is automatically calculated based on your property configuration. What is new is that we also assign a due date when the reservation deposit will need to be paid. As it is currently the case, you can collect the residual balance manually via the “Send payment request” feature or outside of Lodgify (e.g. cash on arrival). COMING SOON: In our next release, we will also introduce the option to schedule future payments, where you can instruct Lodgify to automatically charge payments for you that are scheduled in the future.

• Cancellation Policy: We also assign a cancellation policy to your quote. For the time being we always apply the following cancellation policy: “All pre-payments are non-refundable” when the guest cancels, and “All pre-payments are fully refundable” when you cancel as the owner. COMING SOON: In our next release, we will also allow you to custom-build cancellation rules.

The workflow functions with all our available payment methods and bookability settings. As part of the update, we also added new customizable email notifications. You can customize them as usual in the e-mail notification settings in your Lodgify account.

The only disadvantage of turning on the Policy & Quote Workflow, is that your booking is “stuck” with your policy and the workflow, i.e. your booking has to obey the rules of the terms that you originally set and that your guest and you originally agreed to. The only way to change an “Agreed” quote is by making a change request (see “How to make a change request”).

b) Policy & Quote Workflow is turned off

If the Policy & Quote Workflow is turned off, you would need to manually take care of calculating and requesting reservation deposits or refunds, payment due dates and sending all email communication. While this setting involves more manual work and provides less transparency to the guest, it allows for more flexibility.

Example of a Booking with Quote where the Policy & Quote Workflow was turned off

Improved record-keeping of transactions

We also added a new Transaction card for each Booking with Quote that allows you to keep record of each payment or refund and to have an overview on what amount is still due. You can send a payment request to your guest and manually add payments received outside of Lodgify. Also you can mark previous transactions as refunded.