webNorth Design & Development | Guest-house Booking System demonstration and information

The B&B Booking System will save you money -

• 20% - There are many corporate systems available that enable B&B/Hotel owners to accept bookings online. These are all fine, except that they tend to take such a large percentage of your revenue - typically in the order of 20%.
• 1% - Our system provides secure online payments via PayPal for about 1% of the booking total*.

The B&B Booking System allows you:

• to put your own independent website to work
• to keep the maximum percentage of what it earns
• to control how your booking system works
• to use your own data - e.g. marketing, accounts

All it requires is:

• A free PayPal business account
• Your website
• PHP Scripting and MySQL database. (NB. These are both readily available but we can advise about appropriate hosting if required).

A one-off payment of only £599 includes:

• Plug-in software components
• Booking Administration Centre
• Customisation of 4 booking pages
• Installation, setup support and instruction.
• Considerable happiness.

(Optional front-end installation of editable page content (CMS), special offer features, links and comments sections into website are also available.)

To find out more and use the demo, just click on the tabs above.

---

* between 0.5% and 3.4% (depending on turnover and the amount of deposit). E.g. For a booking worth £100, with a 30% deposit, the charge to PayPal will be £1.22 (20p + 3.4% of £30) - compared to about £20.00 with another system. So you collect £28.78 via PayPal and £70.00 directly from your customer.

Feel free to try this out - if doesn't send any transactions to PayPal.

This demo is configured to sit inside a single booking page but it can also be used in individual web pages for each of your rooms.

The user just selects a start date, sets the length of stay (number of nights) and clicks the Availability button. If rooms are available, their details and prices are shown. Clicking on any of the available rooms shows a photograph and description. Clicking on the photograph brings up a larger version.

Alternatively, and at any time, they can enter different dates and re-check availability.

In non-demo mode, when the users have entered their details, they are transferred to PayPal, where they can make payments with all the main credit cards or via their own PayPal account.

• Secure payment through Paypal - all major credit cards accepted or payment by PayPal account transfer. Very low transaction cost (and refunds are free).
• High/low season pricing (for adults and children) - showing a breakdown of costs if the booked period overlaps both high and low seasons.
• Extra sales items - unlimited extra items (e.g. packed lunches, evening meals, tickets for local events/attractions) available to guests who can specify the date required (within their stay). You can create your own mini shopping cart and really extend your service.
• Check-in/registration forms - created automatically and pre-filled with all available data. Shows all check-in/out dates and times, list of booked rooms and any extra items the guests may have ordered.
• Check-out invoice/receipt form - created automatically and pre-filled with all available data. Shows full details of the guests' stay, any extra items they may have ordered online or during their stay, plus any surcharges/adjustments charged. There is also a receipt form attached.
• Minimum booking period - separate minimum booking durations can be set for high and low seasons. If set, and your potential customer opts to stay for less than the minimum, a warning is shown (mentioning the Minimum Booking Surcharge, if applicable) explaining that only rooms already booked immediately before and after their stay will be made available. This way you are not left with 'orphan' days when your rooms cannot be booked
• Minimum booking surcharge - applied to bookings below minimum duration (optional).
• Multiple room configurations - a room can be listed in more than one configuration. For example, a double room could also be listed as a twin-bed room.
• Flexible deposit options - select from non-deposit, percentage of total, per room, per person, cost of one night's stay. Optionally, you can allow customer to pay the full amount upfront, should they wish.
• Per person or Per room pricing with adjustable surcharges (also low-season sensitive) made for the number of empty beds in a room
• Individually priced rooms - with room descriptions, image, title, etc.
• Adjustments/surcharges - you can make adjustments to a booking at any time, if a guest wanted to cancel an item, for example. You can also add surcharges for breakages etc. Additional sale/service items can also be attached to a booking and are added automatically to the check-out invoice.
• Unavailable/closure periods - in case you need a break yourself.
• Busy Weekend Periods - minimum booking duration can be set for busy weekends.
• Minimum room occupancy - e.g. can specify that a double room cannot be booked for single occupancy (alternative to using the empty bed surcharge feature).
• Multiple room booking - any number of the available rooms can be added to the 'cart' and booked simultaneously.
• Successful payment page with automatic email confirmations to administrator (B&B owner) and customer.
• Failed payment page with automatic email of failed booking to administrator.
• Booking Administration Centre - monitoring and manual bookings (see tab for full details of features). Set prices, room details and change options to your heart's content.
• Bookings Archive - allows you to download and use your data for other purposes. For example, you might wish to contact your customers with news or special offers. Data is exported in CSV format which is compatible with most spreadsheets and databases (e.g. MS Excel or Access).
• Quickbook utility to make 'manual' bookings via mobile phone. This allows you to take telephone bookings even when you are out and about.
• Special offer system - this optional feature allows you to offer rooms at special prices for particular events, times of the year or when you expect to be less busy. Guests and visitors can also subscribe to an RSS feed to see your latest offers.
• Links - (optional) easy add and maintain links to other websites, as useful/related information or to help promote your site (by exchanging links, for example) and improve its search ranking.
• Comments - (optional) add and maintain a list of customer reviews/comments about your site. A further option is to include a customer form to post a comment/review (via your approval).
• Page editing - this optional content management system allows you to easily edit and maintain the content of your web pages, keeping them up to date and adding new interest. You can also add any number of additional pages, upload photos and easily incorporate them into your pages.

The Booking Administration Centre is where you administer and configure your booking system. It is divided into simple to use tabbed screens.

	Bookings The Bookings Tab is the main day-to-day business area. The data table lists all the current and future bookings, with all the most important information displayed, together with easy to read indicators for booking status and the source of the booking. Data can be sorted instantly on any column and there are filters to view data for a specified period, room or booking status. Clicking on a booking displays the full details in the lower panel and allows you to delete it or edit the details, e.g. change the status of a booking to confirmed. New bookings can easily be entered, so that you can continue to take bookings via more traditional methods such as the telephone. By switching to the month view, you can see at a glance, what the bookings are for each room and just when each room is available (useful for telephone bookings). Clicking on a booking shows the details in the detail panel and allows it to be edited or deleted. Dragging a booking on to another room (row) duplicates the booking - allowing you to quickly book multiple rooms without having to re-enter all the details again (name, address, etc...). View the next or previous month by clicking on the arrows in on the calendar.

	Rooms This is where you set up details of your available rooms. As well as specifiying prices, title, description, an image and how many each room accommodates (sleeps), you can also set a minimum occupancy and empty-bed surcharges, etc. Prices for adults, children and empty-bed surcharges can be set for both high and low season. (Low season periods are defined in the setting tab). Rooms can also have multiple configurations, so that a room can be presented as a double or a twin-bed room, for example.

	Settings The setting tab controls basic details such as your login and password to the Bookings Administration Centre and, importantly, your PayPal account login (normally an email address). You can also define repeating date periods when your establishment is unavailable (when you are on holiday or just closed), when is low-season (low season prices are charged) or when there are busy weekend periods (minimum booking is set to 2 nights).

	Archive and other tabs The archive tab is where out-of-date/expired bookings can be viewed, archived and deleted. Any bookings in the main data table can be archived into an archive file at any time. The data table will then be clear. Once created an archive file can be downloaded/viewed and imported into any standard spreadsheet program that accepts CSV files (e.g. MS Excel). It can also be deleted. The Links and Comments tabs allow you to incorporate optional dynamic links and comments sections into your website. You can create, edit and delete links that can add interest and help promote your site. You can create, edit (moderate/approve) and delete comments/reviews of your service.