Moving a Reservations & Keeping Workers Paid & Employed [Mini Video]

For your convenience, we've included a transcript of this video below.

Hello everybody. My name is E Scot Fuller Beatty and I'm the Director of Sales & Education here at ThinkReservations and like you I'm also a property owner, as well like many of the staff members here at ThinkReservations.

I hope you've been enjoying these little mini videos that we've been doing for tips and tricks to help you through these tough times today. I hope to cover two different topics with you.

First, we're going to talk about how to move a reservation to a different date, something that's very common in ThinkReservations. An easy task to do but it doesn't happen all the time. So I just want to make sure we cover the right steps of how to do that properly.

First, I'm going to do it in the old UI (user interface) and then I'm going to move over and do it in the new UI. I'll also show you how to update to the new UI as well if you want to do that.

And then secondly, I'm going to talk about the Keeping Workers Paid and Employed Act that is currently going through Congress sponsored by Senators Susan Collins and Marco Rubio. I'll talk more about that at the end of the video.

So let's dive into how to actually move a reservation if that is what a guest would like to do right now. So again, I'm going to start in the old UI. Let's click on Jonathan Simpson’s reservation here. And when I click on it, it's going to bring me right into that reservation. If you are using the old UI you will see this new banner message up here., just letting you know that we are deprecating this on March 25th, and you have the ability to learn more about the you new UI and the ability to update it yourself if you want to go ahead and change that.

To make a change to the reservation dates, right next to the green check in button there's going to be this downward-facing arrow. We're going to go ahead and click on that and click Edit. You are able to change the dates. We can go ahead and move them to a date in May. So let's go ahead and have them checking in on the 12th and checking out on the 14th.

I also have the opportunity to move the room that they're in is well if we want. If this box is checked “do not move” that means that their reservation is pinned and before you can move this you will need to uncheck it. You can always go back into the reservation once the move is done and recheck it so that it is pinned.

Also, this is another opportunity for you to possibly talk to that guest about a potential upsell. Maybe they didn't realize about your Romance Package or other packages that you offer. This is an opportunity for you to maybe add some of those. So you can change the rate type if you have those set up as Packages as a Rate Type.

Once we click Save it's going to go ahead and update all that information on the bill. You can see that they're now checking in on the 12th, staying the 13th, and checking out on the 14th. It will have updated to any pricing that you have set forth at those dates. So you may need to make some adjustments there as well.

So that is how we move a reservation in the old UI.

To make the change to the new UI you can go to Settings right now if you go over to Business Settings, you'll see that box up here that says Enable New Reservations User Interface for All Users. This is something that's either turned on for all users of your business or it's turned off for all users of your business. It's not by user by user basis. If you want to have that turned on, check the box click Save and now the new UI is all turned on.

So now let's go ahead and move a reservation using the new UI as well. So I'm going to go into Susan's reservation right here just by clicking into it. And now in the upper right, we'll see the Edit button. I can go ahead and click Edit and I'll be able to change those dates to where she would like to move to.

Again, you have the opportunity to change the room. If this room was already pinned you will need to unpin it before you move it and you can also move them to a different rate type as well.

And once you click Update, it’s going to go ahead and make that change. The last thing I would do for this reservation, whether you're using the old UI or the new UI, is make sure to send them a Reservation Updated email. y\You may have called it something else in your account, but this will at least give them all the information about their new dates.

One thing I like to do personally is click into that email and we give you the ability to type whatever you want. This is a great way to put a sentence or two to really personalize it, maybe even thanked them for changing their reservation instead of canceling the reservation. All you'll have to do is hit Send.

So those two reservations are now all taken care of it's simple as that. It's very easy to move a reservation in ThinkReservations.

So now I would like to talk about the Keeping Workers Paid and Employed Act. I am going to read this here on the screen in case you can't see it all but the Keeping Workers Paid and Employed Act would prevent workers from losing their jobs, and small businesses from going under due to economic losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The plan would provide cash flow assistance through 100% federally guaranteed loans to employers who maintain their payroll.

During this emergency if employers maintain their payroll, the loans would be forgiven which would help workers to remain employed and affected small businesses and our economy to quickly snap back after the crisis. This proposal would be retroactive to March 1, 2020 to help bring workers who may have already been laid off back onto payrolls.

So I think that this is definitely a bill that I want to see passed through the Senate and you have an opportunity to reach out to your Senator to say that you want them to support this bill. I would definitely say, like everything, you should do your research read a little bit more about it.

If you want to reach out to your Senator, it's very easy to do that. If you go to senate.gov, hover over Senators and click Contact. You then will be brought to a page where you have the ability to search by your state senators.

You'll have contact information about how to call them or to go to their websites, which often have an email field that is all built-in for you to submit to say that you really like them to support this bill. I strongly believe this is one of the biggest Hail Marys that we have kind of going for us and really could help some of our businesses, you know, not have to lay off or reduce hours or salary for our employees, but also has provisions to help you pay your mortgage and other utility bills during this time.

And as long as you follow the protocols of the loan, it will be forgiven at the end. So this isn't just a loan that you're going to have to pay back. It is actual funds that you can use for your business to help you get through this crisis. So please reach out to your Senator to say you want them to support this bill if you agree that you want them to.

Thank you very much. I hope you guys have a lovely weekend and we look forward to putting together some more of these videos and posting them on our social media site. Have a great day, everyone. Bye.