april 2013Dashboard part 2: add reservations from the dashboardWe activated a powerful new function today that enables you to quickly check availability data and create reservations from the dashboard. An alternative way to add reservationsOn the dashboard, just navigate to the arrival date and click on the availability number below the date. A form is shown. Adjust the dates, set the rate, select the amount of accommodations and, if required, change the price. With a simple click on and the reservation is created and inserted in the timetable. Check out the dashboard on-line help for more information. In addition, the new feature will work on most touch screen devices. Obviously you can continue to use the timetable to add, modify or delete reservations. No changes there! april 2013Dashboard: more control and easy access to your dataToday we activated a new functionality in Oscar called Dashboard that offers you a different view of your availibility and helps you to quickly find your reservations and drill down to underlying data. The feature was specifically developed for our large hotel customers, but we believe it will be very useful for smaller businesses as well. More functionality will be added to the Dashboard in the near future. Dashboard viewsSimply click on a date in the calendar and a Reservation summary shows the amount of arrivals, departures and stays of the selected date. Click on an amount and a list of reservations will be shown. Drill down by clicking on any of the shown reservations. Search functionIntroduce any data in the search field and hit the enter key or to search in all current and future reservations. You can search for names, email addresses, phone numbers, reservation numbers and accommodation names. Client buttonAs Oscar now offers advanced search options on the Dashboard we removed the Client menu button. The function is now available in the Reports section. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. march 2013Watch the videos and get answers to your questionsToday we published two «Getting started» guides in the help section of Oscar. There is a guide that helps you to configure: «Setting up Oscar» and one that helps you with the operation: «Working with Oscar». This last one is stacked with videos that show most of the features of Oscar. In the future we will add even more videos in all supported languages. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. january 2013 (2)Reservations report and other updatesJust a short information bulletin on a couple of new features. Reservation reportFuture reservations — You can now quickly check all your future reservations with this new report. Use the sort function by clicking on the column headers or drill down to see all detail by clicking on an entry. Export to CSV — You can export all future reservations information and import it into a spreadsheet or database program for further processing. Note that the CSV file contains more detail than the report. Improved Invoice reportSort on columns — You can check your invoices even easier by using the column sort function. Just click on a column name. Paid or not? — The report now also helps you to better control your payment collection by signalling in red the invoices that have not been paid yet or have conflicting statuses. Advance payment in export — Advance Payment information has been added to the export file. If you import the CSV file into Excel or LibreOffice you will find the information in columns P,Q and R with labels: 'Advance amount', 'Advance date' and 'Advance method'. Reports order changedWith the introducion of the new reservation report, we have changed the order of the Operations reports just a bit. 'Daily payments' has moved down and 'Departures and arrivals' has moved up. Just so you know.
Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. january 2013Happy New YearFrom all the Redforts Software team we would like to wish you a happy and succesful 2013. Thanks for your support and your confidence in our products and services. Since our last newsletter we have been quite busy, adding some interesting new features to Oscar. Below you will find a short overview: Booking engine improvementsMore flexible — You can now offer specific accommodations or rates for certain periods, seasons or even on weekdays or weekends only. Just try it out, pick a rate and set prices only for one season or leave prices empty for weekends or weekdays. Easier for your clients — A number of small improvements make it even easier for your clients to fill in the forms of the booking engine. We now signal more clearly any required fields and show more prominently where to fill in the amount of persons. Clearer price overview — To help you check your booking engine prices, we have created a price overview page where you can easily see all the activated rates and the daily prices you are offering on your booking engine. Check out the price overview by yourself. Really easy — Setting up rates and prices for the booking engine is really easy. No need to introduce a lot of prices, just use the season rules to define the rates you want to use and if a minimum stay applies for the season. If for certain dates you want to deviate from the rule and set different prices or minimum stay rules, use the exception rules and activate a different rate or set a different minimum stay rule. Easter holiday example — If for the upcoming Easter holiday you want to quickly change your prices and set a minimum stay of 3 days, create an "Easter holiday" rate, define the prices and set an exception rule for the easter holiday dates, defining a 3 day minimum stay and activating the "Easter holiday" rate only. That's it! Other improvementsRecording user name — On creation or deletion of a reservation the user name and time and date of the action is recorded in the reservation, allowing for better control. Note that you can add upto 5 users and assign them permissions Time and date in local time — All time and date fields are now in local time. You can set your local time in main settings. Deleted reservations — Reservations that are deleted are not directly removed from your database, you can still retrieve them by searching for reservation number or client details. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. december 2012Sell on-line with the Oscar booking widgetWe continue to add functionality to Oscar. Today we finished another interesting feature: the booking Widget. Read all about it. Oscar booking widgetYou can now install our booking widget on your website and offer your customers the possibility to start the booking process from your own website. Style the widget to fit your website's design and start selling. To get an idea of what can be done, have a look at some examples, but remember they are just examples. The bottomline is that you can style it anyway you like. Just ask your website developer to have a quick look at the information on the integration page and probably it will be up and running in no time. If you have questions, just let us know. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. november 2012Daily payments and more improvementsAfter having dedicated a lot of our resources to developing the new booking engine we now have come back to satisfy the multiple functionality requests we received from our clients. Today we launch the functions stated below and in the coming months we will continue to add a lot more. Daily payments reportThe new Daily payments report enables you to easily manage and control your daily business revenue. The report show the sum of the payments per payment method for the selected day and with a simple click shows you all detail. You can now quickly check your cash flow. If any abnormal situation is detected the amounts will be shown in red, this will help you to easily check and correct any error. Day view report improvementsThe Day view report has been improved. Now it shows clearly the amount of persons per accommodation. Furthermore the report now allows for sorting on the Name and Persons columns. Introduce the amount of guests per accommodationAlthough this is not a new functionality in this version, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can now define the quantity of guests per accommodation on the Guests page. Introducing the information is very useful as it is used by a number of reports such as the Day view report. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. october 2012New booking engineToday we have launched our new booking engine. From now on you can sell your accommodations on-line, in a far more advanced way, allowing you to sit back and relax while Oscar takes care of business. Just 4 stepsIn just four easy steps, your customer can create a reservation, get full price information, guarantee the booking and receive an automatic confirmation email. All your customer has to do is:
That simple. Try it out for yourself by using the demo on our web site or set up your own booking engine. You will be up and running in no time. Easy to configureThere are only a few things that need to be configured to start using the new booking engine. Just log in to Oscar and ...
Go to the integration page and click on to see what your booking engine looks like and use the URL to link the booking engine from your web site and start selling. Sit back and relaxOnce you have configured your booking engine set it to Auto accept reservation requests and just sit back and relax and see that your reservations are automatically inserted in the timetable, that they show all the reservation detail, that the costs are automatically booked, that confirmation emails are sent for your and that the availability calendar of the booking engine is updates by itself. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. october 2012Extended Validation (EV) CertificateProbably you noticed that the address bar of Oscar is slightly different than before. The address bar is now green or shows our company name in green letters. That green colour indicates that the website uses an Extended Validation Certificate of a renowned Certification Authority (CA). Few websites have an EV certificate. You probably have seen it only on your bank's website or other websites that allow online financial transactions. The fact is that only a few Certification Authorities are permitted to issue EV certificates and that they can only be obtained after rigorous and thorough audit by the CA. For this reason Redforts Software has been thoroughly investigated by GeoTrust. Obviously we were very proud when last Friday we received notification that we had met all requirements and had obtained the EV certificate. With this EV Certificate, GeoTrust underwrites the legitimacy of our company and ensures that you and your customers can do transactions on the websites of Redforts Software with the utmost confidence. Obtaining the GeoTrust EV certificate is a milestone for Redforts Software and is especially important for the launch of our new booking engine which will process credit card details and confirm reservations of your hotel or rental business. With the EV Certificate the new booking engine website has received an officially recognised seal that will ensure your customers the maximum security and confidence when making reservations. We have already installed the EV certificate on oscar.redforts.com and will soon install it on the booking website. We continue to build for your success. Thanks for your trust. june 2012Credit cards, reservation numbers and day view reportToday we have launched another important part of the preparation work for the introduction of our improved booking engine that will take in bookings, collect credit card details and calculate prices. These are the details of this version: Secure credit card storageIn compliance with PCI-DDS regulations of the major credit card companies, we now offer you secure storage of your customers credit card details. For you as a user this means a couple of things:
Note that in compliance with PCI-DDS regulations, credit card details may not be stored forever. Therefore credit card details of your customers will be removed one month after their departure. Please note that the system will remove the old guarantee details in the same way. Visit Credit Card Security to set your passphrase and activate the credit card security feature. Although it is a complex security mechanism, it is very simple to activate. Day view reportA new report has been added that shows the status of all accommodations with reservation details for one day. This feature is specifically useful if you manage a large amount of accommodations and need a day view for your reservations and for scheduling routine activities for your staff. Check out the Daily view report. Reservation numberWe have introduced a new feature with respect to reservation numbers which allows you to use an automatically generated system reservation number referred to as «Reservation number». The old reservation number has been renamed to «External reference»; it can be used for recording reservation numbers of your sales channels.
Searching reservation numbersYou can now quickly look up a reservation by using the reservation number search feature on the Clients page. Just introduce a number or reference in the field and click on search. Oscar will search in both the «Reservation number» as well as the «External reference» fields. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. All our newsYou can find all our previous bulletins on the Redforts website in our news section and read back all news bulletins we published before. You will be surprised how much information there is. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. april 2012Weekend prices, rates per accommodation and more!Most of the functionality in this new version is related to the definition of accommodation prices, an important part of the preparation work for the next big step: the introduction of our improved booking engine that will take in bookings, collect credit card details and calculate prices. For now these are the details of this version: Weekend accommodation pricesDo you charge different accommodation prices during the week than on weekend days? Now you can make sure that Oscar automatically selects the correct prices when introducing a reservation. With this new functionality you can indicate what accommodations use different workday and weekend prices and set the prices for every rate and season you have defined. Simply go to the Accommodations or, if you use groups, to the Accommodations: groups setup page and check the «Weekends» check box. Weekend prices for public holidaysWould you like Oscar to automatically use weekend prices for a specific holiday? You can now do so! In public holiday just use the check box «Weekends?» to define what price you want Oscar to apply for every holiday you set up. Assign rates to your accommodationsDo not all rates apply to all your accommodations? Maybe you have defined quite some rates for special offers, packages and specific travel agencies, and maybe not all rates apply to all accommodations. No worries, Oscar now allows you to define what rates are active for each accommodation. Only the rates that you selected on the Accommodations: prices page, will be available on the charges page. So you will no longer be bothered with rates that do not apply. Notes on client cardWould you like to record general information about your client? We have added a notes field to every client card. This is a free text field that you can use to record any information about your client. Now you will be better prepared for returning customers and will be able to serve them better. New names for front and back officeFor reasons of clarity we have decided to change the naming of the Oscar front office and back office. Although technically speaking the terms were correct, we believed it was not specific enough and therefore not always well understood. From now on we will use the terms booking engine and management system. No rates for itemsItems do no longer use rates any more. This specific functionality was hardly used by anyone and created some confusion. If you did have items that used rates you will not have lost the item, but see that the name of the item has changed to indicate the rate name it had. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. january 2012Redforts Software wishes you a happy 2012!We start our first bulletin of this year by wishing you and your dear ones the best for 2012. We have big plans for Oscar in 2012 with new and improved functionality that will make your life easier every time. Today we deliver the first chunk of that plan by activating new functions in Oscar. Some of you may recognise them, as there are quite some functions that were requested by our clients. Multiple usersYou can now create multiple users for your Oscar account and decide what every user can see and do. The user account that you are using at present is the main user account. Only the main user can manage users and define their permissions. This opens the door the a number of possibilities: You can create a user that can do anything but is not able to see the financial reports; or create a user that can only see reservations but not create them. You are completely in control. Before you can add new users you must set a security question for the main user. The security question is part of the password recovery procedure. We recommend all users to set a security question for improved protection. This new functionality is available through the setup menu and is called Users. Read more about it on the help page. Invoices for non-staying clientsUntil now you could only create invoices for clients that stayed at your accommodation. From today, you can also create invoices for clients without an accommodation, but just enjoy your bar or restaurant, for example. To use this new functionality simply go to the Invoice list and add the invoice. More information on this feature can be found in the help page. It is now also possible to delete a reservation and create an invoice for the advance payment. As such, we vastly improved the way that reservations are deleted: the option to delete one is now always available on the timetable and on the reservation page and it presents a confirmation page with a nice overview of all related items. Date indicator on timetableOn crowded timetables it was not always easy to tell the date of the mouse position. From now on the date for the mouse position is now clearly highlighted. Other improvementsThere are so many improvements, we just list the remaining ones. You can read all about them in the online help.
Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. november 2011Accommodation groups and moreA couple of new functions were added to Oscar today. Most noticeable is the introduction of accommodation groups. A very useful feature when you have a lot of accommodations with the same characteristics. Read all about this and other new functions in this bulletin. Accommodation groupsGroup your accommodations and define prices, applicable taxes, use of seasons and rates at the level of accommodation group. Using this functionality will save you time and will reduce the chances of error when introducing prices. Possible examples of accommodation groups are: Single room, Double room, Suite, etc. To use this feature simply go to the configuration page and create your accommodation groups. After you have done so, set your accommodation group prices and assign your accommodations to the groups. Accommodation information on the timetableOn the timetable you can now quickly see the most important characteristics of your accommodations. Simply place your mouse pointer on the accommodation name and a small window (tool tip) shows: the name, description, accommodation group, total capacity and adult capacity of the accommodation. Public holiday presentationThe presentation of the list of public holidays has slightly changed. By default the list will only show future public holidays. If you would like to see all of them, just click on the new button «Show all holidays». Visit the Set up public holidays page and look for yourself. Blocking periods and occupation statisticsYou can easily block the timetable in periods of closure or maintenance without affecting the occupation statistics. Just draw a reservation block on the timetable and select the status «Not available» for the reservation. Herewith the period of the reservation is marked as non existing, thus assuring correct statistical reporting. Although this is not a new function of Oscar we thought we mention it as we have received various questions on the subject. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. |
october 2011Improvements to the timetable & moreToday we activated a new version of Oscar with a number of timetable related features. First and foremost you will notice that the timetable loads quicker and scrolling is smoother. Secondly you will see a new and improved navigation bar and of course we incorporated a number of new functions, specifically requested by some of you. Last but not least, for our Spanish based customers we incorporated an automated upload function for the "Policía Nacional" and "Mossos d'Esquadra". Read all about it ... Faster timetableYou can now move through your timetable much quicker and smoother than before. Just use your mouse wheel or the new navigation bar and notice the speed and smoothness of the movement. While you navigate through the timetable you will see that Oscar loads new information every now and then, showing a "loading..." message. Do not worry about that, just continue. New navigation barA new vertical navigation bar has been introduced with buttons to move 1 day, 1 week or 4 weeks either forwards or backwards. If you want to go quickly to a specific date, use the calendar button and pick a date. Would you like to return to today, just click on the today's date in the top left hand corner of the timetable. Current dateThe current date is now shown at the top left corner of the timetable. Not only does it remind you of the date of today, it can also be used to quickly navigate back to the current date. Just click on it and the timetable shows the current date on the third line of the timetable. Year indicationAs a reminder and to avoid mistakes, we have introduced two small changes to the timetable presentation. One is that we now show in the top bar of the screen the year of the timetable shown. In addition the dates will be printed in red when you have have moved more than half a year forwards or backwards from today's date. Just jump with the calendar button half a year forward and see for yourself. Automatic upload of "Partes de viajero"If your business is in Spain, you can now automatically upload your "Partes de viajero" to the websites of the "Mossos d'Esquadra" or the "Policía Nacional". The upload to the "Guardia Civil" was already available. We would specifically like to thank our customers and owners of Mas Renart and Palacio San Bartolomé for helping us achieving this goal. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. september 2011New functionality in OscarOver the last couple of months we have received quite some requests for new functionality in Oscar. We have started to work through the list of requests and are happy to tell you that today we have activated a number of them. Find below a brief explanation of these new features. Confirmation receiptIf your client would like to receive a confirmation receipt and price quotation of a reservation, you can now create one. Simply go to the reservation page and hit the button «Confirmation receipt». The confirmation receipt details the reserved accommodation and all the charges you have created for the reservation. The receipt is created in PDF so you can send it to your customer by email or simply print it out. Export invoicesAll your quarterly invoice information can now be exported to file and loaded into a spreadsheet program. The file will show all your invoice data, taxes, totals etcetera. That is to say, all the information to manage your bookkeeping. You can find this functionality in the Reports page under Invoices. Just select the quarter you would like to see and click on the «Export invoices» button. Your bookkeeper will love it. Front office adjustmentsA slight change has been made to the booking engine of Oscar. This change will make it easier for people to fill in the form correctly. Most noticeable is the fact that the persons field is moved down and is by default set to 2. Partes de viajerosFor our clients in Spain we have added a functionality which allows them to print out the guest registration cards in the official format called «Partes de viajero». In the Guests page a print button is added for this purpose. If your business does not reside in Spain you will not see this specific functionality. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. august 2011Oscar: The client databaseToday we activated an important new functionality of Oscar that reveals itself behind a new button called «Clients». This button gives you access to all client data and a lot of other functionality: you can look up clients, view contact details, view and browse the client history, create marketing mailing lists, export all your client data to a file and much more. Find below some more detail on the most important new features: Your client databaseOver time you probably entered quite some client data in the reservation, guest and invoice section. Oscar has kept all that data for you, which you can now easily access and use. It can be that some of your clients have more than one client card in the database as they stayed more than once. In the «Clients» section you can now easily join these (duplicate) client cards. Look up clients in the databaseIn the new «Clients» section you can quickly look up all your registered client data. Simply enter a search term, phone, email, name, surname or whatever combination and click on the «Search» button. A search result list is shown. Click on one of the entries and all client data is shown including its history of stays, reservations and invoices. The search mechanism is really very powerful. Try it out, you will be surprised. Enter client data automaticallyFrom now on you can register clients, that have stayed with you before, with a simple database search. When you register the client in the reservation or guests section or when you create an invoice, just enter a little information and look up the rest by using the «Search» button and let Oscar fill in the rest of the data. View the client cardTo view or edit client data, simply look up the client and press the «Card» button. All client data is shown, including its history of stays, reservations and invoices. Send email to multiple clientsTo send email to one or multiple clients, look them up in the «Clients» section, use the check box to select the ones you want and press the «Email BCC» button or create mailing lists for marketing purposes by clicking on «Email addresses». Export all your client dataIf you want to process your client data off-line on your computer. Go to the «Clients» section and click on the «Export all clients» button. A file for your computer is created. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help on this new feature. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. july 2011Oscar: Report section updatesToday we have activated an update of Oscar. This revision introduces two new statistical reports and a number of small improvements to existing ones. In addition we implemented a slight change to the lay-out of the report page. New statistical reportsTo help our customers in Cyprus to comply with the local legislation, two new reports have been created: «Guest overnight stays» and «Statistics guests per country». These reports show the statistical information on overnight stays and geographic distribution of the guests, based on their nationality or country of residence. As these reports reveal valuable information about your business, we have decided to make the reports available to all our customers. To enable the creation of reliable statistical information it is necessary to register dates of birth, nationality or country of residence. Improved occupancy reportA new button has been introduced in the occupancy report. This button allows you to choose to see occupancy as an absolute number or a percentage of the total capacity. Simply click on the button to show the result on the screen. Totals in financial reportsAll financial reports now show totals for the period. With this it is even more simple to control your financial administration. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for the trust you placed in us. june 2011Oscar: New invoicing functionalityToday we have activated a new version of Oscar, incorporating additional invoicing functionality and improved flexibility in creating invoices. The functionality has specifically been developed for Oscar users that work with travel agencies and tour operators. However the new report 'Unbilled charges' helps all Oscar users to easily control their billing processes. Below we will briefly explain the functionality. Split chargesIf you work with travel agents or tour operators, you probably need to separate the charges that are invoiced to the agent from the (additional) charges you invoice to the guests. Oscar now allows you to easily manage this and create upto three different subtotals for your charges. Simply click on the «Split charges» button on the charges page and a subtotal is added. More on this feature in the charges help. Create a single invoice for multiple reservationsThese same agents might ask you to send periodic invoices for all reservations sold through them. With Oscar you can now select any number of unbilled charges and include them on a single invoice. In this way you can create a single invoice for multiple charges or create separate invoices for a reservation. A new report called 'Unbilled charges' allows you to easily check all unbilled charges and quickly create invoices. More on this feature in the Unbilled charges help. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for the trust you placed in us. may 2011Oscar: The latest news on our serviceWe are proud to be able to announce that thanks to clients like yourself, Redforts' first quarter of 2011 has been very positive. Clearly the latest features of Oscar (like the booking engine) have been very well received and as a result we have seen a considerable increase of our client base. Attached we present you the latest news on our Oscar service which hopefully is useful to you. New telephone number: +34 902 800 027We have established a new telephone service through +34 902 800 027, offering extended service desk availitbility for all your queries. We attend your telephone calls Monday to Friday from 10.00 to 19.00, Madrid time (CET). Outside these office hours simply leave us a message and we will get back to you. New web portalWe launched the Oscar service just one year ago, but it has evolved so rapidly that we needed to change our portal on www.redforts.com completely to relect the current situation of our company and service All the information that has been distributed in the past, like for instance the information bulletins, is now available on our new portal for your reference. Have a look! New reportsWe have added two new reports to make it even more easy for you to manage your business. With the report «Billed totals per sales channel» you can check your sales figures and the possible commisions you have to pay to intermediaries like touroperators or other agencies you work with. The report «List of arrivals and departures» shows you the movement within your business, making cleaning task planning very easy. Pay for Oscar through bank transferSince a couple of weeks you can opt to pay for the Oscar service through a bank transfer. Simply go to the pay page and select the option «pay by bank transfer». New web browsers: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4 and Chrome 11Lately a number of new browser versions have become available. Not only does Redforts make sure that Oscar supports all of them, in addition we advise you to always download the latest versions such to be able to use Oscar to its full potential. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. february 2011Oscar grows: another big stepToday we activated a more powerful Oscar. We have reenforced Oscar to be able to satisfy the demand of bigger clients. From now on Oscar will be able to handle upto 30 rooms or other rental units. Redforts does not raise its prices in 2011We have published the prices of 2011 with new plans upto 30 and with the option to include the new booking engine. The new prices reveal a more logical increase for the different capacities (Plans). Prices in 2011 are slightly lower for all plans, except for 1 and 20 who remain the same. Oscar basic or complete serviceYou can now choose for the basic service (PMS only) or the complete service (with the integrated booking engine). You can enable or disable the booking engine at any time. You do not need to make any payment to make the change. When changing service, a new expiration date will be calculated based on the price difference between the two services for your plan. If you do not use the booking engine we advise you to disable the service, in order not to pay extra for it. If you are already a customer of Oscar or if you are in the trial period and you contract the service prior to 1 March 2011 you will not need to pay anything for the booking engine service for your contracted period. Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find the answer to your question contact us. We hope you enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. january 2011New functionalityToday we have activated, on request of some of you, some small new funcionality that is explained below. Notes in the reservation blocks of the timetableWith this funtionality you can show short messages in the reservation blocks on the «Timetable». On the «Reservation» page a new free text field has been added for messages upto 120 characters. «Contact» and «Name & address» now in one panelWe have slightly reorganised the panels on the «Reservation» page. Now all data of the requester is shown in one panel called «Contact Data», removing the old panel called «Contact». Language selectorNow you can change your language in Oscar instantly. Go to the pull down menu on the top right hand corner of the screen. By default Oscar will select your preferred language as set in your browser. To change language, simply click on the word «english» and select your language. At this moment Oscar is available in three languages: English, Spanish and Dutch. Soon we will add the French language. Automatic link to your emailA new button with the symbol «@» has been introduced next to any email field. With this button a link between Oscar and your email program is created, saving time and reducing the possibility of errors. Simply click on the button and your email program will create a message for the email address entered in the email field. If it does not work, check the configuration of your browser: For Firefox (recommended by Redforts) go to the Tools menu → Options → Programs and look for mailto in the search field and check whether it is correctly set for the email program you use. For Internet Explorer check in Tools → Internet options → Program tab that the field « Email », is correctly set for the email program. Automatic link for web pagesWe have added a button with the «#» next to all web address fields. This button allows you to check the entered web address directly. Click on the button and a new tab will open in your browser for the entered web address. We hope you enjoy this new functionality and we invite you to continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for your trust. january 2011Oscar: now completely integrated with an on-line booking engineAs we announced some time ago, today we have launched a new version of Oscar. This version contains new functionality to help you capture new business through your own website in a super simple manner. I am referring to the introduction of the Oscar "Front Office": an on-line booking engine and availability calendar. With this your customers can request reservations through your own website and you receive the requests directly in Oscar. How do I start to use the booking engine?Oscar's booking engine is ready for use. You only need to make it visible on your web page. It is really very simple. Just introduce a small snippet of code into your web page. You can generate the code on the configuration pages. Obviously you can adapt the presentation and the colours of the booking engine and integrate it to match your web page design. What availability is shown by the booking engine?The booking engine shows the availability as you see it on the timetable of Oscar. That is to say, when you introduce a new reservation on the timetable, the availability calendar on the booking engine will update automatically. You do not need to take any action. It is always in synch. In addition you can choose what level of detail is shown on the calendar. What languages are available at the booking engine?Oscar supports five mayor European languages: English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch. Not only are the reservation forms available in these five languages, the booking engine offers you all you need to serve your international customers with: conditions, privacy statements, confirmation email messages, absolutely everything available to you in five languages ready for use. Obviously you can change the forms and adapt the texts to meet your specific requirements. Can I define minimal stays?Yes, the booking engine of Oscar allows you to implement reservation rules for the requested stays. You can define rules like: minimal stay, weekend stays, whole weeks etc. All you need to assure that you customer can only choose those arrival and departure dates that fit your requirements. How do I receive the requests?When a customer fills out the booking engine request form on your web page, a email confirmation message is sent to the customer with a copy to yourself. The request will show up in Oscar on the 'Requests' page. With a simple click you can accept the requests and introduce them automatically in the timetable as a new reservation with all its detail. Do I have to pay more for the booking engine?Oscar offers an integrated solution for professional management of your business:
Choose for the basic service (PMS only) or for the complete service (PMS and booking engine). Need help?Oscar has an extensive on-line help. If you cannot find an answer to your question do not hesitate to contact us. We hope you will continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for the trust you placed in us. november 2010Oscar better and betterRedforts is working intensively to improve Oscar day by day and to make it even better and more versatile. Many of you have helped us in achieving this, keep sending us your suggestions and ideas. Once again, thanks a lot! Today we launch a new revision. Below you can find the details of these latest changes. Configuring Oscar is even simplerThe presentation of the configuration pages has changed. We have achieved a clearer organisation that allows easier and quicker navegation between the different pages. In addition it enables the introduction of new functionality, like the planned «Front Office» (booking engine and availibility calendar) without affecting the usuability. The previous page would simply have been too small for all our plans. Visit the new configuration pages. Proforma invoicesYou can now generate proforma invoices. A number of customers have asked for this funcionality. These proforma invoices are requested by business customers for their internal authorisation or budgetary processes. Oscar generates these invoices as the other invoices in PDF, allowing them to be printed or sent by email. This functionality is availible on the same «Invoice» pages. On-line helpOscar has an extensive on-line help. On the upper right hand side you can find the link to this help. Simply click on the word help to get help and explanation on the functionality shown on the page you are at. When you are in the help you will that the help linek has changed to «exit help» and that a new button is shown with the same text in the left hand upper corner. With any of these options you can return to the program. We hope you will continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for the trust you placed in us. september 2010Latest newsOccupancy reportsOscar introduced new reports to its reports section incorporating occupancy reports that give you a detailed view of of your establischments occupancy. You can choose to show daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly views of the report. The reports show the historic occupancy, or the total occupancy including the non billed reservations. Visit the reports pages and check out your reports. Save money and invite your colleaguesSurely you have some friends or colleagues that want to get to know Oscar as well. If that is the case, invite them and get your cost down. For every friend that becomes a customer, you will earn free usage days as a reward. Inviting friends and starting to save money is is really simple. Send an invitation from your account page and click on the button «Invite somebody» and introduce your friends' email address and write a small message. For more information on the benefits of inviting friends go to the Redforts web pages. We hope you will continue to send us your ideas and comments. Thanks for the trust you placed in us. |
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