Bookings

Bookings #


Bookings hold relationships between Contacts and Trips.


How are Bookings Created? #

  1. Bookings are created via Travelers through the booking form. OR

  2. Bookings are created by users manually in Groupdesk.

Create a Booking (in Groupdesk) #

  • Click [+] (top right corner)

  • Select Bookings

Example of the `Create Bookings` pop up overview
  • Status: Status of the booking (active, overdue, pending, waitlist etc.)

  • Select a trip: which trip the booking will be on**

  • Select a contact: contact with the passengers information that the booking will be associated to

  • Student number

  • Referred by: contact who referred the booking passenger

  • Insurance Policy Number: Number for policy purchased by the traveller or on behalf of the traveller

  • Ticket Number: Ticket Number (or confirmation number) assigned by the travel provider

  • Comp, Med, Deluxe and Premium sent: refers to insurance

    • These are selected when Insurance has been purchased for the passenger (if applicable)

** Once the Trip has been added to the create window, all of the inventories available on the Trip will appear. It will default selecting any mandatory inventories, so you can just click Create.

Comp, Med, Deluxe and Premium Sent

These fields are used if travellers are purchasing an insurance policy through your company.

If they are, these values would be selected once the policy has been purchased for the booking. As this gets updated for existing bookings, you can eliminate those bookings from your new search which means that their names will not be submitted to the insurance company more than once.

To update these fields:

  • Open booking record

  • Click Edit

  • Select appropriate policy type

  • Click Save

Book on Behalf of Someone Else #

Some travelers do not wish to book for themselves, or are incapable of booking on their own (ie: A dependant, child, or spouse). We have modified our booking flow to allow a contact to book on behalf of someone else, or on behalf of multiple people.

A few key terms that pertain to Booking For Someone else:

  • Primary Contact: The Person who made the booking (aka a parent)

  • Domain Contact: The contact created by a Primary Contact (aka a dependent)

  • Booking Record: The record that links a contact with the trip they have booked

  • Contact Record: Record usually containing the information like name, email, and phone number. A Contact Record can either be a Primary Contact or a Domain Contact.

  1. When Booking For Yourself

    1. Travelers will fill out the booking form and not choose the I am booking for someone else option

  2. When Booking For Someone Else

    1. The person booking will provide their contact info, choose I am booking for someone else and not need to provide contact information for the booking (unless mandatory during the booking process)

    2. You can book for as many other travelers as necessary

When logging in to MyProfile, travellers must use the Primary Contact (The person who made the booking’s) email and password. Resetting login details will only be available from Primary Contacts (The person who made the booking), and will only be sent to the Primary Contact Email. For more information on Password resets for Contact Records, please click here.

Duplicate emails are filtered when sending emails: if multiple domain contacts (aka Dependents) with the same primary contact (Aka Parent) are selected and emailed in the same request the primary will only get 1 email.

Example Booking form when `Booking for Someone Else` is not enabled
Example of the Booking form when Booking on Behalf of someone else

Once a traveler has made their booking, a button will appear under their My Trips Module (located on the left of their profile) that will allow them to Book for Someone Else. The Book for someone else button also appears on the welcome page after they have completed the booking process, under the Booking Results Module.

Book for someone else button under My Trips Module
Book for someone else button under the Booking Results Module of the Welcome page

Booking Statuses #

Traveling Statuses:

  • NEW JOINER – New Booking created with no transactions

  • ACTIVE – All payments are up-to-date

  • OVERDUE – 1 payment is listed as missed

  • COMPLETED – All payments up-to-date, and the Trip status equals Completed

Non-Traveling Statuses:

  • PENDING – 2 or more payments are listed as missed

  • DEFAULT – 3 or more payments are listed as missed

  • CANCELLED – Set manually by users

  • WAITLIST – All payments up-to-date, and Trip status equals Waitlist

  • UNCONFIRMED – Deposit payment is listed as missed

  • NO SHOW – Set manually by users

    • Typically used is cases where a booking was Active but did not actually travel on the trip and did not contact the company to cancel their spot.

Only Bookings with a traveling status can be assigned a room number.

Bookings with an Organizer association to the trip will not fall below Overdue even if they have 3 or more Missed payments. It will be your responsibility to review these bookings and move them to the appropriate status if they are no longer traveling.

How to Update a Booking Record’s Booking Status #

Groupdesk has automatic status updates for Booking Records. This means you will likely only have to manually update a Booking Record when cancelling, uncancelling, fixing an error or updating an Organizer Booking Status that has fallen below overdue.

  1. Open the Booking Record

  2. In the Overview Panel, Click Edit

    1. In the Status dropdown, choose the status you want to update to

    2. Click Update

Updating a Booking Status may send an automated email to the traveler to let them know the change in their status.

Add Discounts / Fees #

When adding Discounts / Fees to bookings, you will need to be on the booking record.

  1. Scroll to the Pricing module

  2. Click Edit

  3. Add the following fields:

    1. Category – Discount or Fee

    2. Description – Description of category

    3. Type – Amount or Percentage

    4. Amount – Amount of Discount or Fee

    5. Expiration Date – choose a date for Groupdesk to automatically remove the Discount or Fee from the Booking

If you would like to add multiple discounts / fees to one booking, just add another Line Item + and fill in the appropriate information.

Edit a Payment Schedule for an Individual Booking #

Each Booking has their own payment schedule (generated from the Trip). This can be edited on the booking record to customize the schedule for the passenger.

  1. Open the Booking Record

  2. Scroll down to the Payments module

  3. You can now do any of the following to edit the bookings payment schedule:

    1. Add Payment

      1. Click Add Payment

      2. Fill out the amount, and scheduled date

      3. Click Create

    2. Edit an upcoming payment

      1. Find the payment in the list

      2. Click edit on the right side of that payment row

      3. Edit the Amount or Date

    3. Remove an upcoming payment

      1. Find the payment in the list

      2. Click remove on the right side of that payment row

    4. Edit the Balance Date

      1. Scroll to the Balance payment

      2. Click edit on the right side of that payment row

      3. Edit the Date

Adding a payment to a booking record.

When removing payments from the schedule, make sure that the deposit payment is scheduled first, and is the only transaction scheduled on that date.

If you have payments listed before the deposit date, update the dates of those payments so they are after the deposit date.

The Payments module on a booking record includes an UPDATE SCHEDULE button. This button is available for all users and can be used to recalculate booking schedules if there are any errors.

Payment Statuses #

  • Upcoming – Scheduled for the future

  • Paid – Satisfied by transaction

  • Missed – Scheduled in the past, without a transaction to satisfy the amount due.

If you edit or delete an upcoming payment, Groupdesk will automatically adjust the balance payment.

By changing an existing Periodic payment, it will change the payment from periodic to custom.

The difference between a Periodic payment and a Custom payment is the relationship to the trip. When payments are generated on the trip they create relationships to the payments that correspond to the booking. Custom payments do not have that relationship.

Adding a new payment does not exempt the traveller from the next scheduled payment, unless you also delete or change the scheduled payment date of that next payment.

Deleting a payment from an Individual Payment Schedule is helpful when you want to keep the traveller’s Booking Status in good standing. Missed payments = changes to the booking status.

Errors Caused by Incorrect Payment Schedules #

When the total amount of the payments on a payment schedule is more than the total trip cost, it causes display issues on the booking record’s profile and payment schedule. The total of the scheduled payments must be lower than the total trip cost. Typically, this error only occurs when creating custom payments/schedules or when a discount has been applied to the booking record. When a periodic schedule is used, only payments less than the total trip cost will be added to the booking, regardless of when they sign up. Please see the example below for information on how to fix and prevent this error.

Example Booking Record with Incorrect Payment Schedule

In the example photo above, the total trip cost is $575 but the total of their scheduled payments is $750. This is causing their balance payment to show as a negative amount and the status is showing as Paid.

There are two ways to fix this error:

  1. Remove some of the payments on the schedule until the total cost of the payments are less than the total trip cost

Removed the last $200 from the payment schedule

2. Adjust the payment amounts so that the total of the scheduled payments are less than the total trip cost

Edited all payments to be $100, so total amount of scheduled payments is less than trip cost

If a Balance payment’s status on a Booking record is Paid and the passenger has not paid in full, there is most likely a issue with their payment schedule.

Refunding a Transaction #

How do I give a full refund? #

Refunds are issued on the booking record by selecting the single payment you want to refund.

Once the single transaction is selected, a Refund button will appear in the header of the Payments module.

Click Refund, and fill in the applicable information

  • Refund Reason: Choose one of the options

  • Transaction Date: will usually be listed as “Today”

  • Status: should be Pending and will updated if the refund is processed successfully or not (unless refunding cash or cheque payments)

    • If refunding cash or cheque payments, set status to Cleared once the cheque has been issued and confirmed

    • By setting the status of the refund to Cleared Groupdesk will not communicate with the payment processor to process the transaction.

  • Type: Refund

    • This will default to Refund or Extra Refund depending on the transaction selected.

  • Form of Payment: This will default to whatever form the transaction was originally. This should match the original form.

  • Amount: This will default to the full (negative) amount, see below to issue a partial amount.

You have to issue a refund for every transaction, you cannot issue one lump sum

How do I give a partial refund? #

Follow the same steps as above for Full Refunds, but when entering the amount, update the amount to be less than the full (negative) amount.

How do I assign a refund to another user? #

In the case requesting the refund there is an Assigned To field. Here is where you assign the person who needs to look at the case next, or who is responsible for issuing the refund (based your business processes).

  1. Open the booking record with the refund case

  2. Scroll to the Transaction module

Impersonate a User #

An action to login as a traveler (login on their behalf)

  1. Open your booking record

  2. In the Overview panel click on Impersonate Login

  3. View and/or edit the My Profile as needed

  4. To stop impersonating, click logout in the top right box above the left navigation

ALWAYS LOG OUT AFTER IMPERSONATING. Not logging out confuses the Traveler Interface, and you may inadvertently create errors or make incorrect edits for the booking. Refreshing Groupdesk pages while impersonating a user may also cause errors.

If you’re unable to impersonate a user, you may have to ask your admin for access.

Booking Finances #

When viewing a booking, you can also view the state of the financial records on that booking.

How to View Booking Finances Module #

  1. Open the Booking Record

  2. Scroll to the Finances Module (this exists under the Overview Module)

Example of a card on file, with Auto Charge Enabled, and a Deleted card on file, without Auto Charge

Expired and Deleted Cards will appear greyed out (see photo above).

Reading the Finances Module #

  • Number: The card number

  • Type: Card Type

  • Expiration: The date the card expires

  • Active:

    • Yes = This card is active on the Booking Record Appearance > The finance card will appear normal

    • No = This card has been removed from the Booking Record (Deleted by the traveler or a user) Appearance > The finance card will greyed out as it has been deleted on My Profile

  • Auto Charge:

    • Yes = This card will attempt to auto charge on the next payment date

    • No = The next payment will need to manually be charged by the traveler

Booking Records can have multiple cards on file. Each card will appear within it’s own box.

Editing and Deleting Payment Methods on MyProfile #

Travellers are able to edit and delete any payment methods they have associated to their bookings on their MyProfile. Any card on file can be deleted at any time. Only the Auto-Charge status can be updated on an existing card. Travellers can add as many payment methods to the file as they want, however only one can be set to process automatically.

This information can be accessed on their Profile under the Trip Payments tab of their desired trip.

Method of Payment under the Trip Payments tab
Editing the Auto charge function on a Method of Payment