CSS: Opening Windows^® with Inntegrity™, Part 3
Transactions

The CSS Inntegrity™ Property Management System is a true 32 bit Open Database Compliant Windows^® GUI Application.  As in previous Pipelines, CSS will detail Inntegrity™ features. In this issue - Transaction functionality: posting, routing correction/transfers.

A reservation is made and a credit card number is taken to secure the reservation.  At some Hotels, management requires the credit card number as a guarantee, but not processed.  At other Hotels, an advanced deposit is required and applied to the credit card.  It is then posted to the Advanced Deposit Ledger.  Incidentally, Inntegrity™ will authenticate the credit card before it accepts it.  At check-in, the first posting is the Advanced Deposit moving it from the Advanced Deposit Ledger to the Guest Ledger; it’s an automated process in Inntegrity™. 

Room Rate and Tax postings occur during the Night Audit.  If there is a rate change during the stay, either due to a seasonal change, weekday to weekend or a rate change calculated by the Inntegrity™ Yield Management, the changes occur on the appropriate date automatically. 

Postings can be made to Guest Accounts from sub-systems (Point of Sale, Call Accounting, etc.) real-time through an interface, or manually. Here is where the Inntegrity™ System excels – the user has full control over the posting function.  Full service hotels with sophisticated food and beverage breakdown requirements can detail a charge in as many bins/buckets as they choose.  For example, Inntegrity™ can accept a restaurant charge separated into: Food, Tax, Beer, Wine, Liquor, etc. with no limit to the number of bins.  On screen options allow the user to view a single restaurant charge or the detailed bin breakout.  This charge detail can be routed as necessary.  If a group is set up to allow Room, Tax and Meal charges to route to the Group Master, and not alcoholic beverages, it’s simple to set up.  This would be a partial routing; only part of the restaurant charge would route to the Group Master.   When viewing on screen, each line item is color coded to easily distinguish the routed items – yellow, from the partially routed items – orange.  Click Detail, and the restaurant charge breaks out into the individual bins to visualize routed and non-routed line items.

To avoid confusion at the front desk, Inntegrity™ will only print the charges the guest is responsible for on the folio.  If the guest wants to see the routing information, you can print that too.

The Transfer and Correction of Transactions also has some great features.  In either Transfer or Correction, a single or multiple items can be chosen to remove from the guest account.  Click on the ALL button and all items will be corrected or transferred off the guest account.  Choose an option from the Category Code pull down field, like Room Charges or Phone Charges, and all of this type of charge will be selected for Transfer or Correction.  Of course, in Transfer you have a search option to choose the proper account for  the charge transfer.  All changes to transactions remain visible on screen, and as mentioned above, won’t print on the folio unless the guest wants to see the revision detail.

Good things come to those who wait; better things are available to those who didn’t.