For bookings over the phone or in the venue, you can put it straight in the ROLLER system so you can manage payments and track bookings. In this article you will learn how to:
- Create a new booking from the Venue Manager
- Add contact details to a new booking
- Add items to a new booking
- Understand the meaning of the different booking status labels
- Take payment for a booking
- Download ticket and send a confirmation email to the guest
Create a new booking
In the Venue Manager, hover over the Bookings menu and select Create booking.
Add contact details
1. Under the Details tab > Booking holder section, type in the following information:
- Email - this is a unique identifier for guest records. If the product sold issues a discount code on the purchase, the e-mail is especially needed to ensure the code can be generated for that guest
- Include in mailing list - marketing opt-in (only check this if the guest has confirmed this)
- Phone number - this is a unique identifier for guest records
- Guest name - this is a required field and both first and last name is mandatory
- Postcode - this is not a mandatory field
2. Click Add booking holder. The following fields will now appear:
- Booking name - this will default to the guest's first and last name on the booking holder section. You can override the default name and the new name is going to be the name that will be printed in tickets and the name that is searchable in POS. For example, if you are making a booking for a school group, you can change the booking name to the school's name so this is the name that the booking will be found under, instead of the contact person making the booking
- Booking notes - this will allow you to add notes for the booking. Please note that notes in this section are only visible in the Venue Manager
- POS notes - this will allow you to add notes for your POS users
You can edit the guest detail you have saved by clicking Edit contact details. You can also click the Change booking holder option to swap the booking holder details. Learn more about editing a booking here.
Add products/tickets
1. Under the Availabilities section on the right-hand side, adjust the filter of the availability selector to search for the product:
- When - this allows you to choose a specific date using Today, Tomorrow, or On, or to select a date range using the Between or Within the next (day/week/month) options. Click Apply to change the filter
- Product - this allows you to search and select a specific product, or select multiple products, the entire product type or product categories
- Guests / qty - this allows you to set the number of items required
- Days - this option is only available if you select a date range under the When filter. The Days filter allows you to specify which particular day(s) of that range you want to filter to
- More options - allows you to select an Arrival time with the options of Morning, Afternoon and Evening
- Include unavailable products - this shows availabilities that are possibly sold out or unavailable. Please note that selecting this option can lead to overbooking
2. Click Search. All selected products are displayed and segregated by the day(s) on the next page
3. The next page will give ticket types and pricing as well as descriptions, availability and time slots depending on the product configuration. You can use the arrows to increase or decrease the number of items for each ticket type
4. Click the Add items to booking at the bottom to add the product/tickets to the booking
5. To add other products or ticket types to the booking, click the back arrow and repeat steps for all booking items required. If you need to adjust the date filter from the product selection page, you can either:
- Hit the Back arrow button until you can see the filtering options
- Click the Exit [x] button
7. Click Save & reserve to confirm and finalize the booking. If you would like to confirm the booking without finalizing it, click the Save without reserving button instead
You can view all the items in the booking under the Order tab. You can also make adjustments to the booking items from this page. Learn more about adjusting booking items here.
Booking status labels
- this label is displayed when first creating a booking
- for all bookings that are confirmed, this does not relate to the payment status
- bookings that are cancelled will release the availability for sale
- bookings uploaded from a previous booking system
Taking payment for a booking
Payment options
Once the booking status is changed to confirmed, you can take payment by clicking on the Take payment button. Clicking this button will prompt a pop-up to appear which gives you the following options:
- Credit card - this allows you to charge your guest's credit card immediately via your online payment gateway. You will need your guest's card details to complete the transaction
- Cash - this allows you to mark the booking as paid and collected by the venue directly. Please note that choosing this option will not automatically connect you to the cash drawer of your POS device
- EFTPOS - this allows you to mark the booking as paid to the venue via EFTPOS terminal. Please note that choosing this option will not automatically connect you to the EFTPOS terminal connected to your POS device
- Bank transfer - this allows you to mark the booking as paid and collected by the venue directly via bank transfer
- Gift card - this will deduct from an active gift card in the system, multiple gift cards can be used but have to be added as separate transactions
- Complimentary - this allows you to mark the entire booking as free of charge. Note that is will not be an option once payment using other methods have been made
- Take payment later - this allows you to defer payment until the guest arrives. Payment will be done through the POS. Click here to learn more about taking payment for an existing booking in POS
- Groupon - selecting Groupon will prompt the user to enter the Groupon voucher ID. It is important to capture this information for reporting. Please note that this is not a direct integration with Groupon, so you will still need to use normal verification processes (eg through the Groupon app) to validate and check off the Groupons. It is not possible to partial payment with Groupon with another payment type - for example, the scenario to redeem one ticket on Groupon and another on cash is not supported. Each Groupon voucher should be redeemed as a separate transaction
Adjusting the amount to charge
- The amount to charge defaults to the full amount of the booking.
- If your product has a required deposit amount, there is an option to check the Pay deposit amount option which will automatically calculate the amount owed based on the deposit you have set in the product configuration
- If you do not want to take the full amount of payment but want to change the amount being collected, you can change the amount in the Payment amount field by selecting the text and typing in a new figure
- When deducting from a gift card, it will display the available balance, please note that you cannot deduct more than what is available on the gift card and it's not possible to redeem an expired gift card. Please ensure the figure is correct before finalizing the payment
Finalizing the payment
- You can leave notes using the Add comment functionality
- Click Take payment to finalize the transaction or Cancel to go back to the booking details screen without taking any payment
Once payment is made, you will see a new section on the right-hand side of the screen called Activity. Anytime a payment is taken, the Activity stream will track every action and the booking total will reflect the Booking Total & amount owing. Payment will remain Unpaid until it's fully paid or if a 100% Discount Code is used (in which case it is unpaid but confirmed). The booking's payment history can be viewed in full by going to the Payments tab - click here to learn more.
Send ticket and confirmation
You can download tickets to send to your guest via your personal e-mail, or send a confirmation email directly from the ROLLER system.
- To download tickets attached to the booking, click the down arrow on the top right corner. Click here to learn more
- To send a confirmation email to your guest from ROLLER, click the three-dot button on the top-right corner and select Send confirmation email. Click here to learn how you can customize the look and feel of the confirmation email sent to your guests