Myallocator: Reviewing External Bookings

Once a booking has been made through one of your third-party channels, it will be automatically added to Checkfront and your available inventory updated. To review your external bookings, go to Booking > Index in your Checkfront dashboard and click on the External Bookings button, as shown below.

Note, that only new bookings from myallocator will sync in Checkfront under External Bookings. All bookings made prior to the connection with Checkfront and myallocator will need to be manually entered in Checkfront.

You will now see a list of all the bookings that have come in through the myallocator add-on. From here, you can see the source of the booking, which in this case will be myallocator. You can also see which channel the booking came in from, the customer name and email address, amount of the booking, the item booked with start and end dates, plus the current status of the booking.

If the booking status is NEW, select the booking by clicking on any of the information in the table. A pop-up window will present the details of the booking.

Verify the booking details shown with the original channel booking and click Import Booking if you are happy to proceed.

Make any changes to the booking details in the next view and click Add to Booking when satisfied with the reservation.

The Next button will now become active and you can click on this to accept the booking. If the booking has already been accepted, you can select it from the list of external reservations to view the booking details.

Once the booking has been created, the booking will be in the Staff Booking Status. This status, by default, is Pending. You can change this in System Defaults (Manage > Setup > Configuration > Staff Status).  Learn more here: Setup: Configuration.

External Booking Updates All booking edits are sent from myallocator to Checkfront. However, this will only update the 'external booking'. If the booking has already been imported, then any changes to the external booking will not change the imported Checkfront booking. The best solution is to disable booking edits in all enabled channels in myallocator, such as Booking.com. If you proceed with this solution, this means that the guests will need to contact you directly for any changes. Another option is to not import external bookings (under Booking > Index > External Bookings) until after your guests show up at the reception and check-in. With this solution, the inventory is blocked in Checkfront even if you don't import the external bookings. However, Checkfront Notifications will not be sent to guests until the booking is imported...something to consider when making your decision.    If you want to allow edits, and need to import your external bookings, then the third option would be to manually edit the Checkfront bookings when any changes are made. This will be dependent on if you are notified (by either Booking.com or MyAllocator) that a change has been made to a booking. After receiving such a notification, you would then need to edit the booking in Checkfront to match the changes that were made.

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