In order manage mass cancellations due to weather or school shutdowns, we have a few tips to notify your clients as quickly and effectively as possible.
Email Notifications
Firstly, although you can't send out emails to multiple users through BookingsPlus, you can use the Client Users or All Clients report to quickly gather all necessary emails to Blind Copy in using your email software. To do this go to your Reports tab and click on the report 'Client Users' or 'All Clients' (depending on if you want to get all users or just the client contact email) within the dropdown. For either report you do not need to select a time frame as it will pick up all existing users/clients at your venue, so just click Generate Report. It should download in less than a 30 seconds.
Please ensure you do then only Blind Copy in all email addresses for Data Protection.
Message in client login
Secondly, you can put a message on your clients Dashboard that they will be able to see once they have logged in. To do this go to the Manage Tab - Edit Venue - Client Login, and scroll down to 'Message for Non-Billable Clients' and 'Message for Paying Clients'. Here you can type in a message, Save the page and display a message to client informing them of any closures.
This then displays at the bottom of the Dashboard for clients:
Message on your Website
Next, you can put a message on your Website's dashboard to inform both hirers and their clients/the general public of the venue closure. To do this go to your Manage Tab, Edit Website, Home Page and scroll down to Homepage Announcement:
Once you have saved this it was show on your websites homepage:
If you also have social media accounts you can also announce any sudden closures there.
Booking cancellations and venue closure
Finally, to cancel any existing bookings and stop further bookings being put in the calendar there are two steps to follow:
1. We would always advise performing cancellations, especially for a large number of bookings, from the Bookings Tab. From here you can filter by Space, Category, Status, Payment Status Time frame, and using the search bar, by client name. Once you have filtered, click Go, Show 100 Entries, and use the top tick box on the left hand side to select all bookings on the page.
Then click to 'Cancel Selected'. You will then see a pop-up giving you the option to also notify clients of their booking cancellations and give a reason why in the Text box. If any bookings were billed then you will also be given the option to raise Credit Notes and send another email notification.
The bookings will then cancel and all client booking users will receive an email notification.
2. In order to stop any further bookings being put into the calendar, you can create Venue Closures. To do this, go to the Manage Tab, Scroll down to Closures. Click to Add a new Closure, enter the Start and End date and click to Save.
You will then see this closure as an administrator in the calendar, and the system will not allow you to create a new booking on that date:
For any further advice please contact us at the helpdesk on helpdesk@bookingsplus.co.uk
