Room charging and children

This guide details two options for adding the additional charges for child stays as part of a bedroom booking. These can be defined as:

• Charges related to the kind of accommodation required
• Charges related to the age of the child

It is advised a single method is used for the entire property

Charges related to the kind of accommodation required

This options is best suited to scenarios where there are essentially two charges for children based on their need for either a cot or a sofa bed/extra bed.  

The initial configuration takes places via Configuration > Services > Bedrooms > Miscellaneous in the same way as the example below:

In this example:

• Child charging will relate to the Extra Bed Field within a room reservation.  Additionally the 'Person' box is checked so any input here will count towards the house count for reporting

• Cot charging will relate to the Cot Field within a room reservation.  Additionally the 'Person' box is checked so any input here will count towards the house count for reporting

Once the charging format has been set it is necessary to define the charges per rate plan via Sales > Rate Plans > Bedrooms.  Within the lower section of the rate plan set up, attach the charges as per the example below:

In this scenario the rate will be recalculated to add £25 every day in multiples of the number set within the Extra Bed field of a room booking

Charges related to the age of the child

This options is best suited to scenarios where the charge for a child is dependent on their age.

Initially this configuration must be activated via Configuration > Global > Advanced and ticking the C.button box:

Following this the child charges must be configured in a similar way to above via Configuration > Services > Bedrooms > Miscellaneous:

Complete the information as above ensuring:

• The field relation is set to 'Rate Defined'
• The 'Child' must be ticked
• The age range that this charge relates to is set e.g 5 - 12

Following this the charges must be attached to a rate as before:

When creating a room reservation after the initial save of the booking the three dots next to the Children field will become active.  

Once a booking has been created press the 3 dots to launch the screen below where details of the children staying can be added:

Multiple entries can be created via the Add button.  Once all the entries are complete press the Charge button to commit the changes

Once the booking is refreshed the room rate will be updated to reflect the additional child charges.  The rates are added via the Rate Change tab and can be viewed as below:

Please note it is not possible to amend the guest name as this protects against guest profiles being created for children.  Amendments can not be made directly here and if a child age is incorrect or needs updating then the record should be deleted from the above screen and re-entered via the 3 dots.

In addition to the above, the information is replicated to the Family tab which also calculates the approximate age of the child now based on the amount of time elapsed between the current date and date of entry.  Please not this is approximate as the exact date of birth is not stored

Further phases of development for this area include integrating the above process into the rooms booking engine.  Further details will be released when this feature is available.