Using Letters in BookingCenter Desktop

There are two ways to create 'rich text' Letters from within Desktop, so that your Registration, Confirmation, or Guest Marketing letters/emails can be sent with colors, graphics, ect and merge with data in BookingCenter Desktop:

  1. The built-in word processor shipped with Version 6.21 and later releases. This simle to use feature allows anyone to create Letters (and Groups of Letters) and customize them for delivery via email, fax, or printer - easily. A simple Tutorial can be downloaded from here.

  2. Use an external word processor such as Microsoft's Word or Apple's Pages. This method is more complex, it's commonly called 'Mail Merge', and we describe the four things you need to do to set-up Mail Merge, below.

Mail Merge Instructions using an external word processor (not recommened)

  1. Place your letters in the C:\BOOKINGCENTER\templates Folder (or where BookingCenter was installed on your computer)
  2. Set up Path name in Personnel
  3. Set-up Letters
  4. Create Data Source Path

Place letters in BookingCenter templates folder

Please make sure all your customized Merge letters are saved to the following path: C:\BOOKINGCENTER\templates\ (or, in the templates folder wherever you have BookingCenter installed). We provide a sample collection of letters here for your use and an explanation how to customize your own Letters.

Set up Path name in Personnel

You need to make sure that the bookmerg.txt file (or any of the other data source text files) are exported to the same folder where the Mail Merge Letters are located. This is done as follows:

  • Go to the Parameters section of BookingCenter- Click on Personnel
  • A Personnel window will open and click Next until you find the Personnel ID 'M'
  • Click the Set Merge Folder button and make sure it is the following path: C:\BOOKINGCENTER\templates\ (or, wherever you have BookingCenter installed)
  • Repeat this process for each of your Personnel IDs (i.e. for Susan, Sherri, Jose, etc)

Set-up Letters

Within BookingCenter, you need to inform BookingCenter what Letters are currently in the system and which ones you wish to load. This is done as follows:

  • Go to the Parameters section of BookingCenter Click on the Booking System drop-down menu (top left hand corner) and then select Letters
  • A Letters window will open and click New to set-up a new Letter -Place in a Letter ID (i.e. GR) and a Description (i.e. GUEST REGISTRATION), include a Guest ID (i.e. M), check the External Document box and click Ok
  • Click the Choose Document Folder button and make sure you set the following path: C:\BOOKINGCENTER\templates\GUEST REGISTRATION.doc (we provide a sample collection of letters here for your use)
  • Repeat this process for each of your other letters

Create Data Source Path

You need to make sure that the merge document (usually MS Word or WordPerfect) has the correct path to the 'data source', such as bookmerge.txt.

There are four types of data sources BookingCenter generates:

  1. From a Booking Detail, BookingCenter generates a datasource called: bookmerg.txt. An example can be viewed here.
  2. From a Group Booking Detail, BookingCenter generates a datasource called: groupmerge.txt. An example can be viewed here.
  3. From a Sales Detail, BookingCenter generates a datasource called: salemerge.txt. An example can be viewed here.
  4. From a Guest Detail or the Guest Marketing area, BookingCenter generates a datasource called: guestmerge.txt. An example can be viewed here.

The data source file should be in the C:\BOOKINGCENTER\templates folder.- To make sure you are pointing to the correct data source (for example, from a Booking screen it is called 'bookmerg.txt', you can bring up the Mail Merge Word file. Make sure that the Mail Merge Toolbar is present and click on the Mail Merge Helper icon. This will bring up a Mail Merge Helper window and under Get Data Source -> Open Data Source.

Customizing Letters with BookingCenter Desktop

The BookingCenter Desktop PMS allows you to customize letters above and beyond the plain text letters within the software. Customers opting for greater letter customization can use Mail Merge. To technically set-up Mail Merge within BookingCenter, please see above. To customize letters for your needs, read on...

There are currently five different types of Mail Merge files you can use within BookingCenter. These include:
  1. Booking Letters
  2. Group Letters
  3. Guest Letters
  4. Guest Marketing Letters
  5. Sale Invoices/Letters
  6. <Envelopes and Mailing Labels

We offer Microsoft Word examples (.doc files) of each type for Hotels/Inns/B & Bs and for vacation rental companies below - feel free to use these as a foundation for customizing your own. Simply click the files and choose 'Save As' into your BookingCenter/templates/ folder.

Booking Letters

Booking Letters are often used for printing and/or sending Confirmation Letters, Cancellation Letters, and Registration Cards. Please find the examples below for a Bed & Breakfast:

Please find the examples below for a Hotel: Please find the examples below for a Resort: Please find an example below for a Vacation Rental:

An example of a Confirmation Letter with Payment details

Group Letters

In certain instances, you will have Group Bookings that would warrant the sending of a Group Contract or a Confirmation Letter. Please find examples below for a Hotel:

Guest Letters

If a guest was making an inquiry at  the property and you wanted to send them a follow-up, a guest letter would be beneficial.Please find an example below for a B&B:

Guest Marketing Letters

There are numerous times when one wishes to send a customized letter from the Guest Marketing area. For eample, onem ight want to send an email for all guests from the City of San Francisco (as an example). Within BookingCenter, you would do the following:

  • From the main 'Home' screen, click on 'Marketing'
  • Click on 'Guest Search'
  • Click on 'New' and an 'Edit Search' window will open
  • Under Search, type 'SF Guests'
  • Under 'Where', choose 'City'
  • Being 'Where', choose 'is equal to'
  • Under 'Value', type in 'San Francisco'
  • Click 'Add Line' and 'Ok'
  • From the 'Select Guest Search' window, choose the 'SF Guests' option and click 'Select'

From this result is all customers from San Francisco. If one wanted to send the letter to the entire search result, you could choose PRINT, destination FILE and BookingCenter will place the guestmerge.txt data source (containing all the folks from San Francisco in this example) to be used as in the Guest Letter above.

Sales Invoices/Letters

If you wish to print out a summary of all sale/inventory items sold to a guest, a custom sales invoice/letter looks very nice. Please find an example below for a Hotel:

Envelopes and Label templates

Overall, utilizing Mail Merge letters with BookingCenter provides greater flexibility in customizing various letters (according to font, font size, and formatting) to give each property unique correspondence with guests in a fast and efficient time frame.

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