Call Acounting Module

There are two ways to automatically add phone charges to a booking in BookingCenter (it can always be done manually without purchase of a Module):

  1. Manually - by creating CALLS as an Inventory Item and adding the total as a line item(s) - call by call - to the booking account. This is usually done by manually processing the room calls from a separate phone system, looking at the total, and adding this total to the Booking by choosing Account | Add Items and choosing the CALL item you set up. For help understanding the Inventory system, please see Chapter 2 of the BookingCenter Reference Manual, Setting up the Inventory System.
  2. Automatically - by using the BookingCenter Call Accounting interface, the calls will be added as line items to the Booking Account - a complete record of the call, its duration, and the destination - automatically between check in and check out. This requires that you have a PBX (or similar) phone system, purchase the BookingCenter Call Accounting Module, and have a Call Accounting program that can cost the calls for you. BookingCenter then simply takes the costed calls and places them on the Booking Account. You charge the Guest as you normally would at check out, but there is a complete record of all the calls made at any moment on their account.

If you don't have a lot of phone calls and don't look at phone charges as a revenue center, than an automatic system will only add marginal help and profits to your business. However, if you have more than 6-10 rooms and you like making money on calls, we believe that using the Call Accounting Module pays for itself in about a week - with better records of each call, accurate charges every time, and less wasted time by the staff.

BookingCenter does not natively support PBX SMDR (the data that comes out of a PBX telephone system). Instead, BookingCenter works with a 3rd party Call Accounting software to support the PBX data and 'cost' each call for active bookings.

We recommend Profit Watch from Metropolis for American and Canadian customers and CommSoft for the rest of the world. Both run on any Windows platform and are easy-to-use & learn and offer great support for ALL PBX systems in their respective countries.

How it works:

  1. Purchase a licence for Profit Watch from Metropolis or CallMaster from CommSoft for ~$1,800
  2. Purchase the BookingCenter Call Accounting Module $300.
  3. Have a phone vendor or technical resource install both of these softwares.
  4. We help you get BookingCenter configured to accept the data from Profit Watch/CommSoft.
  5. Set up each "room" in BookingCenter with an extension that matches what the PBX and Call Accounting software have been setup to produce.
  6. Between "check in" and "check out", BookingCenter polls the call accounting software and appends the call summary to all active bookings - where to, for how long, and at what cost.

The BookingCenter Call Accounting Module allows you to maintain your profit goals and append complete call details added to the Guest Account. That means that when the guest checks out, they will automatically have their calls added to their final invoice.

The Call Accounting Module is an OPTIONAL module to the base BookingCenter Pro system. It can be purchased and enabled at any time from our online Store.