Reservation Sources

Use sources to record where each reservation came from, so your reports can show where your business comes from and each channel can follow its own confirmation email and payment terms. A source is a label such as your front desk, a phone line, an online travel agency or a corporate account.

To manage them, open Property Settings in the sidebar and select Reservation sources under Sell.

• Name: a clear, consistent label such as Booking.com, Travel Agent or Walk-In, up to 100 characters.

• Category: one of three groups used in reports and in the reservation wizard:

  • Direct: reservations that come straight to you (website, phone, walk-in, email).
  • Corporate: company accounts and negotiated corporate business.
  • OTA: online travel agencies and similar third-party channels.

• Confirmation email: whether a new reservation from this source emails the guest a confirmation:

  • Send automatically: emails the guest as soon as the reservation is confirmed, if they have an email address. A reservation you create starts Pending, so its email goes out when you select Confirm Reservation.
  • Send by hand: staff send it from the reservation, once it is confirmed.
  • Never: no confirmation email, not even by hand. Use it for channels that send their own, such as Booking.com.

  Until you choose, an OTA source uses Never and every other source uses Send automatically. The property's own confirmation setting still comes first: with it off, nothing is sent whatever a source says.

• Payment terms: Rate plan or property terms (the default) or Own terms. With Own terms, reservations from this source follow the deposit and balance terms you set here, whatever their rate plan. Existing reservations keep the terms they were reserved with.

• Account: where the source's commission books in your chart of accounts. This field appears when you edit an existing source, and it changes at once.

A source also carries a commission percentage, a settlement model and a default payment method, which decide how money from that channel is recognized. The form does not show these. They are read when a reservation is confirmed and then frozen on it, so a later change to a source never changes revenue already recognized.

The Sources table lists every source for the property:

• Name: the source name. A lock icon marks a system source.
• Category: Direct, Corporate or OTA.
• Confirmation email: the source's confirmation choice. Changing it here saves at once.
• Active: a switch that turns the source on or off.
• Actions: Edit source (pencil) and Delete source (trash).

On a phone, the Category and Confirmation email columns are hidden; edit the source to see them.

1. Select Add source below the table.
2. Enter a Name.
3. Choose a Category: Direct, Corporate or OTA.
4. Optionally change the Confirmation email and Payment terms.
5. Select Create source.

The new source appears in the table and can be picked on new reservations straight away.

Select Edit source (the pencil) on any source to change its details, then select Save source. Renaming a source changes its label from then on; reservations already tagged with it keep the link.

The Active switch decides whether a source is offered when staff record where a reservation came from in the reservation wizard. Switch a source off when you stop using a channel but want to keep it for reporting. The switch does not change any existing reservation.

Veridien creates system sources in two places: the sources set up with your property (such as Phone, Email, Walk-In and Website), and one for each OTA channel the first time a reservation arrives from it. A lock icon marks these sources.

• A system source cannot be deleted: its delete button is disabled.
• You can still switch a system source on or off and edit it like any other source.

This protection keeps channel reservations attached to the source they arrived through.

Select Delete source (the trash) on a source you created, then confirm with Delete source. The source leaves the list you pick from, and the tax rules and agencies linked to it lose that link. This cannot be undone. If you may want the source in your reports later, switch it off instead.

Once your reservations are tagged, you can compare channels by volume and revenue and watch how your mix shifts over time. See Reports for the breakdowns by source, and the Dashboard for an at-a-glance view.

• Reports: analyze your mix by source.
• Creating reservations: where the source is chosen on a reservation.
• Channels setup: connect the channels that feed reservations into Veridien.