Release Notes - GoTour: 1.26.3

New Features

Mandatory Fields Now Outlined In Red!

Mandatory fields on GoTour screens are highlighted in red as a reminder that these fields must have data entered. Frequently, information has already been populated in these fields.

Data Entry Error Messages

If mandatory fields are not complete, GTO now returns you to the edited page for completion. The error is noted in red on the page and you may resume editing the page. Previously, GTO returned to a separate error page and all data from the previous entry screen was lost.

Receive Money From “Named Anonymous” Passengers: Receivables, Refunds and Charges

“Named” Anonymous Passengers can now receive money, and have refunds and charges issued against their receipts.

Previously, anonymous passengers were unable to receive money in GoTour Online. Only those passengers who were entered as customers on the customer list were allowed to receive money. This created problems for users who needed to receive money from a passenger who they did not want to have on their customer list (ex. visitors or tourists from out of town who are unlikely to book another trip).

The anonymous customer must be “Named” in order to receive money. You must overwrite “anonymous [#]” with the person’s name.

Navigate to the “anonymous” customer screen.
At the Customer field, delete “anonymous, [#]”
Enter the passenger’s name: LastName, FirstName
Click “Update”
“Post Receipt” button will appear above the “Print Customer Summary” button.

To Post a Receipt:
Click the “Post Receipts” button.
The asterisk after the name indicates that it is a “named anonymous” customer and is not on the customer list.
Complete the receipt fields: Amount, Type, Number and Note.
Click “Add”
You are now at the receipt screen where you can make edits to your information.

If there are other members of the party who are customers or “Named anonymous” passengers their names will appear at the bottom of the receipt screen. You can transfer funds from the “Named anonymous” passenger to other customers or named anonymous passengers in the party.

Refunds and Charges and “Named Anonymous” Passengers.

Named anonymous passengers can have “Cash on Account”. To manage the cash on account you must navigate to Finance, Receipts, Select a filter “Cash on Account”, or “Cash on Account by Customer”. Or, find the receipt by selecting the filters “Receipts for a date range” or “Receipts by Customer Name”.

Refunds and Charges can be created from the receipt.

Named anonymous passengers will appear on finance reports under their entered name with an asterisk to indicate they are named anonymous passengers.

New Fields: ReferenceId 1 and ReferenceId 2 In Company Setup, Included In Party and Customer Heading

Two new fields, Reference Id1 and ReferenceId2 have been entered to the company setup screen. These fields can be used to add information to the company heading on the customer documents. They were designed for the TICO number and the GST number for Canadian companies but they can be used for other purposes. They print out on the right and left sides of the company email address in the heading. Please call RBS if you need assistance using these fields.

“Invisible” Components

Components can now be made "Invisible" so they will not print out on the party or customer summaries. The components will continue to be available for the costing and payables systems.

To make a component "invisible":
Apply the component to the tour. Upon adding the component, notice the "Appearance" field under the component "Find" button on the component screen. Choose "Normal" (no change in appearance), "Bold" (bolds the name and address of component) or "Invisible" (component does not appear on customer or party summaries).

This allows you to add costs, such as miscellaneous tour fees, gratuities, overhead costs, etc. on the tour without having them print on the customer documents.

This feature already exists in the "Note" component.

Price Descriptions

"Price Descriptions" is a new tab under the setup tab. It is currently under construction.

Contracts

"Contracts" is a new tab under TourBuilding and Finance. It is currently under construction.

Modified Features

Ability to Change Tour Dates to Earlier Dates Restored!

Tours dates can now be changed to earlier dates.

Multiple Offices Feature Enhanced

Fixes for companies that have multiple offices:

Includes sorting reports by office and tracking receivables by office.
Users are assigned to offices. Reports and views can display work based on user’s assigned office.

Report headings for the party and customer summaries reflect office information of the user who is logged in and printing the documents. Ex: If the user is assigned to the Albany, NY office the customer and party summaries will have the Albany, NY location address, logo etc. in the report heading.

New filter parameter allows you to select which office you want to view data from. Navigate from Reservations to Tours (or from Tourbuilding to Tours).
At the filter parameter screen for views or reports, choose "Select Where ID, Description or Destination match".
Click “Go”
At Office field enter the desired office name in the field or enter "all" to view all tours assigned to all offices.

Follow the above process for viewing “Receipts for a Date Range” or for the “Daily Receipts Report” (Navigate from Finance to Receipts to Select a Report).

Customer Birthday Field

A customer's birthday can now be entered on the customer reservation screen and the permanent customer record will be updated with the birthdate.

“Show Reservations” Screen Is Now Displayed in Alphabetical Order

Click on “Show Reservations” button. List is now in alphabetical order rather than booking order.

Refund Check Request

Refund check request no longer says "This report contains no data"

Options Order On Reservation Screen

Options now appear on reservation screen in the sequence the builder intended, not in entityid (data entry) order.

New Reports

Tour Party Deposit and Balance Due Report

Navigate to Reservations to Parties. At "Select a Report" choose either "TourPartyReceivablesByBookingDate" or "TourPartyReceivablesByDepartDate". Enter appropriate date to produce a report for deposits and balances due.

Customer Tour History Report

Navigate from Reservations to Customers, Select the appropriate customer. At the customer screen there is a new button: "Print Tour History"

To print report:
Click on "Print Tour History"
Select a date range
Click on "Print Report"

Report includes:
TourId
Description
Purpose
Depart Date
Customer Revenue
Pax (number of passenger reservations for this tour)
Party revenue

Totals include:
Number of Tours
Customer Revenue
Number of passengers
Party revenue

* Reservations are counted even if the customer did not travel on the tour (such as group leaders).

Modified Reports

Enhanced Customer and Summary Reports:

Tour Confirmation Number: A tour confirmation number can now appear on the customer and party summaries. Some people use this as the reservation number. The tour confirmation number is the reservation party number. The format option in the report format field is ShowReservationIds=yes. The confirmation number now targets page correctly and is in correct font size. Please call RBS if you would like to add this feature to your summaries.

"Seat": "Seat" columns and numbers appear on the Party and Customer summary only if a seat has been assigned.

Print Notes with Summary Heading only:

Navigate to Party Reservation Screen.
Click on "Print Party Summary"
Or
Navigate to Customer Reservation Screen
Click on "Print Customer Summary"

To print Notes with Heading enter "HN" in the filter parameter field;
To print Itinerary with Heading "HI" in the filter parameter field.

Add "rate" after rate type: "Rate" has been added after "Full" on both the customer and party summary, to help describe the rate. (Hopefully, no more phone calls about the size of the beds!)

12:00 am Pickup and Drop off Times: Pickup and drop off times will not appear on the party and customer summaries if the assigned time is 12:00 am. 12:00 am is considered a "non time" in the GTO System.

Enhanced Seating Report

Seating Chart now includes the tour heading, the tour destination, tour depart date, tour return date, report print date. The seat number appears next to passenger name. Font size has been increased.

Enhanced Boarding List

New filter parameters:
 Show balance due (yes/no)
 Show ticket Id (yes/no) The ticket number is the pax #, or passenger number, associated with each passenger reservation.

 Added a number: to left hand column that associates the passenger with other members of the reservation party. All the members of the same party will have the same number.

 Font Size: for the boarding list can be increased under System, Reports. When the font size is increased the text for the notes and phone numbers sometimes falls off the page if printed in portrait. To include all text you must print in landscape mode.

 Phones: are now labeled: c= cell phone, 1 = phone 1, 2=phone2. Cell phone appears first in the list if it is available.

 Notes: now appear under the customer name. The first line is slightly indented for readability. HTML tags can be used to make notes stand out:
Bold: text
Underline: text
 Italics: text

Surround the text that you want to apply these attributes to with these tags.

Fixes to Tour Liability Report

Fixes have been made to the liability reports. Problems occurred when selecting depart dates cutoffs that were prior to day of printing the report. Report would capture data as it appeared on date of printing not on date of cutoff. Now report captures data as of the report cutoff date. Example: Run report on 11/5 for a cutoff date of 10/31. Previously the report would capture data with the 10/31 cutoff but any changes which occurred between the cutoff 10/31 and 11/5 were included in the report. Now the report will display data as it appeared on the 10/31 cutoff date.

Report Moved from Receipts to Charges

Navigate from Finance to Receipts, Select a report. The "Charges Paid For Date Range" report has been removed from the "Receipts" tab. It is located under the "Charges" tab in the “Select a Report” list.

Feature Clarification

“Reduce $ Paid” Button and Charges

Issue: A customer from a group reservation cancels and your company must retain the cancellation fee for that particular reservation. The issue appears when there is no specific credit available for that particular customer/reservation and, therefore, no specific credit to charge against. In this case, you must create a credit. This can be done by splitting a receipt using the “Reduce $ Paid” button. (Note: Funds can be transferred from a particular receipt to a specific customer only once, however, you can split (reduce $ paid) a receipt numerous times.)

Solution: Create a credit from an existing receipt before applying the charge.
Navigate to Reservations, Tour, Find desired tour.
Click on “Show Reservations” and navigate to party leader.
At main party reservation screen, click on the “Reduce $ Paid” button.
Enter the desired charge amount in the “Amount” field. All the customer’s receipts will be listed above the “Add” button. Select the receipt to which you would like to apply the charge. If the entire receipt amount will be used, check the “Apply” button. If only a portion of the receipt will be used check the “Partial” button.
Click on the “Add” button. This will create the credit from which you can now create the charge.

Navigate from Reservations to Customers. Select the desired customer.
Click on the “Unapplied Credits” button and review credit for accuracy. Navigate back to the main customer screen.
Click on the “Post Charge” button. Enter the charge amount in the “Charge Amount” field. The unapplied credit, which you created above should appear on the screen above the “Add” button.
Check the “Apply” box next to the appropriate unapplied credit.
Click the “Add” button.

You can view the charge by clicking on the “Show Charges” button on the customer screen, or you can view it by navigating from Finance to Charges, Select the Filter or Report for “Charges for a Date Range”.

Filter Issues

New filters: Search by Customer Name

A new filter has been added for searching for an item by customer name. This can be used for searching for customers as well as named anonymous customers.

This filter appears in:

Finance, Receipts, Select a filter choose
“Receipts by Customer Name”

Finance, Charges, Select a filter choose
“Charges by Customer Name”

Finance, Refunds, Select a filter choose
"Refunds by Customer Name”

Issue Resolution

Transfer Customer from within Tour

Issue only in some company installations. Transfer of Customer from one party to another party in the same tour does not crash system

Charges, Unpaid Charges

Added “Charges by Customer Name” filter to locate customers and named anonymous passenger charges by name. Added ability to search for both paid and unpaid charges (P=Paid, U=Unpaid).

Removed “Charges For a Date Range” Report under Receipts tab. “Charges for a Date Range” can be found under Finance, Charges tab.

Fixed various issues with the Charges report.