Questions and Answers

Beds24 is a cost-effective self-service system offering powerful online booking engines for your own website property management and optional channel management.

1 Bookings

Beds24 shows real-time availability. Bookings can be instant (auto confirmed) or on request (manually confirmed or declined). Bookings can be changed or moved to another room if required.

Cancellations

You can give guests the option to view and cancel bookings but not change them.

Information

You can set which information your require the guest to enter when they make a booking.

2 Channel Manager

We have a two way XML connection with mayor booking channels so Beds24.com can export inventory and prices and import bookings and modifications to bookings. To some channels we can also send pictures and descriptions. The capabilities of the connection depend on the channel. You can find details for each connected channel here.

This page explains in detail how the channel manager works.

If required you can set different rates for your own website and booking channel(s).

3 Currencies

You can set the system to use one master currency. The new responsive version of the booking page allows you to use a currency converter. If you are using booking channels which require a different than your standard currency you can ass a multiplier to prices to convert to a different currency.

If you are using multiple properties you can set a different currency for each.

Your account fees are billed in € but you can pay in any mayor currency according to the current exchange rage.

4 Deposit Payments and Payment Gateways

You can use Beds24 to receive deposit payments with the booking or collect credit card details. Integrated payment gateways are Paypal (which also allows credit card payments), Stripe, Realex, Authorize.Net, Paymill and Bitpay. All later payments have to be processed outside the Beds24 system. Beds24 does not handle money. All payments go directly into your account with the payment gateway.

To use this service you will need an account with the payment gateway you want to use. Beds24 charges a small per transaction fee and the payment gateway will charge their fees.

All the payment gateways we connect to are fully PCI DSS compliant.

Alternatively you can securely collect credit card details and process the payment through your own bank or merchant account.

Beds24 is not involved in deposit collections for bookings from booking channels. Each booking channels handles them according to their rules/your account settings. If you use Stripe as payment gateway you can choose to send credit cards supplied by all channels directly to Stripe where the cards can be validated and charged.

5 Fees

With Beds24 you only pay for what you use. There is a basic fee for the use of the system which is based on the number of rooms set up plus fees for the services which are used.

You can find detailed information and a calculator on our website to calculate the monthly fee for your set up.

6 Facebook

Beds24 provides a Facebook app to accept bookings directly from a facebook page.

7 Google Analytics / Tracking

You can install Google Analytics on you booking page. Beds24 also has a built in logging system which will give you information on the activities on your booking page and where a booking originated from.

8 Import Data / Connect to other Systems /API

If you need to import bookings into Beds24 you can use a csv via our API (https://www.beds24.com/api/). For some channels we can try to import bookings.

The API can also be used to im/export other data, connect to third party systems or to build your own application.

9 Languages

The backend is English, German partially in Spanish, and we can offer customer support in English and German. The booking page where guest can make their bookings is available in 31 languages (Arabic, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish). If the booking page does not currently support your language we can look into adding it if you help us with the translation.

Hosts can choose to activate one or more languages to give guests the option to book in their own language.

10 Messaging and Notifications

E-Mail You can set up template Emails to manually or auto send to guest e.g. x days before arrival/departure, based on origin of the booking etc. You can export all bookings and process the data e.g. add to your mailing lists.

Bookings through OTA´s will be confirmed directly through the OTA not form Beds24.

11 Mailings

Guest information and contact details can be downloaded to be imported into external mailing lists.

12 Mobile

The design of the control panel is responsive meaning it adjusts to the size of the screen. This allows you to perform all actions from your smart phone or tablet it you need to. You have the option to set up a special dashboard to use from mobile devices.

The booking page is mobile friendly. It detects which device the guest uses and adjusts the view accordingly.

13 Multiple Properties / Agency Functions

With Beds24 you can manage multiple properties in one account. You have the option to create subaccounts with individual logins for each property. The subaccounts can have their own login with full access (read and write) or limited access (read only).

The agency search page allows guests to search for availability by criteria you define and book directly online. For a simple example please look here: https://www.beds24.com/demo/agency-online-reservation-system.htm

We do not have a way to automatically split payments or calculate commission. You could collect the deposit from the guest (your commission) and the property collects the balance when the guest arrives.

14 Multiple Users

You can create sub accounts with full or limited access rights. Choose from default roles (e.g. admin, backoffice, reception, cleaner) or create you rown roles.

15 Pictures

The new responsive booking page allows up to 5 pictures per property plus up to five pictures per room and offer.

By default the adaptive version of the booking page allows for one picture per unit but you can add a Woo slider which will let you display multiple pictures. If you are comfortable working with HTML you can also add multiple pictures directly.

16 Private Label

The private label option allows you to use your own subdomain for your booking page (bookings.mywebsite.com).

17 Rates/Prices

You can set a simple or refined rate structure based for example on seasons, occupancies, minimum/maximum stays, time of booking (e.g. last minute).

18 Reports

The system includes a range of predefined reports including revenue reports, arrivals, departures, invoices, occupancy and current guests. You also have the option to create custom reports. All reports can be saved as .csv files. Custom reports are also available for download as Excel or pdf files.

19 Setup and Customisation

Beds24 is a self service system. Set up is free of charge and you do it yourself. We have setup wizards which introduce the system and guide you through the setup process.

Almost all elements on the booking page and invoice have classes and you can apply custom CSS to customise them. You or your web designer can use Firebug or a similar tool to look up the classes.

20 System Status

We do have a public monitoring system. Even though our service is very reliable there will be occasional short outages due to necessary maintenance. Also we cannot except acts of God.

21 Support

Beds24 is designed as a self-service system. Beds24 information and support is available via following channels:

• Beds24 Forum
• Beds24 Support Wiki
• Context sensitive help
• Ticket support system

For users who prefer phone support we cooperate with partners who offer professional help for a fee. For a list please have a look here:

22 Web site integration and Widgets

Beds24 can be integrated into any website. Adding a booking widget to a website requires pasting some html code we provide to the source code. This will work with any systems as long as you can access the source code.

The Beds24 booking page is fully customisable. The innovative design of the new responsive version lets you not only change colors but also define which content you want to display where on the form.

23 Where is your office?

Our company is in Berlin, Germany.

24 Wordpress

Beds24 provides a Wordpress plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/beds24-online-booking/) which makes it easy to add booking technology to any Wordpress site via shortcodes. The actual management of bookings and inventory is done directly in the Beds24 control panel.