Author: Olivia

Here’s what our team’s been working on this month:

• Venue Bookings in Retreat Booking Guru can be imported into Google Calendar, via an iCAL feed, and displayed on an online calendar with other events (RG-557)
• Users going to view “Bookings” or “Payouts” tab from the Retreat Guru Marketplace will stay logged in automatically (RG-573)
• Re-order your list of saved reports, by dragging & dropping them into the order you want (RG-591)
• “Webhooks” have been added to the Retreat Booking Guru API, so integrations with other pieces of software can be easier & faster to develp (RG-70)
• Global Optional Items: instead of adding optional items every time you create a new program, you can now save time by setting up all the info about your optional items once (being piloted with a few centers)(RG-211)
• You can now quickly notice special “flagged” guests in the registrations or people areas. Guests with a balance owing are highlighted yellow, guests marked as blacklisted are dark grey, and guests marked by a staff as “flagged” for any other reason are blue.(being Piloted) (RG-326)
• To improve the listings of Retreat Booking Guru customers using the Marketplace, an automatic email can be sent to all guests, the day they leave a retreat center, asking guests to review the center on the retreat.guru Marketplace(being piloted with a few centers) (RG-558)
• When a registrar re-registers a guest for another program using the registration form, they can now choose to use that guest’s existing credit card on file to immediately pay for the new program.(being piloted with a few centers) (RG-220)
• Retreat centers can now create custom registration statuses like “application needs review” (being piloted with a few centers) (RG-168)
• Calendar availability: for hotel-dates (flexible date) programs, the calendar availability will update automatically based on your center’s availability (being piloted with a few centers) (RG-205)
• Meal summary report: meal reporting now breaks down meals by day & diet type. (being piloted with a few centers) (RG-550)

Here’s what our team’s been working on in April:

• Added an option to notify the Program Contact of new registrations without also notifying the Registrar (RG-268)
• See which of your registrations came from the Retreat Guru Marketplace. Learn more (RG-473)
• Enhanced API: Venues are now included in the Retreat Guru API (RG-435)
• Ability to use seasonal and modified pricing together, in certain circumstances (RG-287)
• Optional items with long descriptions: guests will see a shortened description on the registration form, that’s expandable if they want to read more (RG-271)
• When hovering over an individual program on the Venues page you can now see the program’s max capacity & the number of guests registered (RG-221)
• When changing a guest’s room after they register, rooms that may not be the best choice because they’re part of a room block for a different program will now be marked as “blocked” (RG-204)
• When a guest picks the last spot in a gender-specific room and then specifies they aren’t that gender, they’ll be notified to pick a different room (RG-375)
• Improve re-register experience: The re-register dropdown menu on a participant dashboard now includes programs AND rental programs. It is now ordered by 1) open date programs & rentals 2) current programs & rentals, 3) future programs & rentals sorted by start date, 4) past programs & rentals (if recent, <3 months ago) (RG-348)
• Registration Volume chart on the Dashboard now includes discounts & cancellations. Previously, it only included registrations. (RG-229)
• Ability to re-order Program Notes, in Reg. Settings (RG-394)
• Bug Fix: Changing the lodging type for registration should update transaction description (RG-377)
• BETA Feature (being piloted with a few centers) – Printable view of a “rental contract”: capture a registration for a “rental contract” in a viewable and printable format at a point in time. (RG-93)

Here’s what’s new in Retreat Booking Guru for March 2019:

• “Time and Date Details” field from the program edit page now shows in the “Program” screen options. (RG-216)
• Improving the Participant Roster: only questions enabled in the program should display, and make columns wider for easier viewing (RG-206, RG-207)
• Up sell additional courses feature: the secondary programs (workshops) can now have a maximum capacity (RG-262)
• Prevent negative tax rates from being entered, to ensure accuracy of Accounting Reporting (RG-342)
• Up sell additional courses feature: now additional courses are available via Quick Add Reg. Previously only available when registering as a guest. (RG-365)
• Improvement to the changes log for transactions: saving a transaction does not overwrite staff name who created the transaction (RG-409)
• Show Package Builder on the registration form to create a basic “rental contract”. Only available for those interested in piloting this feature. (RG-311)

We have made some improvements to our accounting reports and the underlying calculations around revenue for programs and registrations. This update makes our revenue calculations for programs and registrations more accurate but has changed some behaviour related to: 1) Cancelling a group lead’s registration, 2) Removing of “Revenue Dates” from the transaction filters, 3) Locking down registration cancellation.

Cancelling a group lead’s registration

Sometime people register for a retreat as a group, like a mom registers for herself and her spouse. Or a visiting teacher renting out your retreat center registers all their students for the retreat, on their behalf. In these cases the mom, or the visiting teacher become the “Group Lead”.

Before

When a member of your center staff cancelled a “group lead’s” registration using the “Cancel Registration” button, the system would

1. cancel all transactions on the group lead registration
2. set the status of the leader to cancelled
3. set the status of all group member registrations to cancelled as well.

The system would NOT cancel the transactions under the group member registrations, resulting in confusing revenue numbers for certain programs.

Now

When a member of your center staff cancels a “group lead’s” registration using the “Cancel Registration” button, the system will

1. Cancel all transactions on the group lead registration
2. Set the status of the leader to cancelled
3. NEW cancel all transactions on the group lead registration
4. Set the status of all group member registrations to cancelled

If you only want to cancel the group lead, and not cancel the remaining group registrations then, separate the group lead from the group before canceling their registration.

Removal of “Revenue Dates” from the transaction list filter

After talking to many accountants and bookkeepers we’ve improved our revenue calculations. The “Revenue Dates” filter on the transaction list is no longer an accurate representation of true revenue earned during a time period so we have disabled this filter on our transaction list.

Centers using our Accounting Report feature will now be presented with a “Realized Dates” filter which provides a more accurate filter. If you’re looking for the new & improved alternative to Revenue Dates reporting and are interested in being in our pilot for the Accounting Report, please get in touch with us.

Locking down registration cancellation

(Only for centers in the Accounting Report & Accounting Mode pilot)

To ensure accurate accounting reports, staff members without the accounting mode override permission are no longer able to manually set a registration status to ‘Cancelled’ or set the registration status for a cancelled registration to active again.

Staff members with Accounting Report override access can still utilize the “Cancel Registration” button within a registration to properly cancel a registration. Staff members with the accounting override permission will still be able to manually set the registration status as usual if necessary.

We just launched a new feature, the Participant Roster for teachers.

Now you can send visiting teachers a link that will automatically them up to date with important info about students coming to their retreat. 

Learn more or check it out for yourself in the Advanced Tab of one of your Programs.