Customisable 'additional comments' field

Useful little change released this morning: you can now use your own label for the 'additional comments' box which appears on the last page of the widget. So if you want your guest to enter their estimated arrival time, or a flight number, or any other specific information, you can label the box accordlingly.

If I want to ask for 'Flight number', for example, then I'll put that as my custom label under Settings > Online Bookings > Customize:

Then on the last page of that widget, guests will see a box labelled 'Flight number':

Whatever they type there will be recorded as a note in their booking.

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Two new payment gateways: MoneyBookers and SecureHosting UPG

We've put two new payment gateway integrations live this morning: Moneybookers and SecureHosting UPG. (So we now provide support for PayPal Website Payments Standard, PayPal Website Payments Pro, Authorize.net (USA only), SagePay (UK only), Moneybookers and SecureHosting UPG.)

Moneybookers has very wide global coverage, so is particularly good for our users who are based in countries where our other gateways don't operate. They also have a very compact payment page which can stay in your widget iframe, so the guest doesn't have to leave your website to make their payment. PayPal Pro has this option too, but with other gateways the guest leaves your website to make payment, then returns back afterwards. Keeping the payment page within the widget iframe offers a smoother experience for your guest. (The payment page is still hosted, and secured, by the gateway. But it appears within the iframe on your website, so the guest's experience is that they stay on your website, even though they are typing their card number onto a page on the gateway's site.)

SecureHosting UPG is good if you want to see the actual card number the guest used to make a payment, as you'll find this within SecureHosting's interface. This is useful if you want to charge further amounts to the guest without needing to ask them again for their card number.

Keep payment page within widget iframe

We've just released support for a useful little feature in PayPal's Pro gateway ("PayPal Website Payments Pro") which allows you to keep PayPal's payment page within the iframe on your website. This provides for a smoother experience for the guest, everything can take place within your website (even though the actual card details are still entered by the guest directly onto PayPal's servers), rather than having the payment stage take place on a new page altogether.

If you have a PayPal Website Payments Pro account, check the box "Keep payment page within iframe" under Settings > Online Bookings > Require payment with booking:

Then your guests will see a compact payment page, which will stay within the widget iframe, like this:

The smallest size which will accommodate the payment page (without scrolling) is 540 wide by 570 wide, so you need to use a custom-sized widget to fit even this small PayPal payment page (our default widget size is smaller, at 300x370 pixels). To set the size for your widget go to Settings > Online Bookings > Customize.

(This only works with PayPal Website Payments Pro, not Website Payments Standard. With Standard, the
guest is always sent out of your website to a whole new page to enter their card details).

Deactivate (rather than delete) old rooms

You can now deactivate rooms, rather than having to delete them completely. If you deactivate a room, it won't count towards your rooms for subscription purposes, you won't see it on your calendar, and guests won't see it when booking online. But old bookings in that room will still show the room name when you view the booking details screen.

And you can reactivate a room later if you need to.

Here's how it works ... on the room you want to deactivate, click 'Delete', and click OK when prompted.

If there are bookings associated with that room, it will be deactivated, rather than deleted. You'll see a new link at the top of the page to view inactive rooms:

Click there, and you'll see all your deactivated rooms and you can reactivate them if you need to:

This makes life much easier if your inventory changes from time to time, if you take on new units and drop others. You can still keep a full history of which bookings were in which rooms, but you only need to pay for (and see on your calendar), your active units.

Merry Christmas to all our users!

Merry Christmas to all our users from everyone on the KeepMeBooked team.


We hope you have a lovely Christmas and a prosperous 2012!

Unexpected intermittent outages

We appear to be suffering some intermittent outages at the moment (around 9pm GMT / 4pm EST). We are investigating.

Update @ 9:32pm GMT: Service seems now to be performing normally, but we will continue to monitor closely.

New widget look-and-feel, plus option to show availability grid in widget

We've released more booking widget options this morning. If you go to Settings > Online Bookings > Customize, you'll now see a choice of widget types and widget styles:

Widget Styles:

Default
This is the neutrally-styled widget that you are familiar with:

Modern
A bolder, more colourful style:

Use my own CSS
You can still use your own CSS if you have the skills to create your own widget stylesheet.

Widget Types:


Date Selector
Here, your guest searches for available rooms by picking a date, and will then see a list of available rooms. Here's the Date Selector in the Modern style:

Simple Calendar
As with the Date Selector style, your guest picks a date, and then sees available rooms. But in this version, the guest can see if a particular date is full or closed. Here's the Simple Calendar in the Modern style:

Availability-by-room
This shows the guest a grid, similar to the one you see as owner, showing availability and price for each room on each day. Here it is in the modern style:

More styles will follow over the next few months. Enjoy.