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Charging for Bookings in Operate: The PoS vs. The Calendar
Charging for Bookings in Operate: The PoS vs. The Calendar

This article shows how bookable space is managed in the Operate PoS and what your booking invoicing options are

Stuart avatar
Written by Stuart
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

The way most Operate users charge for their bookings is by using the Calendar tool. This method comes with the option to invoice straight away or at the time of bill run. It allows you to see space availability and send booking forms to your customers. 

However, there is a second charging method which uses the PoS. This method also allows you to raise a charge and optionally bill for a booked space; but does not offer the options that the Calendar does. (booking form, booking details, space availability, etc.). 

The key differences between these two methods are: 

  • The Calendar does not immediately generate a Charge Sheet for the booking. This will be generated during the Bill Run, when the system pulls all of your bookings, creates charges then adds them to the customer's invoice. As an alternative, the Calendar allows you to immediately invoice the booking.

  • The PoS will immediately create a Charge Sheet. It can either be invoiced right away (you have the option to generate an invoice right on the PoS) or during the Bill Run, when the system pulls all of your Charge Sheets and adds them to the customers' invoices.

While it is possible to charge for bookings using the PoS, it may become cumbersome due to the fact that you also have the option to hide some products from the PoS. 

We recommend that you establish a general practice with regards to this matter and only charge for bookings either via the Calendar (which we suggest as the most complete and efficient method) or using the PoS if you find it easier

To avoid potentially confusing situations, we have created a workflow that automatically hides Desks, Meeting Rooms and Offices from your PoS (Desks and Meeting Rooms can be billed via the Calendar and Offices are normally subject to Licences). This workflow is active starting the 20th of November, 2017 and applies to new essensys customers who join us after this date. 

This is done using a workflow that triggers whenever a Desk, Meeting Room or Office is created or edited and it does not have the 'Hide From Point of Sale' checkbox checked on the record. Once this workflow triggers, it will check this checkbox automatically and therefore hide the product from the PoS.

The workflow criteria are:

The Action is a Field Update and looks like this: 

How to Manage Booking Charges Using the New Workflow

If you have joined essensys after the 20th of November, 2017, your Desks, Meeting Rooms and Offices will be automatically hidden from the PoS.

As a new essensys customer, you have two options: 

  1. Leave the workflow on and only bill for bookings via the Calendar as recommended.

  2. Disable the workflow and allow booking related products to be available in the PoS. In this case, you would need to make sure that you do not check 'Hide from PoS' on the products you want to be able to bill here. Since the workflow would be turned off, it would not be done automatically, therefor any product would need to be hidden manually. By default, this checkbox is unchecked. 

If you have been with essensys before the 20th of November, 2017, this workflow will not apply to you. 

Your options are: 

  1. Create the workflow yourself as shown above, if you want to automatically hide these types of products from your PoS. This will then mean that you would only charge for bookings using the Calendar.

  2.  Do nothing - If you want to continue charging for bookings via the PoS, you don't need to do anything. Your products will continue being available within the PoS; however, we recommend that you check your entire list of products and make sure the ones you want to be able to bill with the PoS are not hidden ('Hide from Point of Sale' should be unchecked). 

Changing the Workflow

Regardless of whether you are a new or existing Operate customer, you can amend this default workflow to include other criteria you choose. For example, if you would like to also hide Virtual or Contract Services from the PoS and only bill them as part of Licence Agreements, you can do so by adding them to the Record Type filter shown above. More information on workflows is available in the dedicated Knowledge Base section, linked below.

Learn more about booking via the Calendar.

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