The way it works is pretty simple… once you set a calendar to “public requests” a web address will be assigned to that calendar which is displayed any time you are using that calendar, usually below it.

You can use this web address in e-mails, ads or on your own website to bring users to a form that collects their details, shows them what’s available for the timeframe requested, and allows them to make a reservation request.

Both parties then get an e-mail with the request details and the reservation is automatically added to your ResEngine calendar with the status of “Requested”. All you have to do is switch the reservation status to “Reserved” or “Confirmed” and use the contact information provided to deliver any reservation or payment details.

This is the most simple, flexible way of managing online reservation requests, and it allows you to follow in any way you choose. Since you enable reservation requests on a calendar by calendar basis, you can even choose exactly what portion of your inventory to make available in this way.

Calendars are great for checking availability, but list views are better when “working the desk”… when you have to quickly look up reservations as people arrive. The list views offer the same access to guest and reservation details.

And working with calendars has been pulled out of the “My Settings” section and placed directly in the Calendars sub-menu for easy access.

Your account profile sets a number of display settings and defaults for your ResEngine account. For instance, if you use the “Vacation Rental” profile, your calendars default to 30 day views and various screens use labels for working with “guests” and reserving “nights”. If you switch to the “Salon” profile, your calendars default to the 1 day view where you work with “customers” and make “appointments”.

But what if you rent rooms and jet skis? Have no fear, you can also set up Calendar Profiles that do the same thing, but for a specific calendar. By default, all of your calendars will use your Account Profile to decide how they look and work. But you can choose a Calendar Profile on the Calendar Edit screen that will override the account settings.

We’ve launched this feature with a dozen or so profiles and will be adding more over time. Here’s the current list, if you have an idea for a new one, send it to us at support@resengine.com

Current ResEngine Profiles:

• Boat Rentals
• Campground
• Court Reservations
• Equipment Rentals
• Field Reservations
• Hostel
• Hotel
• Marina
• Meeting Rooms
• Plane Rentals
• Salon
• Spa
• Vacation Rentals

The new 1 day view is great for those of you booking hourly or partial day reservations. For instance, say you book rooms nightly but you also rent bicycles on an hourly basis. If you set up a ResEngine calendar for each, you can set the rooms calendar to display either the 7 day or 30 day view, then set the bicycle calendar to display using the 1 day view.

• Reserved  =  Blue
• Confirmed  =  Green
• Arrived  =  Orange
• Departed  =  Grey

For more detail on how to use reservation status and color, there’s an article in our documentation section that goes into greater detail called How To Use Reservation Status and Color.

The color helps to quickly identify the status of each reservation when scanning the calendar. You can also hover over a reservation to see the status printed in the upper right corner of the hover box. In the Guest section you can view your guest list by status, so you can see everyone who has convirmed, arrived, or canceled at the same time.

Future Status: Reserved and Confirmed

If you leave the default selection when creating a new reservation it will appear in a blue bar representing the status “reserved”. So in most cases, when looking forward over the coming weeks most reservations will appear blue.

If you require guests to confirm, you can click on a reservation and change the status from “reserved” to “confirmed”. This will change the color of the reservation to green.

Current Activity: Arrived and Departed

Setting the status to Arrived changes the color to orange and updates the daily activity log. Over the course of the day as guests arrive more and more of the reservations will appear orange, so you can quickly glance at the calendar to see who has arrived and who has not yet arrived.

When a guest departs you can set the status to Departed in the same way. This “greys out” the reservation on the calendar and updates the daily activity log.

Canceled Reservations

Canceled reservations don’t have a color because they don’t appear on the calendar at all. Once you cancel a reservation it comes off the calendar to make room for new reservations, but we don’t forget about it. You can easily view all your canceled reservations by visiting the Guest section and clicking on Canceled in the sub-menu. This is a great report to review if you are concerned about sudden vacancies.

Since we don’t delete cancellations, they will appear whenever a guest makes a new reservation, so you can quickly tell if someone is prone to cancellations or not.

You can group resources onto different calendars, so that you can view a few of them at a time, or quickly see groups of them when the phone rings.

To create new calendars, simply click on My Settings in the main navigation and choose Calendars from the sub navigation. Click the “Add New” link next to the page heading and give your calendar a name and click Create. You can repeat this process for each calendar you’d like to create.

Next, you need to assign resources to each calendar. Click on Resources in the main navigation to return to your resources list, and click on the name of any resource to bring up the edit window. On the right side just above the Update button you’ll see a list of your calendars. You can check the box next to each calendar you want this resource to appear on.

Separating Resource Types

Once you experiment with creating a few calendars, you’ll probably get a feel for their most effective use for your organization. But I’m going to provide a few examples here, to get you in the right frame of thinking.

The first and most obvious use for multiple calendars is to separate different types of resources. A resort might take reservations for hotel rooms, cabins, dock slips and dormitories for overflow space. In ResEngine each of these resource types could have it’s own calendar, so when a call comes in for a dock slip reservation, a single click can display availability for only dock slips. Likewise for the other types of properties.

Location-based Calendars

Similar to the above example, location-based calendars separate resources based on geographic location. This works well if you manage three equipment rental stores, or take reservations for airplanes at multiple airports. If resources move between locations they can be easily updated to reflect their current location.

Feature-based Calendars

Because resources can be assigned to multiple calendars, you can use them as “tags” to group resources in different ways based on their characteristics.

If you take reservations for hotel rooms, you might group them in different ways on the following calendars: Singles, Doubles, Ocean View, Pool View, Handicap Accessible. One room might be assigned to any number of these calendars based on its characteristics.

For these kinds of situations ResEngine is usually smart enough to figure out the date or time you want, even if you just type a single word.

For instance, try creating a new reservation and when you get to the start field, just type in “today” and for the end field, type in “tomorrow”. Click the next button and take a look at the start and end times recorded on the left. ResEngine is smart enough to figure out what you meant by “today” and “tomorrow”!

Let’s try another one that is perhaps more useful. Try making a reservation that starts “tomorrow” and ends “next friday”. Just type “tomorrow” into the start field and “next friday” into the end field. ResEngine should get that one right too (of course, the specifics of the stay will depend on when you’re trying this).

Here are a few other ways you can enter reservations:

• starts “in 3 days” and ends “in 6 days”
• starts “friday” and ends “sunday”
• starts “jun 13″ and ends “jun 16″
• starts “july 4th” and ends “july 8th”

If you don’t specify times, ResEngine will guess those (since you probably don’t really use them). But if you do want to enter times, you can do the same sort of thing:

• starts “today at 3pm” and ends “tomorrow at 11:30am”
• starts “friday at 4pm” and ends “sunday at 2pm”
• starts “mar 5 at 9:30am” and ends “mar 12 at 10:15am”

Don’t be afraid to experiment with these. A great way to experiment without making reservations is to use the field at the top right of the calendar. This field lets you set the “range” of the calendar display, and whatever you type into the field will become the first row on the left side. This field, like the start and stop fields, is smart enough to figure out the date from whatever you type.