Sales & Event Management - Standard & Essentials release notes

These release notes describe new features and fixed issues in the 2020 releases of Amadeus Sales & Event Management - Standard & Essentials. To schedule a complimentary update to the latest version, Contact Support.

For guidance on how to use these new features, click in the top-right corner of any page to turn on inline Training & Help.

December 3, 2020 (R40 P2)

Minor fixes for the Advanced, Standard, and Essentials Modules. These changes have no impact on how you and your team use the system.

October 19, 2020 (R40 P1)

New Features

• Replace setup values on existing records. Administrators can now replace setup values for existing records. This is extremely helpful for cleanup after you migrate a new property into your database, or if your organization changes existing setup values. For example, if your brand decides to combine the national association and state association market segments into one segment called Association, on the left sidebar click Setup, click Setup Values, and then click Market Segments, and enter a new value for Association. Next, you click the new Replace Setup Values button and replace the old segments with the new one. In a matter of minutes, all accounts and bookings are updated and you can run your reports with the new values. All corporate administrators will see the Replace Setup Values button immediately following your upgrade. Corporate administrators can give property administrators access by selecting the new Replace Setup Values option on the User Details page.
• Reassign owners. Similar to replacing setup values, administrators can now quickly reassign accounts, bookings, and activities from one owner to another. When you have staff turnover, just click your name in the top-right corner, select Admin, and click Reassign Users. For newly migrated properties, we now collect the name of the record owner from the previous system, and add "(Migrated)" after their name on the Reassign Record Owner page—this makes it a snap to identify which owners should be replaced.
• Freeze cutoff date at definite.(CR0131658) The system automatically updates the cutoff date when the arrival date changes on a booking—which is very helpful when you're in the negotiation process. However, it's rare that you want to change the cutoff date after a booking goes definite. Currently, if you add a few staff or early arrival rooms to a definite booking's room block, that changes the arrival date and the Cutoff Date field will automatically update too. If you would like to prevent the Cutoff Date field from updating automatically when a booking is definite, property administrators can select the new Freeze Cutoff Date at Definite field in the Booking & Event Options section of the Property Details page. Users will still be able to manually update [the cutoff date if necessary.
• Catering Pace report. (CR0132695, CR0132704, CR0121510) This report compares each month's budget to the event revenue on the books now, as well as revenue for the same time for the last three years. If you haven't done so already, enter your property's budget to take advantage of this report.
• Peak rooms from MeetingBroker.(CR0122240) RFP Peak Rooms is a new field that displays in the Guestrooms tab of inquiries that come from MeetingBroker. This additional information can be used to assign the appropriate owner, evaluate the opportunity, or prioritize leads in the All RFP Inquiries tab.
• Lost comments to MeetingBroker. (CR0130806) When you receive a MeetingBroker lead from an above-property sales office using Central Sales (formerly known as Connex), you can now send personalized lost comments without ever leaving the system. When you change the status of an inquiry or a booking that came from MeetingBroker to Lost, Turndown, or Cancelled, the information you enter into the Lost Comments field is automatically sent to Central Sales. Now you'll spend less time responding to leads that don't materialize while still adding that personal touch. We are working with Cvent to add this capability for their RFPs soon.
• Corporate Administrator field. To maintain consistency with our Advanced module, the Administrator field has been relabeled Corporate Administrator on the User Details page.

Fixed Issues

CR0133178: After a new guestroom type is added to setup, if you edit the guestroom block on an existing booking, you will be prompted to click Refresh Room Types which will display the new guestroom types.

CR0514916: When you copy a booking, the BEO items are now also copied.

CR0133283: Bookings that are more than a year old now display in the Bookings tab of the Account page.

August 31, 2020

Reports - no upgrade required

CR0132146: If your property migrated data from another system to Standard or Essentials, the data in the GRC Report will now match the data in your previous system.

August 13, 2020 (R39)

New features

We have added several new document templates to support new inclusive pricing and package functionality. Administrators, after you upgrade to R39, make sure you go to Setup > Document Options > Booking Templates and clear the Active check box next to any templates your property will not be using.

• Booking check. When your customer wants to see an estimate of charges for their booking—including guestrooms and events, taxes, and other fees—you can now print a booking check. Administrators, there are two new booking checks in the Booking Templates section of Document Options. If you don't charge administrative fees or gratuity, you'll want to use the tax only version and deactivate the other template. For properties that do charge admin or gratuity, change the tax only document to inactive.
• Packages. In today's fast-paced marketplace, many customers want to forego the back-and-forth process of selecting specific menus and calculating a la carte pricing for their budget. Instead, they want to quickly purchase a collection of services for a per-person price and let you manage the details. Hello packages!

  Packages Overview

• There's a new Packages section in Setup where property administrators can enter the details for each package that you sell (Complete Meeting Package, Day Meeting Package, etc.). This makes it easy to add the package to a booking and quickly create the events and guestrooms that are part of the package price. We've also added a selection of new package document templates—proposals, contracts, BEOs, and a booking check to support the sales team. So if your property sells packages—don't wait, read the Administrator checklist for packages. Then click Setup on the left sidebar, click Packages, and follow the guidance in the inline Training & Help.

• Default items for event classifications. When creating a BEO, do you find yourself adding the same items every time for a meeting or continental breakfast? For example, you always add a water station, pens, notebooks, and candy dishes for meetings. Save everyone time by having your administrator add those items as defaults to the Meeting event classification in Setup. Then the next time you're detailing a meeting BEO, those items will be created automatically (yay!).
• Flat guestroom tax. The tax feature has been enhanced to allow a flat occupancy tax rate to be applied to guestrooms. Flat taxes are a specific amount charged per person/per night, rather than a percentage of the guestroom rate.
• Localization - setup values and event classifications. We are working towards the capability of translating our entire application into languages other than English. As part of that work, we've added translations for our default setup values and event classifications. Administrators will see a new Alternate Language field in those areas of Setup. The translations will display based on the language selected in the user's profile. So if you're located in Canada and some of your users have selected French as their language, after the upgrade they will see some of the values for things like market segments and event classifications in French. If you added any setup values that were not in our default list, they will display in English. Until our development of localization is complete, we recommend that your users set their language to English for consistency in documents and reports.
• Sort lists and search results. To make finding information easier you can now click column headers to sort lists and search results. For example, in the My Open Inquiries list click the Status column header to sort inquires by status. An up arrow indicates the data is sorted in ascending order (A, B, C ... 1, 2, 3). A down arrow indicates a descending order (Z, Y, X, ... 9, 8, 7).
• Delete documents. If you have administrator access, you can now delete the system-generated documents that are attached to bookings and volume contracts. For example, when you create a contract for a booking, a copy is automatically added to the attachments section. If you later make changes to the booking and create a new contract, you can delete the old version to make sure you only access the latest one moving forward.
• Quick link to support. On the left sidebar, you'll now see a Contact Support link. Click this to access the Amadeus Customer Central Community where you can open a new support case, see the status of cases you previously opened, and find additional resources for all of your Amadeus products. Register for a Customer Central account today.
• Inquiry market segment. A new Market Segment field has been added to the Inquiry page for enhanced reporting.
• Localization - documents. When creating documents like contracts and BEOs, the formatting of dates, times, numbers, and currency symbols will be determined by the locale in the user's profile. The following locales are available with this release:
  • English (US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and United Kingdom)
  • German (Germany)
  • Spanish (Spain)
  • French (France)
  • Italian (Italy)
  • Dutch (Netherlands)
  • Polish (Poland)
  • Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal)
  • Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)

Fixed issues

CR0131922: You can now perform an account search with only two characters.

August 13, 2020

Reports - no upgrade required

• Same Time Last Year in Reports. 2020 may not be the year you want to compare to when you run pace and productivity reports in the future. The Guestroom Pace and Productivity reports now let you choose if you want to compare to same time last year (STLY), same time 2 years ago, or same time 3 years ago.

July 21, 2020

Reports - no upgrade required

CR0132146: The GRC report will immediately display data for properties that migrated from hSP.

May 18, 2020

Reports - no upgrade required

• Report localization. The following reports now display date, time, numeric, and currency fields based on the user's locale: Daily Events, Booking Export, GRC, Productivity, Guestroom Pace, Productivity Verification, Guestroom Pace Verification, and Volume Contract Account Production.

CR0132486: When you select All Users in the criteria, the following reports will now include users whose property access has been removed: Daily Events, Booking Export, GRC, Top Accounts, and Activity report.

CR0132759: The activity date displayed in the grid of the Productivity Verification and Guestroom Pace Verification reports now displays in the local property time zone.

CR0133108: In the Guestroom Pace report, the yearly total under Definite Revenue now calculates correctly.

April 13, 2020

Reports and training videos - no upgrade required

• Training videos. Some people learn better by watching. Our library of how-to videos now includes New user training that covers how to create accounts, contacts, bookings, and contracts. When it's time to detail your events, watch the Create a BEO video to learn best practices and shortcuts.
• Report localization. The following reports now display date, time, numeric, and currency fields based on the user's locale: Activity, Account Listing, Contact Listing, Top Accounts, Monthly Revenue & Guestroom Summary. Additional reports coming soon.

CR0132486: The Volume Contract Account Production and Monthly Revenue & Guestroom Summary reports will now include inactive users, when you select All Users in the report criteria.

CR0132970: To better streamline your report results and marketing lists, you have a new option to exclude inactive accounts when running the Volume Contract Account Production report.

CR0132490: When running the GRC report, if the booking is marked pickup complete, the picked up numbers will display when the Room Count Type field is set to Blocked—giving you the most accurate picture.

CR0132886: The GRC (New) report now displays a blank cell, instead of zeros, on days without guestrooms. Bookings without an active room block are no longer displayed.

March 24, 2020 (R38)

New features

• Enhanced function room capabilities. Property administrators have some exciting new options for function rooms including the ability to create combination rooms, define shared spaces, and specify the order in which rooms display in the function diary.

  A combination room consists of smaller indivisible function rooms that can be joined together. When a combination function room is blocked, all of the associated indivisible rooms are blocked too. You can see this in the Function Diary. The indivisible rooms display in a lighter shade of the booking status color to indicate that it is also unavailable. See Overview: Combination function rooms to learn more.

  If you have function rooms that can be used by more than one definite group at a time, select the new Shared Space check box. For example, if you have a lobby breakfast area that you send all your groups to, you can now book them all in that area at the same time.

After the update to R38, all existing function rooms will be set to indivisible. If any of your rooms should be combination, see Deactivate a function room.

• Inclusive pricing. If you traditionally sell food and beverage, guestrooms, and function space inclusive of taxes, admin, or gratuity, the inclusive pricing feature makes it simple for you to provide estimates and quote rates on-the-fly. No calculator needed. When you merge a banquet check, BEO, or contract we will automatically calculate the charges. A corporate administrator must enable this feature, and then the property administrators can update a few options in Setup. Also new in this release for this feature - guestrooms is a revenue classification option when setting up taxes. See Overview: Inclusive pricing.

If you work in a multi-module org and inclusive pricing was already enabled in the Advanced module, the feature will automatically be enabled for Standard and Essentials properties during the upgrade.

• Move booking. When your customer needs to change their dates, use the new Move Booking option. On the Booking page, click More... and then select Move Booking. The guestrooms and events will quickly be moved to the new dates.
• Deposits. Do you require a deposit with a signed contract to consider a group as definite? Or maybe you require groups to prepay all charges before arrival? You can now track deposits and payments on the Booking page in the new Deposits tab. Deposits can be included in your group sales contract, resume, and other booking documents. Payments recorded against individual events are reflected on the banquet check.
• Join duplicate accounts and contacts. With all properties sharing accounts and contacts, duplicates are bound to happen. Now you can keep your lists clean by joining the duplicates together. If you have Corporate Administrator access, you can use the new Join Accounts and Join Contacts options that are found in the More... button. Before joining, it compares the two records side-by-side and allows you to select the best information to keep from each one. This feature is especially helpful for new properties who choose to migrate data from another system.
• Contact recap. Sometimes it's nice to print a contact's details. On the Contact Details page, click More... and then select Recap. The recap includes all contact details, including how much revenue this person is associated with, comments, and activities.
• Report filters for inactive accounts. To better streamline your report results and marketing lists, you have a new option to filter out inactive accounts when running the following reports: Top Account, Account Listing, and Contact Listing.
• Help your team log in. Getting started can sometimes be the hardest part. The new Log in and manage passwords video walks you through the process of logging in, verifying your account, and managing passwords. Share this video with all new users to streamline adoption.

Fixed issues

CR0131835: Changing a booking status now updates the guestroom block status as expected.

CR0132126: When creating a contact, the Email field now allows 80 characters instead of 40.

CR0132817:Properties with duplicate corporate and property setup values are now able to edit the property values.

CR0133024: You can reset your password without receiving an error message.

January 27, 2020 (R37 P1)

CR0132997: You can now enter activity goals for all active users and they will be listed in alphabetical order.

January 15, 2020

Reports - no upgrade required

• Booking Export report. Revenue Managers—this one's for you. Using the new Booking Export report, you can download every detail from your bookings by day. The information is data typed making it easy for you to slice and dice the data any way you want to in Excel, combine with other reports, or upload the data to other systems.

January 14, 2020 (R37)

New features

• Merge Documents. Your contracts are about to sparkle! In Setup, under Document Options, administrators can add custom text to include in proposals and contracts. In this release, we've added new functionality to allow you to insert merge fields as part of your custom text. For example, your property's terms and conditions can now include the group's decision due date and cutoff date—you can even make the fields bold and use bullets if you'd like. This reduces the amount of time it takes to proof and edit documents—freeing the team to focus on selling and other guest related tasks.
• BEO with totals. We've added a new BEO template that includes a summary of charges—including tax, admin, and gratuity—at the bottom of the BEO. You'll follow the same steps you do now to create a BEO but instead of selecting BEO, select BEO with Totals. We love the simplicity of the combined BEO and banquet check and suspect your customers will too.
• Batch create BEOs and banquet checks. Making your weekly BEO packet has never been easier. Using the new Batch BEOs section of the left sidebar, you can now create one file that holds multiple BEOs or banquet checks. You can create a batch for a specific booking or a date range to include BEOs from multiple bookings.
• MeetingBroker integration. Do you receive leads from Cvent, your brand website, or your property Facebook page? Searching your inbox for new RFPs, responding via email, or worse, retyping all the requirements into a booking is painful and a waste of your valuable time. With MeetingBroker integration, those RFPs are automatically imported and an inquiry is created. You can then open the inquiry, review the details, and respond with a proposal or contract, or turn down the lead and capture the lost business. Regardless, you won't have to retype anything—creating the account, contact, agency, agent, and booking is all automated for you. If you're already using MeetingBroker and want to integrate, or want to start using MeetingBroker, contact Amadeus Sales.
• Save & New button for activities. A small but helpful addition—when creating an activity you now have a Save & New button. Logging the call you just had and reminding yourself to follow up in a couple of days will be quicker than ever.
• All Active Items tab added in Setup. Property administrators that manage the menus and items in Setup will now see the All Active Items tab first. If you migrated from another system and had to clean up old menus, or if the chef changes your menus, we'll hide that clutter by default. Just click the All Items tab if you need to find or copy an inactive item.
• New user guide. Training & Help now has a comprehensive guide for first-time users with step-by-step instructions for entering their first booking.

Fixed issues

BEO header and footer text defaults to left-justified. We had to adjust this default setting to work with the new rich text formatting options. So after your update, you'll notice a change in the BEO header and footer—they used to be centered, now they will be left-justified. If you would like to change it back to centered, a property administrator just needs to go to Document Options in Setup, expand the BEO Text section, click into the field to display the toolbar, and then click the Align Center button.

CR0132201: When running the Productivity, Productivity Verification, Guestroom Pace, and Guestroom Pace Verification reports - if you select the Pickup option in the Guestroom criteria, the guestroom details in the report will be displayed based on pickup numbers. This is true whether pickup has been marked complete or not.