Services are all additional parts you want to offer to your guests besides the guest rooms. Breakfasts or business packages, additional costs for pets or parking lots, mini bar items and other goods. Services can be created and changed in the Rates > Services section.
When to use services
In apaleo, services can be used in three different scenarios:
- In packages, to offer e.g. 'room with breakfast'. In apaleo, packages are modelled as rate plans. Each rate plan can include any number of services.
- As extras, like additional beds or high speed internet. Extras can be added when making a reservation and they will be booked based on their availability settings. Extras can also be added or removed from existing reservations and their prices and quantities can be changed.
- For posting single charges to the folio, like mini bar items, or extras that should only be added to specific days.
You can use one service in all three scenarios, or you can set restrictions when creating the service. You can change the restrictions at any time.
- If the service should be visible only inside apaleo - for adding it as extras, or posting directly to folios - select only Direct as booking channels. This setting is useful for goods which are consumed during the stay and not booked in advance.
Availability
In the availability section, you can control when the service is available and how many services you have available for selling.
When it comes to defining when the service is available, you have two different options which can be also combined.
| You can decide whether the service should be available throughout the stay, only on arrival or only on departure. This setting is useful for services that are sold on specific days like a welcome drink (only on arrival) or a final cleaning (only on departure). |  |
| In addition, you can decide on which weekdays the service should be available. This setting is useful for services that you don't deliver on specific days. |  |
| Last but not least, in the service limitation section, you can configure how many of those services you have available for selling for a given day. As an example, parking spots or e-bikes. |  |
Note: there is actually a difference between having a service that cannot be sold on some specific days (e.g. weekends) and having a service that is fully booked, especially when it comes to services included in rate plans. In the first case, the rate plan will be offered, but the service will not be added. In the second case, the rate plan will not be offered, and selling such a rate plan on OTAs wouldn't be possible and the day will be closed.
Pricing and accounting
apaleo calculates and books revenues and VAT automatically, if a service is added in any of the ways described above. Pay attention that the pricing and accounting is set up correctly. It can be changed later, but all services that are already added to reservations will keep the old settings.
- Set the price, and whether it is per room per night, or per person per night. When posting the service directly on the folio, the price will be entered as a suggestion, and you can overwrite it.
- Set the corresponding VAT rate for the service. If you are unsure, ask your Accounting Team or Tax Advisor.
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In case you need to adjust the VAT rate at a later stage, e.g. your country enables a temporary VAT change, then you can do it through the accounting configuration. Simply set the new starting date for the changed VAT rate and apaleo will use the new VAT rate:
When guests are staying over night it is important to know for which day the service delivery will take place. With the setting Post next day you can specify that revenues for this service will be booked always to the second day of a night. Examples for services this should be active for are breakfast, final cleaning or late check-out. Be aware that such a service will still be posted on the same day as the accommodation, if it is sold as included in a package. It will nevertheless show up on the right day in the ordered service report.
Connecting a service to a sub-account
In order to track your services' revenues, we strongly advise you to create sub-accounts and to link them to each of your services. This way you are helping your accountants a lot and you are saving them a lot of time by finding the correct transactions in your accounting software.
- Once you have created all of your services, go to Settings - Finance - Custom Sub-Account and create under the right account (Accommodation, F&B or Other) a sub-account for each of your services.
- You are free to choose the names for the sub accounts, however make sure that it makes sense and is align with your accounting settings.
- Once the sub-accounts have been created, you can then go back to Services, click into one service, scroll down to Accounting and select the right sub-account:
- You will then be able to look for all of the revenue transactions generated by a service, by simply going to Finance - Accounting - Revenues. Here you will have to choose the right Account, Sub-account and VAT type in order to see the full list of the services' transactions.
