| There are many types of interfaces - each with its own unique ability to help your property improve guest satisfaction, control costs, and generate revenue. Here's a list of our most popular interfaces and what you can expect these interfaces to do for you. Please contact one of our sales representatives to discuss compatibility issues between us and your hardware (phone system, movie system, key system, etc.) before making a decision to purchase an interface. Call Accounting - This interface will take the call date, including the charge, from your phone system and post it to the guest's account. It can also keep track of all calls placed from non room extensions or from rooms that are not checked in.
This allows you to be sure you charge the guest for all appropriate calls and catch calls being made by your staff without having to read this information from a phone system report. Not only does this interface save you time, but it ensures that no calls are missed.
Call Costing - This interface can take just the SMDR data from your phone system, without any rates attached, and apply a charge to the call. You can set the amount to charge for local, long distance, international, information, etc. calls. This interface works with out Call Accounting interface and often costs much less (as little as 1/2 the cost) than a hardware based solution that might be provided by your phone system provider.
PBX - This interface allows communication between the phone system and our software and allows the phones to be enabled and restricted without having to pick up the console phone. With this interface, you will no longer have to worry about guests or staff making calls from a vacant room, because once the guest checks out, the phone will be disabled. Some phone systems even allow call restrictions based on the type of payment and guest credit. This would allow you to set cash guests phones to only allow local calling, while credit card guests might have local and long distance.
Another function of this interface, which is common in many phone systems, is the maid status change. Maids would be able to pick up the phone in the room and dial a few numbers, which would tell our software that the room has been cleaned and we would set the status appropriately.
Voice Mail - This interface allows communication between the phone system / voice mail system and our software and allow the automatic creation and removal of guest voice mailboxes. This ensures that the guest will always have a clear mailbox when they check in and also provides the security of the automatic removal of all messages once they check out.
Some phone systems, like Avaya and Northern Telecom, are able to accomplish this functionality through the PBX interface, so, in some cases, the purchase of the PBX interface will be all you need to manage the PBX and Voice Mail.
Movie - This interface allows the automatic posting of movie, game, internet, etc. charges from a movie system like OnCommand, Spectradyne, etc. This allows you to be sure that all charges are posted to the guest without having to read a report and having one of your employees manually enter them. The posting is instant, so you never have to worry about a guest not being charged properly when they check out.
Key - This interface allows communication between the key system and our software, making electronic key creation much easier and much faster. Once a guest is checked in, a message is sent to the key system with the room number and the departure date. The employee simply decides how many to make and inserts the cards. This can be a life saver when the lobby is full. The extra 15 - 30 seconds of time savings per guest can really make a difference. This also ensures that the keys are properly encoded with the right room number and the proper departure date.
Point of Sale - While we encourage you to use our own seamlessly integrated Point of Sale system, we understand that many customers may already have a system in place. For this we offer an interface, using the Micros standard (the most common standard and available on most modern Point of Sale systems). This allows your restaurant, store, etc. to bill the guest's room. Upon receiving a request for room billing from the Point of Sale system, we will check to be sure the guest is valid and what their credit standing is, and then reply back to the point of Sale system with this information. It is up to the Point of Sale system, at this time, do handle this data by either allowing the charge or, in case of a cash guest, it might warn and even require an override. Once the charge is issued, a message is sent back to our software with the details of the transaction and it is posted to the guest's folio.
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