Before we get started on the process of checking-in and checking-out, it’s good to know that there are three places that this can be done from:
The Front Desk – which will always clearly indicate how many rooms are checking-in, checking-out and staying over.
The Reservation Overview page – by clicking on a room expecting to arrive or depart today, you’ll be given the option to check-in or check-out.
The room section within a reservation – the option to check-in or check-out will be in the form of a button at the bottom-left corner of the room page within a reservation.
Check-in a Room
On the day a reservation is scheduled to arrive, you’ll be given the option to check in each room of the reservation.
Checking-in a reservation is done room-by-room as not all guests may arrive at the exact same time on the day of arrival. Therefore, in order to have a reservation that is “completely” checked-in, you’ll need to make sure that every single room within that reservation has been checked-in.
You can initiate the check-in process from one of the three places mentioned above in Benson. Your very first step will be to select the rooms that are checking-in. You can select as many as you want to, but you will need to select at least one room in order to continue the process. For example, if two out of three rooms have arrived at your property to check-in, then only those two rooms need to be selected and the final room can always be selected when those guests arrive.
The second step of checking-in will give you the opportunity to capture any additional guest details in each room. You’ll be able to open up each guest within the room and capture a name, email and contact number.
The third step will allow you to decide which pending charges (apart from accommodation charges) to keep or cancel. For example, if an airport transfer was expected to happen and was provided to the guests by your property, you may have added this as a charge several days before their arrival. It is at this point in the check-in process where you’ll be able to accrue this charge if the transfer was provided, or you can cancel the charge if the guests did not make use of the transfer service.
Once you are happy with the rooms you have selected, the guest details and the status of any pending charges, you can go ahead and confirm the process. Your selected rooms will now be checked-in.
The ability to check-in a Room is available from one day prior to arrival and is also available every day after the Arrival Day. This means that you can still check-in a Room later if you forgot to do it on the day of arrival.
Check-out a Room
Like checking-in a reservation, the ability to start the check-out process will become available on the day the reservation is scheduled to depart. You can initiate the check-out process through on of the three places mentioned at the top of this article.
If you want to do an ‘early check-out’ you will need to firstly adjust the check-out day to the current day.
The first thing you’ll need to do is select which rooms are checking-out. You’ll do this by hovering over each room card and clicking “SELECT”. You can also unselect the room by hovering over it and then clicking “UNSELECT”. Once you have chosen which rooms are checking-out, you can proceed to the next step.
Again, and quite importantly, a reservation is only considered to be completely checked-out once ALL rooms in the reservation have been checked-out. Benson will start to implement a number of rules and checks when you completely check-out a reservation which particularly apply to invoicing.
The next and final stage in the check-out process requires you to settle and sort out any invoices that need settling. The rules themselves, however, are only strictly enforced if the entire reservation is about to be checked-out. If you are checking-out some rooms but not all, then you can simply confirm the process and have those rooms checked-out.
However, as soon as the last room in a reservation is about to be checked-out, Benson will require you to have all the invoices in order.
If a client with an open account has been assigned to an invoice, then there will be no need to settle that invoice as it will be sent directly to the client’s account where it can be paid later. On the other hand, if an account is either not assigned to a client or assigned to a client who doesn’t have an open account, then you will need to completely settle and balance that invoice before the check-out process can be completed. Benson has enforced this rule so that no one checks-out of your property without having all invoices accounted for.
With all invoices sorted and settled, you will now be able to complete the check-out process. The reservation will now become “locked down” and you will not be able to edit most parts of it.
Like checking-in, the ability to check-out a Room is available from the day before departure and then from every day after departure. This allows you to check-out any Rooms that you previously forgot to check-out in the past.
Undoing A Check-In or Check-Out
You’ll be able to undo a check-in or check-out at any time provided that you have the ability to check-in or check-out rooms. The process is similar to checking-in and check-out, but simpler in that you are not required to edit Guests or settle Invoices and so forth.
You can only undo a check-in or check-out from the Room section on the Reservation page.
Since checking-in or checking-out a Room in a Reservation locks down certain aspects of a Reservation, you may want to undo these actions in case you accidentally check-in or check-out a Room before making certain adjustments.