Everything you need to know about Benson’s integration with Siteminder.
Activation
Siteminder support will need to activate Benson as a connectivity partner for your property.
First, locate your property number – given to you by Siteminder when you start with them.
Please email support@siteminder.com with your property number (and cc support@bensonsoftware.com). Issue them an instruction to activate Benson Software as your PMS.
It can take 24 hours for Siteminder to process this so please ensure you have notified them of your intention to activate Benson as your PMS.
Support Access (Suggestion)
We recommend (although this optional) that you add support@bensonsoftware.com as a user in your Siteminder account with an access set to “General”. This will enable our support department to assist with integration issues promptly.
Setting Up Siteminder
To start integrating your Siteminder account with Benson, you’ll first need to make sure that you’ve created all the Rate Types and Room Types on Siteminder before linking them to Benson.
Once you’ve got your room types and rate types setup on Siteminder, head over to the Integrations menu in Benson and open the Siteminder page.
Benson’s integration with Siteminder will not only manage the sending and receiving of reservations between the two systems, but you’ll also be able to send your availability, rate amounts, room type restrictions and rate type restrictions straight from Benson into Siteminder. This means that Benson will immediately send any updates you make to your Room and Rate settings straight through to Siteminder, ensuring that you only have one system to manage rather than two.
Your first step is to link your Siteminder account with Benson.
Now you can select the different Room Types and Rate Types that you’d like to link to Siteminder.
Make sure that you only link the Room Types and Rate Types that you’ve added to Siteminder. If you happen to add a Room Type or Rate Type from Benson that does not exist on Siteminder, your accounts will not be able to link correctly.
From the “Select Their Field” drop-down list, select either “Room Type” or “Rate Type”, depending on what you’d like to link first. Depending on what you’ve selected, the “Select Value” drop-down list will be populated with all the Room Types or Rate Types you’ve captured on Benson. Once you’ve selected the Room Type or Rate Type you’d like to link to Siteminder, simply click on the “+” icon. Rather than capturing something in the “Map Value” field, Benson will go ahead and determine this value for you. In Siteminder’s case, Benson will provide you with a number corresponding to the Room Type or Rate Type that you’ve selected.
The value given to you by Benson is what you need to capture into Siteminder in the “Benson” section of their website, under the “Rooms & Rates” menu item.
To map these values from Benson to Siteminder, open the relevant Room Type in Siteminder and make sure you’ve got the list of numbers given to you by Benson for the Room Types and Rate Types you’re about to link.
The code given to you by Benson for the Room Type will be captured as both the “Room Code” as well as the “Inventory Code”. The Rate Type’s code you’d like to link to this Room Type will be captured as the “Rate Code”. By linking your Room Types to your Rate Types this way, Siteminder will be able to fetch the Rates as you’ve captured them on Benson for that Room Type and Rate Type combination.
To sum things up, you’ll first need to establish your various Room Types and Rate Types on Siteminder. Secondly, you’ll link these Room Types and Rate Types to Benson through the “Integrations” section in Benson on the Siteminder page – all the mapping will be done on the “Company Mapping” step. Thirdly, Benson will provide you with a code for each Room Type and each Rate Type you want to link. Fourthly, this code is captured in the “Rooms & Rates” section under the “Benson” heading on your Siteminder account to the relevant Room Type / Rate Type combination.
Don’t forget to activate your integration with Siteminder from the Siteminder page on Benson once all your setup is completed.
Sending and Receiving Inventory, Reservations and Rates.
Once you’ve activated your integration with Siteminder, you’ll have the option to do two things at any point. Firstly, you’ll be able to send your inventory, availability, rates and all rate type and room type restrictions from Benson to Siteminder. You’ll be able to select any date range of your choice before clicking “Send Inventory”. Secondly, you’ll be able to fetch any bookings that have been made through Siteminder by selecting a date range and clicking “Get New Bookings”.
However, Benson will automatically fetch any new bookings from Siteminder every few minutes and create them for you, so you won’t need to do this manually or worry about your availability going out of sync between Benson and Siteminder. Furthermore, Benson will automatically send any availability changes to Siteminder depending on the activity happening on Benson. Benson and Siteminder will notify you if anything of this nature if unable to be sent or received.
Lastly, any changes you make to your Rates or Blocked Rooms will automatically get sent through to Siteminder as well, so you’ll rarely need to update this data manually.
While Benson will automatically keep Siteminder notified of any changes to availability, rates and so forth as they occur, the system will also send a bulk load of information to Siteminder at midnight each day as a secondary-measure to ensure everything is kept in-sync.