Base Rate Invoice Templates

To make life easier and to keep your invoices consistent and correct Guestbook 247 has base rate invoice templates. These templates are optional but highly recommended. You can create as many templates as you need. A template defines what invoice lines the booking base rate is broken into. For instance if you have a base rate of £100 for a 2 night booking and this £100 includes room, breakfast and tourist tax - all a different tax rates then templates will help with this.

We would need to define a Bed, & Breakfast template and define the different invoice lines. In this case:

• Tourist Tax as a fixed unit cost with zero Tax

• Breakfast as a fixed unit cost with 15% Tax

• The rest of the base rate allocated to the room, so 100% of what's left at a Tax rate of 20%

You can have several different templates, one can be marked as a default, which is used for bookings that are imported, come through BookIt or external OTAs.

To get started access https://app.guestbook247.com/InvoiceBaseRateTemplate This is the list of current templates.

Add New Template

Click Add Template to add a new template, supply a name and description. Then from the list of templates click "Edit" next to the new template.

Default

From this edit page you can mark this template to be the default.

Intro Text

From the template edit page you can add an invoice introduction text. This appears in the invoice above the list of invoice lines. Use it for your own greeting and explanations. Can provide English or German language versions. Note this intro text appears for all invoices using this template. You can also add invoice specific text from the Invoice page in addition.

Invoice Lines

To add invoice category lines simply click "Add Invoice Line". This brings up a form from which you can select an Invoice Category, for instance Room. If an Invoice Category is not yet defined then access Invoice Category page to add it.

You need to say whether this invoice line is a fixed cost item or a percentage of the base rate. Fixed cost items are things like tourist tax & breakfast. The fixed cost is the per night rate. Alternatively an item maybe a percentage of the base rate, after fixed cost items have been deduced. Typically the Room rate would be a percentage (so leave fixed cost unchecked). For the example template of breakfast, tourist tax and room, the room would be 100% non-fixed cost.

You can have any combination of fixed cost and non-fixed cost invoice lines. Be careful that the non-fixed cost items add up to 100%. A total is displayed and highlighted if it is not 100%.

No matter how you define the template invoice lines Guestbook will attempt to allocate the base rate according to the template. Fixed cost items are allocated first and then the percentage based items. If for instance you say Room is 50% but forget to add any other non-fixed cost invoice lines (thus not adding up to 100%) Guestbook will allocate all the non fixed cost base rate to Room - this ensure we always allocate the whole base rate. You can always change an individual invoice from the Booking Invoice page.

Changing the Base Rate

You can change the base rate value from the invoice page but it's assumed the based rate should in most cases be fixed when a booking is first agreed with a guest. You can change any fixed-cost base rate invoice lines, such as the number of breakfasts. Note - Changing the invoice lines item value or quantity does not change the base rate but only the distribution across the invoice lines.

Switching Templates

You can switch between templates from the Booking Invoice page at any time.Any non base rate invoice lines you've added will be preserved.

Not using Templates

You don't have to allocate a booking to a base rate template. In this case the base rate is initially all allocated to the "Base Rate" invoice category.

Locking Base Items

When you close an invoice, especially if you handle advance payments, then the base rate invoice lines are locked for editing and deletion. This is because once payment is allocated via closing an invoice it makes no sense to change those invoice lines. If there are mistakes you need to correct these with reversal invoice lines.