There are two ways to add phone charges in BookingCenter:

1. Manually – by creating CALLS as an Inventory Item and adding the total as a line item(s) – call by call – to the booking account. This is usually done by manually processing the room calls from a separate phone system, looking at the total, and adding this total to the Folio (MyPMS) or the Booking (Desktop).
2. Automatically – by using the BookingCenter Call Accounting interface, the calls will be added as line items to the Folio (MyPMS) or the Booking Account (Desktop) – a complete record of the call including the extension that dialed the call, its duration, and the destination – automatically. This requires that you have a PBX (or similar) phone system, purchase the BookingCenter Call Accounting Module, and have a Call Accounting program that can cost and post the the calls. You charge the Guest as you normally would, but there is a complete record of all the calls made on their Folio.

If you don’t have a lot of phone calls and don’t look at phone charges as a revenue center, than an automatic system will only add marginal help and profits to your business. However, if you have more than 6-10 rooms and you make money on calls, or desire a 3-star rating, we believe that using the Call Accounting Module pays for itself – with better records of each call, accurate charges every time, and less wasted time by the staff.

BookingCenter does not natively support PBX SMDR (the data that comes out of a PBX telephone system). Instead, BookingCenter works with 3rd party Call Accounting software to support the PBX data and ‘cost’ each call for active bookings.

We recommend Profit Watch from Metropolis for all global customers (they support phone system anywhere) while Hansen Software’s Cost + supports all USA and Canadian phone systems. Both run on any Windows platform and are easy-to-use & learn and offer great support for ALL PBX systems in their respective countries.

How the Call Accounting Module Works

1. Purchase a license for Profit Watch from Metropolis or one from Hansen. BookingCenter has preferred pricing, just ask us.
2. Purchase the BookingCenter Call Accounting Module $300.
3. We help you get BookingCenter configured to accept the data from Profit Watch/CommSoft.
4. Set up each “room” in BookingCenter with an extension that matches what the PBX and Call Accounting software have been setup to receive and price.
5. Between “check in” and “check out”, BookingCenter polls the call accounting software and appends the call summary to all active bookings – where to, for how long, and at what cost.

For technical details on setting up and troubleshooting the Call Accounting Module, view this article.