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JACKRABBIT SYSTEMSJRES RESERVATION ENGINE
USER GUIDE & HANDBOOK
CONTENTS
Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Setting up PayPal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The User Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Contact Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
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The JackRabbit Reservation Engine, or JReS, is a lightweight, but full-featured and easy to use reservation engine . JReS is provided FREE of charge to lodgings participating on a Book Direct site through a city or state tourism organization .
JReS is provided for FREE based on a self-serve concept . After signing up to use JReS, you will receive an E-mail with your login and password and a link to your very own JReS system . Once you have logged in, you’ll see seven sections:
HOTELThe hotel section allows you to edit most of the information you used when signing up, along with other specific details to control the information visible to consumers on the front-end of the system. In this section you’ll find information such as the description, policies and contact information . Some of the information is self-explanatory, and some information contains a brief description, giving more details about a particular format or the information required .
ROOMSThe rooms section allows you to create and configure rooms available at your property. Rooms consist of a room name, a description, an image along with occupancy and beds . Here you will set minimum stay requirements for the room during certain periods of the year and manipulate check-
in and check-out restrictions on specific days of the week . You can also mark the room as inactive, during a period of maintenance or closure, for instance, which will prevent the room from showing up in the search results . Additionally, you can also indicate the number of additional rooms if you have similar rooms that rent for the same amount . When creating a room, you must also set a base rate, which will serve as a placeholder and populate your room with rates for an entire year . Of course, rates can always be changed in the Rates and Availability Section .
RATES & AVAILABILITYThe Rates and Availability section allows you to edit the rates and availability for each of your rooms . Rates are initially populated when setting up a room using the base rate; however, using the calendar in this section you can easily manipulate rates throughout the year . To edit an individual room night, click on the rate in the calendar and adjust the price and then click update . Here you can manually adjust the room rates across future nights by selecting one of three options: the night you selected, all future days of the week (matching the day you selected), and all future days . Once you select one of the two latter options, a calendar will appear, asking you to choose a day the rate change should propagate to . Additionally, you can also mark individual room nights as inactive, to adjust for changes in your inventory, for instance, in the case of a walk-in or a phone reservation . When reservations are made, your inventory is automatically adjusted and inactive and booked nights are displayed on the calendar page . Reservation-specific information can be found in the reservations section of the system .
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
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PHOTO GALLERIESThe photo gallery section allows you to upload hotel photos to create an animated photo gallery appearing on the home page of the reservation engine. The ability to create room-specific photo galleries is coming soon .
RESERVATIONSThe reservations section allows you to view and manage all reservations made through the system . By clicking on the magnifying glass by a reservation, you can see the details about the reservation . You can delete reservations by clicking on the delete button, which will remove the reservation and add the room back into your inventory . Initial notifications of new reservations are sent to your email .
WIDGETSThe widgets section provides two snippets of HTML code that you or your website administrator can copy and paste into your own website, to link your website to JReS . You can choose between a search form and a check availability button . Soon we will have an option to get a custom widget designed and built to look and feel more like your own website .
ACCOUNTThe account section is where you can change your JReS password .
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW continued
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GETTING STARTED
LOG IN TO YOUR JRES DASHBOARDgo to www .your-jres-url .jackrabbitreservations .com/admin your-jres-url is unique to your JReS account
EDIT YOUR PROPERTY’S INFORMATION
• The first link you will see is called ‘Hotels’. This link will take you to a page that is almost identical to the initial sign up page .
• You may edit the information and update it at any time .
CREATE AND UPDATE ROOM INFORMATION
• The second link called ‘Rooms’ will allow you to create and update room information .1. If you have never created a room before, you will
be greeted with the following message:There are no rooms in this system . To start, please create a new room .
2. Click ‘create a new room’ to begin the process.3 . Enter the necessary information such as:
Room Name Description (Feel free to use the formatting tools) Base Room Rate Number of Beds Occupancy Number of Identical Rooms Room Image Stay Limits (This is optional)
4 . Once you are finished, hit ‘Create’! This is also the same process for updating a room.
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BUILD A PHOTO GALLERY FOR YOUR PROPERTY • Click on the third link called ‘Photo Galleries’. • Simply click on the ‘Build gallery for
‘yourpropertynamehere’ and you will be directed to a page to upload photos, provide descriptions, and manage the content that you would like the public to be able to see .
GENERATE RATES BASED ON THE ROOMS YOU HAVE CREATED
• In order to create room rates and availability, you must already have created at least one room . 1. Once you have created a room, click the fourth link called
‘Rates & Availability’.2. All of your Rooms that you have inputted will show up in an
itemized list on this page with the rates shown in blue.3. You can click on any of the blue price links in order to set
rates and availability for a particular room.4. Once you are finished editing rates and availability for a room, click ‘Update’.5. Once you hit ‘Update’, you will be taken back to the Rates and Availability page to review your
changes.
VIEW ALL CURRENT RESERVATIONS MADE VIA YOUR ONLINE RESERVATION ENGINE• The ‘Reservations’ link will show any and all current reservations.• To view past reservations, click ‘Show checked-out reservations’ • Sort your reservations by clicking any of the column titles . You can sort by:
Confirmation code, First Name, Last Name, Room, Check- in, Check -out, Adults, Beds, or created_at .
WIDGETS• The ‘Widgets’ link will provide you with the necessary HTML code for both the ‘Search Form
Widget’ and the ‘Button Widget’ which will take customers from your website to your Online Reservation Engine to book their room .
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SETTING UP PAYPAL
YOU MUST HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT• to accept online payments, go to www .paypal .com to register
LOG IN TO YOUR JRES DASHBOARD• go to www .your-jres-url .jackrabbitreservations .com/admin
your-jres-url is unique to your JReS account
CLICK ON THE HOTEL TAB• Scroll down to the PayPal ID field and enter an
email associated with your PayPal account• Enter a minimum payment amount
Use this if you wish to require a fixed dollar amount that the customer must put down to reserve a room.
• OR - Enter a percentage amount Use this if you wish to require a certain percentage of the total reservation fee that the customer must put down in order to reserve a room. Simply enter the percentage amount (ex. ‘25’) and check the box for ‘Use Minimum Payment as Percentage’.
CLICK ‘UPDATE’• After you have entered all of your information, scroll down to the
bottom of the page and click the ‘Update’ button . • Your customers will now be able to reserve a room and pay using their
credit card, debit card, OR using their PayPal account online . The funds will be directly deposited into your PayPal account .
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USER EXPERIENCE
Once you finish setting up your lodging information and uploading pictures in your JReS Admin, you will have a website similar to this:
CHECK AVAILABILITYVisitors can check your current rates and availability using the search widget on the left hand side of your home page .
BROWSE ROOMS AND VIEW RATESAfter inputing their search criteria and clicking ‘Search’, visitors will be taken to a results page where they can browse your available rooms and view your current rates .
BOOK NOWBy clicking the ‘Book Now’ link to the right of the property, visitors will be taken to a summary page which outlines all taxes and fees and allows them to start the reservation process .
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USER EXPERIENCE continued
SUMMARY PAGEBefore booking their room, visitors will be taken to the summary page .
• Here, visitors can view their selected dates of travel and number of rooms/guests
• View all Taxes, Fees and the Minimum Payment to Reserve, in addition to the room rate
• Enter their personal and contact information
• Read terms and conditions and must agree before proceeding
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USER EXPERIENCE continued
RESERVATION PAGE
If you do not have PayPal set up on your JReS Reservation Engine to receive payments, then this will be the confirmation page for your customer’s booking .
If you do have PayPal set up, then there will be a ‘Buy Now’ button at the bottom of the page which takes the customer to a PayPal transaction page .
PAYPAL TRANSACTION PAGEHere, visitors can choose to either pay with a credit card, or pay using their PayPal account, if they have one .
The payment will be directly deposited into the PayPal account you set up in your admin . See ‘Setting Up PayPal’ on page 4.
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USER EXPERIENCE continued
CONFIRMATION E-MAIL
Your customer will receive a confirmation E-mail both from PayPal and from your lodging’s reservation engine once their payment has been processed .
The confirmation E-mail from your lodging will provide them with the dates that they booked, the room type, their payment information, and a confirmation number which you can use to find their booking quickly and easily through the ‘Reservations’ tab in your JReS admin .
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JReS FAQ
Q: “On the Hotels page, you ask us to choose a ‘Website Background Color’. I chose R 224, but it did not come up. Tell me why?”
A: R 224 is not a valid color entry for the Website Color Background field. Only hexadecimal values may be entered. An example of a hexadecimal value is: 1B0009 Be sure and click the ‘help’ link if you need help choosing a hexadecimal color.
Q: “On the Hotels page, what does ‘Extra Footer Field’ mean?”
A: When you sign up for JReS, a default footer is automatically generated which includes your property’s name, address, and contact information. Entering text into the ‘Extra Footer Field’ will add a line of text onto your reservation engine’s main page footer. Here is an example:
Q: “When I enter a percentage, specifically “8%” into the ‘Tax Rate’ field, I receive the following error:
A: When entering a tax rate into the ‘Tax Rate’ field, you must enter the tax rate without the percentage sign. So if your hotel has a 8% tax rate, you would simply type ‘8’ into the ‘Tax Rate’ field.
EXTRA FOOTER TEXT
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Q: “I uploaded photos to the ‘Photo Galleries’ section but they were missing when I checked it. Why?”
A: Make sure when uploading photos that your images are either .JPEG or .PNG file format. To double check if your photos were uploaded successfully, go to the URL for your specific reservation. Once, there you should see the images you uploaded at the bottom of the page next to the ‘Check Availability’ widget.
JReS FAQ continued
