Venuebooker

 

 

 

Getting started

If you wish to get started quickly then log in to VenueBooker by clicking on the VenueBooker icon and use the username master with the password system. You can move on to page 5.

 

If you wish to add users with specific permissions, however, follow the following guidelines:

After setup, you should have the following files and relevant shortcuts installed to your desktop and programs menu:

 

VBAdmin                     – The VenueBooker Administration program.

VenueBooker               – The client software.

VBooker.mdb              – A blank VenueBooker database (No shortcut).

 

The Vbooker.mdb file will have been installed to the location specified in the setup program, preferably a central location where all clients can access it – usually in a shared folder on a server.

 

Run the VBAdmin.exe, you will see the following login form:

 

 

The first thing to do is point the software towards the Vbooker.mdb file (the location you chose for database path in the setup – by default this is C:\Program Files\VenueBooker\Database\VBooker.mdb).  Click the |…| button and browse to it.  The username defaults to Admin for the VBAdmin.exe, and the default password is “venuebooker” (without the quotes), this can be changed once logged in by selecting Admin Password from the Options menu.  N.B. All VenueBooker passwords are case sensitive.

Once logged in, you will see the main form:

 

 

Before you can access the client software, you need to create a user, and assign them permissions.  Click the Add User button:

 

Type in the new users name and email, and enter a password for them, then click Add.

You will now be returned to the main form, with a new user added and visible in the user list.  N.B. Usernames default to a users first name, followed by the first letter of their surname with no space – shown on the right hand side in blue.

 

 

 

 

Now go to the User Permissions tab, and set some permissions:

 

When a new user is added, no permissions are assigned by default.  Click Update Now once the permissions are set.

 

Now that you have a user, you can log into the main program.  Close the VBAdmin program, and run the VenueBooker.exe.  N.B. Due to the reporting in the program, it requires that you have a default printer, even if it is not real –  installing  the Microsoft Windows Fax Printer should resolve any issues you may come across.

 

Once again, you will get the login form.  If you are running VenueBooker from the same machine and Windows login as you ran the VBAdmin program, then the database path should be already filled in, as this is stored in the current users registry, otherwise, set it as before.  Enter the newly created username and password, and click Login.

 

After clicking OK to the evaluation message, you should now see the main VenuBooker form:

 

 

The first thing you need to do, is add a room, assuming you gave the user the permission to do so.  From the Manage menu, select Add Room:

 

 

Give the room a name (10 characters max), adjust the capacity, and write a description if you wish. Then click Add.  You will now be able to click the Room Rates button and add different rates for the room (see below for more).  Click close when completed and you will be returned to the main form:

 

 

Multiple room rates.

 

If you would like to add multiple room rates then when creating a room click add to add the room, then click the room rates button.

You will then see the following:

 

 

You have to give each hourly rate a description and then click add.  You can add as many room rates as you wish. When you are done click Update and you will be taken back to the room page where you can click close.

When adding bookings now you can click on the charge button and select a charge rate for each booking.

 

 

 

The room appears with its timeline for the day.  The room name is a hyperlink that will allow you to modify or delete the room (with the correct permissions).  To add a booking, click the left mouse button near the start time of the booking, and keeping the mouse button held down, drag your mouse to the right for the desired time, and then release your mouse button.  If you release the mouse button without dragging, the duration of the booking defaults to one hour.

 

 

Type a name in the Booked by field – pressing the |…| button allows you to select a predefined client from the contact database, however, this will be currently empty as this is the first time your database has been used.  To add a client, select Add Client from the Manage menu when back in the main form (so long as you have permission).  If the room has an hourly charge, it is automatically calculated for the duration of the booking. The number of Attendees defaults to the room capacity.  Ticking the Link check box causes both Times to change when you manually change just one of them, by the same amount.

 

After clicking the Add button, you are returned to the main form, with the booking blocked out.  You will also notice that the background has turned pink, this is just to indicate that this particular day has at least one booking – useful for when not all of your rooms are visible in the room scroll box.

 

 

Clicking on a booking on a room’s timeline will cause the tab sheets in the bottom panel to populate with the bookings data.  This booking could then be modified or deleted by clicking on the corresponding buttons in the bottom right hand corner (these buttons are only active when a current booking has been clicked and therefore selected.

 

 

Further Features

 

Equipment

 

To add  equipment to rooms for bookings you first need to set up the equipment you have on offer.  To do this click on the Manage menu at the top, then click Manage Equipment (you will only be allowed to do this if you allowed yourself the permission in VBAdmin).  You will see the following form :

 

 

 

First, click Add Category and choose a category name and click OK (for example Audio/ Visual or Food/Drink).  Once you have done this you can add equipment to the category by clicking Add Equipment and choosing descriptive names for your equipment (e.g. Television, Cassette Player).  You can also add a value to the equipment which will be represented when invoicing clients. You can now click close on the form above once you have finished adding equipment.  To add equipment when creating a new booking, drag along the room timeline as before to create a booking and then add client name etc as before.  Now you can click on the second tab along “Equipment”:

 

 

You will then be presented with the following dialog box, where you need to click the Change button:

 

Now you can add as much equipment to the booking as you wish by double clicking on the equipment or category you desire. Once done click on the Update booking button and the booking will have equipment attached.

 

Repeat Bookings

 

To add a repeat booking for multiple days or even weeks make a new booking as normal by dragging the mouse over the room bar timeline and then Click on the third tab this time, Repeat booking. This can be seen below:

 

 

Tick each box that you would like to  repeat the booking for and choose how many weeks. Make Sure you tick the “Repeat this booking Every” tick box.  Then click on the add button and you will have made a booking on multiple dates.

 

Monthly View

 

To see an overview of the month, click on the Monthly View tab at the top of your main form (above the room timeline).  This will show you the following screen (assuming you have some bookings present):

 

 

You can see at a glance from this form that there are no bookings other than on July 22nd – 31st, as they have turned pink  You can see that today is the 22nd, as the box has turned blue.  You can be taken to the details of any of these booking by double clicking on the booking text in the box.

 

Modifying Bookings

 

To modify a booking you have to be in the daily view of the program.  Select the booking you wish to modify by clicking once with the left mouse button on it.  You will see the outside of the box for the booking animate slightly rotating around the box:

 

 

You can now review the booking at the bottom of the screen, even see the equipment added and who the client was.  If you wish to delete the booking simply click the Delete button.  If you wish to modify anything about it click the modify button.  This will take you to a form where you can change anything about the booking – the time, the name, the equipment used, add more equipment etc.  Once you have modified as you wish click the Modify button.

 

Reporting

 

To view reports click on the third tab in daily view (at the top left of the screen called Reports.  You will see the following screen:

 

From here you can choose what you want to report on. Make your choices on the date range, which rooms, whether confirmed etc and click Build and Preview Report.  You will then see the basic report listing everything about the bookings made with those criteria:

 

You can also perform a more simplified report just on the current days bookings by going back to the main form and clicking on the File menu at the top.  Then click Print and then Today.  Your printer will print out a report of all bookings today.

 

Navigation

 

You can easily jump to any room by clicking on the Jump To drop down box and choosing a room:

 

 

The room you selected will flash blue to indicate your choice.

 

 

Organising Reources

 

There are two ways to simplify your administration of resources within VenueBooker. Firstly you can add Room Groupings.  This feature lets you create groups of rooms (or resources) that you can then view as a group.  This will make the management of rooms  significantly easier, especially when you have a significant number.  Examples of room groupings might be; Sports facilities, conference facilities or rooms in a particular building/ site.  To add a room group click on the manage menu and choose Room Groups:

 

 

You can then click the new Group button and type a group name. Once done, you can add rooms to the group by highlighting them in the right hand box and clicking the left arrow, thus sending them to the middle box and adding them to the group:


 


When you are done you can close the Room Groups selection box and return to the daily view.  You can now filter the daily view and view any particular group made. First click the Refresh button to refresh the database data, then click the Group filter selector (currently showing no filters applied) and choose the filter you want to apply to see just those rooms in the daily view:

 

 

The second facility designed to make room administration more manageable is the booking type feature.  This is designed so that bookings this time can be grouped.  You can report on booking types and is therfore very powerful.  You might need to group bookings based on what part of your organisation they relate to, e.g. the catering side rather than the conferencing side.  Another example might be that you want to track all bookings made that are centrally sponsored, you would set up a type that when making a booking reflected that it was a sponsored booking.  To set up booking types click on the manage menu and select Booking types:

 

 

 

You can then click New and type a name for the type.  You can also choose a colour to represent the type.  Once finished adding types you will see a screen similar to the following:

 


 


Once done click close and go back to the daily view.  When adding a booking now you can add a booking type to the booking.  Click on a room timeline box to add a booking and then fill in information required as normal.  This time though click the elipses […] box next to Type to select a booking type:

 

 

 

 

Now select the type desired by highlighting the type and click Select.  Finish the booking by clicking Add and you will be taken back to the daily view.  Your booking will now be present on the timeline.  However, as you selected a type this time, it will now be a coloured box rather than the usual black lined box. In my example I chose the type associated with the colour red, so the box is filled with red:

 

 

 

 

This provides a useful way of visually seeing in an instant what type of booking has been made.

 

You can also use booking types to report.  You can go the Reports tab and run a report as usual, this time selecting a booking type to filter the results to just report on booking of the selected type:

 

 

 

 

 

 


Invoicing

 

 

If you want to invoice a client for a booking, or bookings then click on the booking you wish to invoice them for and click the Invoice button.

 

This will bring up the following screen, indicating which client you are about to invoice:

 

You have to tick at least one booking that you wish to invoice, checking each box.

 

To create an invoice for more than this one booking then expand the date range to the right to see bookings between these dates (you will only be able to do this for actual clients, not quick bookings):

 

 

Tick as many bookings as you wish to add them to the invoice.

 

You can then amend the tax rate (by clicking the elipses button[…]).

Click the Save Invoice button when you are happy with it.  You will then be able to either open the invoice for editing or print it using the Open and Print buttons.

 

 

 

You can also generate an invoice of this nature by going to the invoice tab in VenueBooker:

 

 

You then click on the button labelled Create new Range booking for Client.  You can then choose the client you wish to invoice, and then select the date range etc as above.

 

Invoice Report

 

To see a list of your invoices go to the invoice tab.  You will the invoice grid showing a list of invoices.  You can control which invoices you see on screen using the Options of see ALL invoices, those that are Paid or those that are unpaid, those that have been printed and those that have not:

 

 

You can also tick the filter by client box and click the elipses[…] button to just see invoices for a certain client.  You can also use the date range selector to limit invoices to certain dates.  Once you have chosen what to see on screen you can choose to see this in a report for printing or saving.

Simply click on the Build and Preview Report button to have a report of your invoices including totals:

 

 

 

Receiving payment for invoices

 

If you wish to mark an invoice as paid then simply select the invoice (you can do this by double clicking the invoice in the invoice grid).  You will the the details for this invoice, you can tick the check box marked this invoice is paid and then Save invoice.

The invoice will then be marked as paid if you looked at the invoice grid on the invoicing tab

 

Modifying Invoice templates

 

You can edit the way your invoices are laid out, what they contain and their general appearance.  You do this by first going into an invoice so you are at the following screen:

 

Click on the template tab to amend the invoicing template:

 

You can type any information you require anywhere in the form, highlight text and use the right mouse button to change type, bold, italic etc.

To add merge fields such as client address, invoice number and invoice details (booking info and charges) then use the merge button as follows and choose what item you require:

 

When you have finished then click the Save button.

Close the template screen when done.

 

You can also edit this template file directly in Word by opeing the file INVOICETEMPLATE.RTF in your VenueBooker folder and editing, adding images etc.  Note: Your MSWord page margins need to be set at 3cm left and right by default for the invoice to print correctly.

 

 

Prevent Bookings On Particular Days

 

If you would like to stop bookings from being recorded on particular days then you can with VenueBooker. Simply go the relevant day in the daily view and then go to the manage menu and click on toggle Day bookable:

 

 

Providing there are no bookings in the day you will see all of the rooms timelines as greyed out – they will not let you add bookings.  You will need to remove all bookings from the day before being able ton achieve this:

 

 

Backup

 

Always backup your data.  Wherever the Vbooker.mdb file is saved (the database location) it needs to be backed up regularly – we recommend every day.  All users will need to be logged out of VenueBooker when this backup occurs for it to be successful.