Upgrade to New Software

Some of our customers are now using the new Booking Matrix in test mode. If your bookings are quiet and you would like to help test drive the new booking matrix please get in touch. The new software gives you (and members) the ability to make bookings with guests having different first or last nights. In your Allocate Rooms screen, these options are turned on (they are disabled in the old software), including a "split guest" option when a guest needs to change rooms during a booking.

Along with accessing the new booking screens, the "old page" button isn't present and none of the old pages are reachable.

If you are still chasing bookings from the public, delay going on to the new software for now, we'd hate a glitch to deprive you of much needed revenue. The new software will phase in completely around the end of this year at the latest.

Direct Debit

Also in the new software release is a new payment gateway - Direct Debit online which you can choose to turn on.  One proviso: the service is not available to Australian not-for-profit entities. Please let us know if you would be able to use the gateway, i.e. can you operate a bank account via a Trust or Ltd company for example? If we don't get any feedback, we won't proceed with this gateway.

How it works

Members (anyone with a login actually) can choose to create a Direct Debit mandate and can then choose to pay by Direct Debit instead of using a credit/debit card. To use this facility you need to create an account at https://gocardless.com/en-au/ Our help page https://help.cbdweb.net/online-payments/direct-debit-gateway/ tells you how to set up cardless Direct Debit payments.

In future we will offer the ability to collect payments on a schedule, for example final payment when a deposit was initially paid, or payment after your pre-season Members' Priority Period.

Want to know what Go Cardless fees would cost your club?
Download your receipts from a normal year, e.g. 2019 and use this spreadsheet formula to calculate the cost for each payment: =MIN(4; B2*0.01+0.4) -> B2 needs to change to point to the amount of the receipt in the adjacent column. We've done this calculation and found the average across all our clubs would be about 0.5% which is a lot cheaper than credit card fees or Paypal.

This Direct Debit gateway also removes a vulnerability which exists when the Booking Service emails an invoice containing your bank account details to a member or customer. The scam occurs when a hacker gains access to the customer's computer and modifies the BSB & account details in the email. Your customer then transfers the funds to the wrong bank account. We recommend you remove bank account details from invoice emails once you implement Go Cardless.