Guest Overview

The Guest Manager in ExceedFurther is designed to support Ronald McDonald Houses and similar institutions as they provide services to families and their children. Using the Guest features, you can assign guest families to rooms in various locations, create charges and accept payments for services, track requests and waiting lists, and generate statistics about house utilization.

You can define and manage multiple rooms in multiple locations and report each location separately or combine all locations. You can define attributes for the patients and families and add any number of user defined fields. The Guest Manager includes a calendar view to help you see exactly what rooms are likely to become available each day so you can accommodate requests and confirm future stays. As you add expected occupants to rooms, you can indicate any special needs they may have to help prepare for their arrival. You can track any extra items that guests may check out and use during their stay, and you charge for these items, if necessary, and make sure they are returned on departure.

Getting Started with Guests

To begin using the Guest features in ExceedFurther, you need to do the following:

Consider the types of locations you would like to track. For example, in addition to your Ronald McDonald House, you may wish to track families who are staying in local hotels, with host families, or in rooms at the hospital. These locations are defined by the Guest Location Type code, and they should be set up before you define your actual locations. You use Location Type codes to set filters for what rooms you wish to view in the Guest Manager and in reports. They are entered on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.
For each actual location, create a Location code, for example, RMH or Holiday Inn. Each location code is assigned one of the location types you defined above. As with Location Type codes, you can also use Location codes to filter what you are viewing. For example, you would use the Hotel Location Type to view all rooms in hotels, but the Holiday Inn Location code to view just a single hotel. The Location codes are entered on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.
For each room at each location, add a Room Number code. As you add your rooms, you link them to a specific Location code, add a standard room rate, and enter the room attributes, like the number and types of beds, to the comments. These attributes appear when you are assigning families to rooms. The Room Number codes are entered on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.
There are two other codes that you can assign to each family's stays: the Region they come from and the relative Priority they have for being selected to stay to the house. The Region codes are used strictly for reporting purposes and should be designed to provide whatever information you need to know about the families you serve. The Priority appears in the Request and Waiting Lists to assist you in deciding what families should be invited to stay. You define your own Region and Priority codes and enter them on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.
Each family that you serve includes at least one patient. There are several attributes that are assigned to patients and need to be defined: Relationship, Diagnosis, Medical Facility and Ethnicity. Like the Region and Priority, these are defined by creating codes for each one. Relationship codes indicate the relationship between the patient and the guest or guests staying in the house. It is generally for information only but can be used for statistical reporting if that is of interest. The Diagnosis and Medical Facility codes are used for reporting, but of course may also be important for contacting the medical team. These four types of codes are also entered on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.
You may wish to tag patient and guest family names as you add them. If so, you should define the tags you expect to use.
If you wish to track additional information about each family's stay or about their patients, you can create any number of User Defined Fields for either case.
Charge Type codes are used to create charges for staying at the house or hotel. You can create different Charge Type codes, each with its own rate, for the different ways that you might charge for a room. If your only charge for using a room is the room rate attached to the Room Number code, you only need to create a single Charge Type code and indicate that it should use the rate assigned to each room.
In addition to charges for the room, you can create charges for additional services and items that may have been used during the stay. You should not create Charge Type codes for these, but rather Item codes and Service codes. Items and services can also be tracked even if there are no charges. For example, you can create item codes for such things as lap top computers and tablets, bicycles, DVDs or any other item that a guest family might use during their stay. You can check these items out to the guest and then check them back in when they are returned. This helps keep track of where these items are and helps remind you to ask for them when a family departs.
1. Before you create Item codes, you first define the types of items you are checking out, by creating Item Type codes. For example, you might create an Item Type of iPad and then an Item code for each separate iPad in your inventory. You could, for example, add a serial number to each iPad so you can keep track of each one separately. Service codes, Item Types and Item codes are all entered on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.
Paid By codes are attached to each charge and payment associated with a stay. These codes indicate who is expected to pay the charges, the guest or a third party. If some charges are paid by a third party other than the guest, you should make sure that all third party payors are entered as organizations in ExceedFurther. Then for each such payor, create a Paid By code and link that code to the payor's organization record. In this way, when you create an invoice for that payor, the correct name and address is inserted on the invoice.
Each time a family stays at the house, you add a Stay record. This includes the name of the patient or patients and the adults and other children, the dates of the stay, the location and room number, and other details about the patient(s) and family. You can check out and in any items and record services that the family uses during their stay, and create charges for these and the room. The charges can be added to an invoice or invoices for the guest and any third party payor.
You can record stay requests, confirmations, waiting list status, no-shows, cancellations, and turn-aways due to no space, all by adding Stay records. Each Stay record includes a Stay Type which can have one of the following values: Request, Confirmed, Stay, Wait List, Canceled, No Show, No Room. Use the Guest Manager to record and manage stays.
The Room Manager tab of the Guest Manager displays the status of the house over the course of a month. Use this to manage the rooms by moving guests from the Request and Wait Lists to rooms and moving families from one room to another. You can also print a detailed daily roster from the Room Manager.
Use the Occupant Manager tab of the Guest Manager to keep track of the occupants of each room, along with mobile phone numbers and car license plates. You can also record any special needs and to mark each patient as an inpatient or outpatient for each day of the family's stay.
When a request for a room is received, you enter the name on the Request List by adding a Stay record with Stay Type of Request. This puts the family onto the Request List, with their relative priority and special needs. From there you can assign them to a room if one becomes available, move them to the Waiting List, or mark them as No Room for later statistical purposes.
If a family is actively waiting for a room to become available, you add them to the Waiting List by adding a Stay record with Stay Type of Wait List or by changing the Stay Type os an existing Stay record (from a Request, for example). If a room becomes available while they are waiting, you can remove them from the Wait List and move them into a room.
As your guests use items or services during their stay, you check out and check in the items and add services, all by using the Add/Edit Guest Stay screen.
When it is time to create charges, either at the time of departure or before, you use the Add/Edit Guest Stay screen, Step 7 to automatically generate charges for the room, plus any items or services. These charges are grouped onto invoices by who is expected to pay for the charges. You can add a payment on an invoice at the same time that you create it or you can take payments later.
Use the Invoice Manager tab of the Guest Manager to track open invoices and to add later payments.