Rates for monthly add-on charges

The Rates Setup Examples in the documentation (version 3.5 or later) have a simple example of an add-on like 50A, which is a standard site/reservation attribute field and usually applies to short-term stays.

However, you may have a need to set up an auto-rate that will be used in special cases -- for instance a monthly Cable TV charge that's optional.  You can set up an "Add-on" rate for this, and use the "Applies if reservation field" option in the rate definition to add this charge automatically (assuming you're already using auto-rates or monthly billing for the basic charges).

Here are the steps needed:

1. Go to Maintenance / Data Field Definitions / Reservation Fields and locate the "Cable" field (the Field ID is Attrib_Cable), and change the Status to "Enabled".  (If your need is for an option not present as an attribute field already, you can modify the name of one that's not being used.)

2. Go to Maintenance / Program Options / Reservations and select the "Cable" field for one of the available Quick-select Preferences.  This will add a Cable checkbox on the New Reservation dialog.

Note: For any existing reservations that should be charged for this, you need to go into Reservation Details for the reservations, then click "Site Preferences", and check the box for Cable.

3. Go into Rates Setup and create a rate of type "Add-On" for the cable TV charge.  Enter the charge for cable and other "Applies if..." conditions needed, as you would any other rate definition, and then select "Cable" from the list after "Applies if reservation field".  It will show "True" after the field name when you select it, so leave that selected.

Now whenever you use Monthly Billing or Auto-calculate the rates, it will also add the cable charge for those reservations with that preference selected.