Firefly 2024 Spring Webinar Questions and Answers

The questions and answers below are from the spring webinar hosted by Firefly.

We wanted to make sure all of the questions got answered, so we put them here! If you have further questions about the topics on the webinar, we are here to help - you can reply back to our email that sent these out, or submit a ticket. 

 

Categories of Questions: You can click on each to jump to the section to look for your specific question.

• Accounting and Reports
• Inex Gate Integration
• ReserveAmerica
• Rates/Coupons/Discounts
• Guests
• Feature Requests
• Other General Questions

Accounting and Reporting

• How do add credit card processing fees charged to a report? 

You can find the processing fees charged under Reports > Payments. You will see a Processing Fee column and total. You can also link the processing fee to a specific GL code if you are using the accounting module.  

• Is there a report that will tell us who did not sign electronically for the policies? 

Not at this time, however, if you do try to check a guest in that hasn’t signed, the system will alert you. If you are finding guests aren’t signing, you could add something to the Upcoming Reservation e-mail template to remind them to sign before they arrive. 

• Will you be generating a report that shows us who made cash, check and charge payments? 

The Payments report will show you which clerk has taken each type of payment. If you put in their name in the Search on the top-right, it will pull out just the payments they took. We do have a ticket in for a report that breaks payments out by clerk.  

• Is there anyway to remove items from the payment reports? Such as venmo, paypal, etc? We will never use these. 

There isn’t a way to remove them from the total boxes at the top of the report. 

• Is guest sorted by last name on reports coming soon? 

A ticket has been submitted for this. 

INEX Gate Integration

• How would INEX work for UPS or the mailman? Can you override with a clicker? 

You can set up specific license plates to have permanent access in INEX.  

• Would you use INEX if you don’t have a gate? 

No, there’s no need for the INEX system if you’re not enrolling in the gate system as a whole. 

• How will the INEX gate work with walk-in reservations? 

When you register the new guest and put their dates in with their license plate number, they will be able to get through the gate.  

• How can we get more information about gate integration? 

For more information about the gate integration, visit https://fireflyreservations.com/knowledge-base/integrating-with-izcloud 

• Additional question on gate, if we have an override switch in our office, can we still manually open?  

I would think so! For more information about how the Inex gates work, you can visit this page here or their website here. 

• If we use the visitor add-on and add it to the reservation portal for a guest to choose, can we control the max number of guest passes a user can purchase? 

No, there is currently no maximum.  

ReserveAmerica

• What if we don't use kiosk/online reservations - how could we best use ReserveAmerica? 

Since ReserveAmerica is for online reservations, the best way would be to utilize Firefly for those online reservations. You can choose to not share your direct booking link with others, but have an online ReserveAmerica listing if you wanted. It would still be an online booking through ReserveAmerica.  

• How does the ReserveAmerica fee work? 

With ReserveAmerica there is a 10% commission, and then the traditional reservation fee. This can be set up to pass along to the guest who finds you through ReserveAmerica (and we recommend passing this along).  

The fees for ReserveAmerica will work the same as the other fees you have set up. You can choose to give them their own account 

• So, if we're with Firefly, then, should we be part of ReserveAmerica? Our parks are not listed. 

We recommend it! ReserveAmerica can bring you great visibility through the customers who use the site for all their camping and RV bookings.  

You can see who makes their bookings through ReserveAmerica and then determine over time if it is a service you wish to continue or not.  

• How can we see how many reservations are getting booked through Reserve America? 

By viewing the Reservations report, you can choose to search by Reservation Source.  

• Is there more information on the ReserveAmerica fee and how a park pays for it?

Yep! For Firefly users the monthly fee for ReserveAmerica is waived. There is still a 10% commission fee that you can pass along to your guests. This is a commission fee for hosting your park on ReserveAmerica. This fee goes directly to ReserveAmerica for cost of operations. 

It will be a separate line on your invoice, and you can pull a report to see how many reservations came from ReserveAmerica. You will be billed on the next invoice that the reservaiton would show up on. 

Rates/Coupons/Discounts

• On topic of special rates so I don't forget, is there going to be any update to discounts/coupons to be able to set rules for them like no able to be applied to holiday weekends? 

While we have a ticket in for more discount/coupon options, you could create a special rate qualifier for your discounted rate and have it applicable to holiday weekends.  

• Where do you go to change rates by date?  

To change rates for each day of the week, go to Settings > Units. Click on the unit you wish to work on, and go to the “Rates” tab. On your Daily rate, click the circle and three dots next to the rate you wish to edit, and you’ll see that there is now each day of the week listed. You can copy the settings to other sites of the same price structure under Options > Import/Export Unit Info 

• Is there a means to control holiday weekend minimum day requirements? 

Yes! If you go Settings > Units, click on the unit you wish to work on, and click on the “Min/Max Nights” tab. Click on “Add Minimum Night Rule”. Choose your rate range that this rule applies to, and your minimum number of nights allowed.  

• Would we be able to add a pop up in checkout that shows the coupons for discounts we offer 

You can choose to show available discounts (by discount) as a drop-down on the booking page. To turn this on, go to Settings > Coupons. Click on the discount/coupon you want to show online, and checkmark the box “Show in dropdown on reservation portal”. You could also put a promo code to be used at checkout in the Reservation Portal Instructions section which is found under Settings > Property > Reservations, and at the very bottom, “Reservation Portal Instructions”.  

• Can you please show how to use a coupon correctly 

More information on how to set up coupons and discounts can be found here: https://fireflyreservations.com/knowledge-base/coupons-and-discounts 

• Has a discount been added for employee in the POS 

No, not at this time 

• Is there a way when you move a customer to a different priced spot that it will automatically refigure pricing?  Even when I hit recalculate, I have to still manually go in to delete charges and create new ones to have the charges correct on the day of arrival. 

When you click recalculate, it should create a charge called “Rate Change Adjustment” which is would account for the difference in the price from the old site type to the new site type. There is currently no way to have it update just the charge and not create a Rate Change Adjustment charge. 

• Can you set up a coupon for certain people but not have it available online?  

Yes. When creating the coupon, you can choose if it shows as dropdown or not. 

• Would we use the coupon code creation for people who get a discount if they leave a google or yelp review? 

You can, yep! You can set up a unique coupon code and share it with a guest after they submit their review. 

Guests and Guest Communication

• Will there be a way to filter guest by their site types for emails? 

This is a feature that has been requested. 

• Is there a way to have the information on guest history for Astra?

This is information that would have been needed to be grabbed from Astra prior to moving over to Firefly. 

• When will we be able to filter email & SMS by site type? 

This has been requested. 

• Is there a way to send statements to your seasonals?

 You can send invoices under the reservation. I think that is the closest feature to a statement at the moment.  

You can also send an email using the placeholders to share an update on their totals and balance due, pointing them to the guest portal to make a payment. 

• I would love some training on email attachments.  I am clearly doing something wrong when I try to attach something to mass emails. 

You are likely not doing anything wrong here. Our text editor is just that for now – a text editor. We have submitted requests to enhance the email features to our development teams. 

 

Feature Requests

• Can you add to where the grid is color coded for who is checked in and who owes money? 

I will submit this as a feature requests for these, grid changes are highly requested so this is likely

• It would be fantastic if check in's, check out's and cancelations would come off the grid when prompted 

We have submitted this as an enhancement request. 

• Do you know where batch billing is on the development schedule?

We do not, sorry! 

• POS frustration...  when editing an item.  When you press save, why doesn't it take you back to where you were... It takes you all the way back to the beginning... I am still adding categories to all my POS items... long processes.. 

This does sound frustrating. We can add it as a feature request. 

• Will there be a way to lock the site while making the reservation so that we can take the site lock payment and the reservation deposit at the same time? To avoid having to go in after, lock the site, and then delete the charge it creates.   

We can add this as a feature request. 

• Has the reservation grid changed at all. Hoping it can be color coded so when campers arrive, depart, cancel or are no shows etc it can be seen at a glance on the grid.  

I’m sorry I don’t know when you became a customer, but the grid has had feature changes, yes! We plan to improve it as well. 

• How about adding abillity for wifi site meter reading?? 

We may need a little more info about how the wifi meters work, but under Utilities, you are able to set up any type of meter reading that you want as the charge itself is customizable.  

• Will you be able to edit how much to 1 item when you are doing a bulk pay, like astra you could pay all or some to each line 

We have that in as a request! 

• How about just adding the zip code on the reservation that will add the city and state automatically? 

This has already been added, I can make a note that it has been requested by another customer. 

• Will there be a purchase ordering aspect added in 

We’ve added that in as a request.  

Other General Questions

• Can we add a fee to cover that so if we are charging a rate we get our whole rate back? 

You can! One way to do this is by using the Reservation Addons for a cancellation fee. If you are referring to the Firefly fee, or your credit card processor fee - you can also set these up (Property --> Fees) to pass the fees along to the guests, which is how you would get the entire amount of the rate back.

• Is addons the same as POS items?

They are not! The Addons show as apart of reservation management, and when guests book online. POS Items do not show to customers, they are only on the POS Register for your clerks to see.  Guests must have a reservation to have an add-on charged to them. Anyone can pay for a POS charge (reservation or not). 

• Regarding ways of making more money for our parks, we used to give back discounts in the form of an inhouse credit so the people spend the money in house instead of the money leaving the property. Now we are not able to do so. Any suggestions?  The way to get sales to increase is to allow people to charge things to their reservation and yet they still cant pay for it all at once.  

Currently you can charge POS Items to guests reservations, but the reservation credit process is not helpful in that. It has been added as a request to improve.  

• Will we be able to take payment for pos items and site fees at the same time any soon? 

I can’t speak to developer timelines on these features, but we can highlight it on the priorities coming from our customers.  

• Is there a way to send statements to your seasonals? 

You can send invoices under the reservation. I think that is the closest feature to a statement at the moment.  

You can also send an email using the placeholders to share an update on their totals and balance due, pointing them to the guest portal to make a payment.  

• I am an employee of a park, I received the email about the webinar and the new updates but my bosses email did not receive it. Is there a way to make sure he receives the same emails as me? 

I sent the invite to all Firefly users, sometimes if people have unsubscribed from our emails in the past they might not get these announcements. If you send an email to success@fireflyreservations.com I can check to see what happened with their specific email.  

• How do we access instruction manual for all features?

Here is our new user guide that covers most of the features, and has links to more in depth articles for each feature.