Simple Reservation System Version 1.2

The Softalot Simple Reservation System (SRS) is a web-based general purpose resource calendar. It allows to schedule resources, prevents double booking and scheduling conflicts, and accounts for resource utilization. The application is designed to be used out of the box, can be included in your web/intranet site, or customized to integrate with your environment – source code included.

In SRS, a resource can be just about anything:

1. Meeting room(s), office space
2. Office equipment: overhead projectors, whiteboards, demo kits, etc.
3. Vehicle fleets:  cars, busses, vans, bikes, etc.
4. People: instructors, repairmen, customer service personnel, etc.
5. Real estate: timeshare condos, ski cabins, vacation rentals, etc.
6. Hotel & resort facilities: golf course T-times, carts, instructors, tennis courts, surfboards, catamarans, saunas, spa facilities, conference rooms, event equipment, dining tables, etc.
7. Sporting clubs: sail boats, squash courts, yoga classes, etc.
8. Doctor’s offices: physicians, dentists, psychologists, etc.

The application use is very flexible. Features include:

1. Smooth user interface. Scheduling, rescheduling, and change of resource can all be accomplished via drag and drop operations.

2. Reservations can be recurring.

3. Resources have optional cost per hour attached. This cost gets recorded per reservation and can be used in accumulative reports.

4. Reservations have optional Cost Codes for departmental accounting of resources.

5. Reservations have optional capacity and attendance lists for booking training sessions and tracking availability and attendance.

6. Time slots, hours and minimum increments are freely configurable. For ski cabins you might have half day increments, allowing for 1/2 -day reservations on the arrival and departure days; squash courts may be reserved in 30 minute increments.

7. You can define block out times to prevent booking and without accruing cost during these times.

8. Reservations can be made across multiple days, weeks, etc. (cost is calculated on a daily basis for available timeslots only).

9. Resources can be grouped together in categories.

10. The planner shows as many resources as you have selected simultaneously, so you can see instantly whether all desired resources are available at the same time.

11. The planner shows either single days or entire weeks in one view.

12. The date picker shows reservations for an entire month. This is especially useful, if you are managing day-long bookings, such as ski cabin rentals, or charter boats.

13. Export into MS Excel provides for utilization analysis and accounting.

14. Multiple levels of access can be defined: Generic read and write levels to the schedule, edit/add permissions per resource, and edit permissions per reservation. Combining these permissions also allows for simple workflows between those making reservations and administrators.

Example scenarios:

Meeting rooms and shared equipment in a small business

Self-service resource scheduling as offered by a system like SRS will greatly improve efficiency of managing administrative tasks in a small office setting with limited admin staff.

Let's assume you work in a small advertising agency with 30 employees. As for shared resources, your office has 2 meeting rooms - one which can hold 15 people, and one for a maximum of 6. You have 2 mobile data projectors, 3 laptops, and 1 company car (NY city, most people come by public transportation). You do get frequent visits from clients, and many of your creative staff visit prospects and clients frequently. In SRS you would setup the following resources:

1. Meeting Room 1 - Capacity: 15, Color: blue
2. Meeting Room 2 - Capacity: 6, Color: blue
3. Projector 1 - Color: green
4. Projector 2 - Color: green
5. Laptop 1 - Color: black
6. Laptop 2 - Color: black
7. Laptop 3 - Color: black
8. Car - Color: red

A web server setup (as opposed to Intranet) would even allow you to view availability and make reservations from remote, e.g. directly from your customers' premises or from home.

Beach resort hotel with golf, sport and conference facilities

This is a more complicated scenario, just to cover the other end of the spectrum and to illustrate the potential benefits. In this scenario, resources will carry a price tag per hour - to be billed to the hotel guest - and we'll demonstrate the use of some advanced features.

First the resources:

1. Conference Room 1 - Capacity: 30, Color: blue, Cost: 200$/h
2. Conference Room 2 - Capacity: 10, Color: blue, Cost: 100$/h
3. Convention Hall - Capacity: 150, Color: blue, Cost: 1000$/h
4. Golf course T-times - Color: green, Cost 200$/h (50$/15min)
5. Tennis Court 1 - Color: green, Cost: 20$/h
6. Tennis Court 2 - Color: green, Cost: 20$/h
7. Tennis Lesson - Color: green, Cost 45$/h
8. Hobbie Cat 16 - Color: blue, Cost 20$/h
9. Spa massage - Color: orange, Cost 35$/h
10. Spa facial - Color: orange, Cost 30$/h
11. Sunset Cruise - Capacity: 25, Color: auto, Cost 10$/h
12. Dinner Tables Lounge 1-20, Capacity per table, Color: red
13. Dinner Tables Formal 1-30, Capacity per table, Color: red
14. Sauna: Capacity: 6, Color orange, Cost 20$/h
15. etc.

Access settings:

In this scenario, we would recommend that the conference rooms were to be booked by the event managers of the resort, and all other facilities be booked by any manager. In SRS, this could easily be controlled by password settings on the resources 1,2, and 3 and general write permission passwords for all others.

Benefits of using SRS:

1. Guests could make reservations for any activity from any location in the resort, e.g. you are in the breakfast area and ask the clerk to make a reservation for a tennis court in 20 minutes.
2. After playing tennis, your guest decides he needs a massage. Have the tennis instructor check the Spa resources and make a reservation in the guests name.
3. Cost of resources are being tracked. Room # and time frame will get the details for the hotel bill.
4. You could even take it a step further, and let hotel guests view resource availability online - just an idea. 

Licensing options:

1. Single Website/Domain/Server License – customize software to fit your needs and use on one web site / domain / server (149$)
2. OEM License - customize and bundle with your own application for resale. Resulting product must not compete with our offering. (499$)
3. Enterprise License - single domain/server license. Includes development license and support for MS SQL Server backend. Also includes self-service planner initiation, and control panel for schedule configuration. (699$)

The following link brings you to a demo of the Standard Version, which uses MS Access as database backend.



We also offer the our resource scheduling system on blue planner.com, a free online service hosted by Softalot LLC. Blue planner uses the SQL based Enterprise version, which includes self-service planner creation and a control panel to manage the setup for each planner.

From blue planner you can also download a small user's guide in PDF format.