Frustration

It's not like I don't have enough to do. I'm making breakfast, cleaning rooms, doing laundry, answering calls, balancing seven checkbooks (don't ask), updating the web site, designing brochures, and meeting with bankers and insurance reps and the occasional 'drop-in' tourist. With so much going on, I decided to buy a new property management system to automate reservations and save me some time. Instead I'm having to spend more time fixing all of the problems it has created!

Last week I discovered I had four rooms that were double-booked, meaning two people had confirmed reservations for the same room on the same night! I talked to another innkeeper who said she had one double-booking in 10 years, and here I have four in as many weeks! I found out that even though I asked the new system--twice--to sync with my old system, it never did. Delving into it further, I also found out that the new system isn't even syncing with itself--the reservations I book manually aren't blocked out on the Internet, so someone else could still get double-booked!

Of course, finding these reservations was no simple task because the new system doesn't even give me an "activity report" to see who is coming and going. It only tells me what's happening today, which is a little late if I need to do any preparation. For example, I promised one guest I'd put flowers in his room for his wife's birthday, and I made a note with the reservation. Good thing I stumbled upon the note yesterday, because the new system wouldn't have reminded me until the guest was checking in today!

Then while I was freaking out about this, a friend wrote to say she was messing with the reservation system and asked for a September date, and it came back with rooms in December! I haven't been able to duplicate this, but it scares the heck out of me that people are trying to book a room, and can't!

So yesterday I had to call four people and tell them I couldn't honor their reservations. One I couldn't move because we are booked for Labor Day weekend; another wanted a cottage and I only have one right now; the third wanted a king-size bed and I only have one of those, and the last one I never heard back from. His reservation is for tomorrow, so I hope he got my message and doesn't just show up!

I also got a call from a women who had booked the Paymaster's Office for the end of August, and then saw my journal entry saying it wouldn't be ready until the end of September. I found out that even though I had blocked out the Paymaster until September 25th, you can still book it online. (Please don't, though.)

As you can see, there is nothing funny about this. I'm frustrated and annoyed, my guests are frustrated and annoyed, and the problems still aren't fixed. I'm not sure what lesson is to be learned here: Don't change horses in the middle of the stream? Do more research before committing to a product? Test everything thoroughly? Or just use pencil and paper and forget about this new-fangled web stuff? I don't know. All I know is that I'd rather take calls to make reservations, than have to make calls to cancel them.

P.S. Nobody is going to book a room online after reading this. Sometimes I am such an idiot.