The Enquiries Module is where you create and manage your initial brief which enables you to easily provide venues and suppliers with a full picture of your client's requirements and allows them to respond online, quickly and accurately

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Creating a New Enquiry
• The Venue tab
• Room allocation manager
• Charges
• Sending out your enquiry
• Reviewing Venue Responses

Creating a New Enquiry

From the Home Menu screen menu bar, click once on ‘Enquiries Module’ and a new screen will open:

First, click on the ‘NEW’ command button located on the top right corner of the screen. A new Enquiry screen will appear; 

now using the pick-lists complete these fields with your basic enquiry information.

 Here you can select from Conference, Accommodation or Supplier enquiry type dependent on your booking.

If you want to check or amend your client or contact details at this stage, click on the Client Screen command button and complete as required. 

Save and return to your Enquiry screen. Once you’ve finished, click the ‘ADD’ command button again to confirm these details and the general main Enquiry Screen will now load:

This is where you populate the full enquiry details, arrival date etc.

This is also where you can add supporting information about the brief in the Enquiry Only Notes section; this can help the venues to better understand the enquiry and respond with a quote that is more tailored to your client's requirements.

If there is any important information that you wish both venue and client to be aware of you can enter this in the Notes for Client & Venue section; this field will also automatically populate with any information that has been pre-set- in the Agent Tab of your clients profile in the Client Module. 

This is especially useful when a client has the same requirements for each event.

TIP – fields marked with * are mandatory – you will need to complete these to continue with your enquiry.

Once you’ve completed all of the general information, move onto the Conference Rooms tab. (If you have selected Accommodation or Supplier booking, this will not appear)

This is where you add in the conference room(s) to your booking, using the pick-lists to specify the layout and equipment required for each room, programme timings and any other relevant information.

Enter details for your first room and click on the ADD ROOM command button located at the foot of the page on the right.  Add in equipment for that room and then repeat the process for additional rooms until complete.

TIP – you can re-arrange the order that rooms appear in your booking simply by clicking on the relevant ↑ ↓ arrows on the right side of the screen

If your enquiry has an accommodation requirement, move onto the GUESTS tab, (if non-residential you can skip this step and go directly to the venue tab).

Here you can build up your delegate list, specifying different arrival dates, room types and notes to venue, for example, VIP or Accessible Rooms required together with any dietary/meal requirements and smoking or non-smoking rooms for each person.

The guest list works just like the Rooms feature, complete the details for your first guest and click on the ADD Guest to add to the enquiry. 

 As you’re unlikely to know names at this stage, enter the number of rooms in the GUEST NAME field eg 50 x Rooms – names to be confirmed. Further details can be added late on.

TIP – if you have a long guest/delegate list you can re-arrange the order, for instance by arrival date, number of nights or room type, by clicking on your preferred ‘Sort By” option at the top of the list

The Venue tab

Either find the venue(s) you would like to send the enquiry to by using one of the search options or by typing in the name of a specific venue in the ‘Quick Venue Add’ field

Once you have selected your venue it will be added to the list, you can add as many venues as you wish to the list (the example here shows three):

The Status is New and the red crosses in the Notes, Charges and ALL OK columns indicate that nothing has been added to any of the venues at this stage.

The next step is to specify the charges and details that you want the venues to quote for. Start with your first venue and open the Enquiry Brief by clicking once on the VIEW link on the right of the page.

Room allocation manager

This video steps through the new pick a room features in GRATIS

Please click here to view the video

The following fields will be completed by the venues so you should leave these blank unless you are inputting the details on behalf of the venue:

Contact e-mail

Venue Contact

Cancellation Notice

Release Date

Status of Option

Below are the fields where you can request further information about the meeting room and delegate packages; some of the details have been pre-populated.

All you need to do is amend appropriate to your enquiry. If your booking doesn’t comprise of certain elements you eg 24-hour delegate details, simply highlight the text and delete to remove completely.

If you have more than one venue, you can copy all of these details across to the rest simply by clicking on the button:

Copy All Room & Delegate Details to All Venues

Charges

The final stage in this process is to indicate to the venues how you would like them to quote for your enquiry; you do this by creating an itemised charges grid and leaving the figures blank for the venues to complete for you:

By using the ADD DEFAULT charges button, the system will populate the grid with all the elements of your event that you’ve already inputted on the previous tabs, including meeting rooms, numbers, equipment etc.

You can then simply amend according to your own requirements.

Once you’re finished with the charges grid, you can again copy over to your other venues and save as default charges by using the two buttons:

Copy to All Options and Copy to Default Charges.

Now click on the SAVE command button below to update and save your enquiry. The screen will refresh and will now display your list of venues ready for contact. 

At this stage, you can check each individual venue has the correct information and charges simply by clicking on the View link for each one and amend any section as required.

TIP – check to ensure that Charges and All OK are ticked in red next to your venue, if not review any that have crosses for missing information:

Sending out your enquiry

To send your enquiry to all venues, simply click on the Contact Venues button on the command menu bar at the top of the section. The Contact Options box will appear

At this stage, you can choose to add documents to your enquiry request either from your GRATIS file bank or browse the files in your directory.

Now you can choose to send your enquiry online or create a telephone enquiry list. For online enquiries, click once on the Select Contacts for Online Enquiry button and a pop-up will appear listing all of the contacts for your chosen venues.

 Recommended contacts are already checked, you can choose to add or amend the list as you prefer simply by clicking on the relevant checkbox. Scroll down and repeat the process for each venue. 

BCC myself in RfP - You can blind copy yourself in when sending the enquiry out to also receive the enquiry in your inbox. The option will be selected by default, and it can be unselected.

Now click on the Send Online Enquiry button at the foot of the box.

GRATIS has sent the enquiry to your selected contacts and recorded these details for you; the enquiry page is displayed now and you can see that the status has changed to requested and the system has also recorded the date and time that the enquiry was sent.

TIP if you haven’t heard back within your response time and need to chase; simply open the Enquiry, go to the Venues Tab click on Contact Options and the pop-up box choose Contact Options Who Have Not Responded from the drop-down pick-list – you can now re-send to your original contact or choose another.

Your enquiry is now displayed in the New Enquiries section of your GRATIS Homepage providing you with an at-a-glance view of your current work.

If the event brief changes during the course of your enquiry, you can re-send this to your chosen venues by selecting the Re-Communicate with Venues command button which is located in the venues tab of your enquiry.

Reviewing Venue Responses

When a venue responds online, you will receive an alert e-mail and the response appears in the Online Venue Enquiry Responses section of your Homepage.

If your venue responds by e-mail or telephone you can complete the details on their behalf by opening your Enquiry, Venues Tab and selecting the View link in the right column of the relevant venue and direct inputting the information.

When you have received some or all of your responses, you should start reviewing each repsonse and making sure that all information that is needed is showing correctly. This wil drive how the proposal looks. When you are ready to go to the to move to the proposal stage, go to the General Tab of your Enquiry and click on the Convert command button located at the foot of the page.  Your enquiry will then open in a new tab as a conference booking.

TIP If you have missed any required information out of the enquiry, for instance, release date, the system will prompt you to review prior to converting to the next module.

At this stage you should close the enquiry tab and work in the event booking – the reservation number remains the same throughout.

If at any stage during the initial enquiry process your booking is lost, simply click on the LOST command button at the foot of the General Tab.  

The system will then pop-up a prompt for you to enter a reason for lost booking; choose one from the drop-down and you can enter additional back-up information in the free text box below