AlleyTrak v4.29.0 introduces Same Day Reservation Buffers and Order Cancellation Improvements
Same Day Reservation Buffers
One of the most complicated aspects of offering online and real time reservation capabilities is how you handle the management aspect of walk-in reservations to ensure accurate availability for your customers when they attempt to book a reservation online.
In AlleyTrak we already have a feature to disable same-day reservations, which is a simple way to avoid managing “just in time” reservations with walk-in reservations. This however limits your ability to take reservations for the current day. Based on current booked reservations by AlleyTrak centers, nearly 65% of all reservations are booked for the day that the event takes place (note: this does factor in reservations manually entered by staff members).
In AlleyTrak customers are unable to book a reservation for a time that has already passed, this seems obvious, but our new Same Day Reservation Buffer allows you to block off additional amounts of time beyond the current time that is unavailable for customers to book. For example, you may set your Same Day Reservation Buffer to add an additional 2-hour buffer onto your availability. This would mean at 1:00 PM the earliest a customer would be able to book a reservation for the current day would be at 3:00 PM.
This buffer tool allows you to avoid instances where your front-end staff may set up a walk-in event on a lane, not enter that reservation into AlleyTrak (not normally advised), and then have another customer book that same lane during the time the walk-in event is taking place.
Order Cancellation Improvements
In AlleyTrak you have the ability to allow your customers to cancel a reservation. When enabled your customers will receive instructions in the order confirmation email to cancel their reservation if necessary. Customers were able to cancel a reservation up to 2-hours before the start time of their event.
We've now implemented new controls to allow staff members to control the time limit that you will allow for a customer to cancel a reservation. You can now choose from 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 36, and 48-hours. Again order cancellations are an optional feature you can enable in AlleyTrak.
Additional Improvements
We've implemented a few new validation rules to resolve some common occurrences when connecting various payment gateways.