Thank you to everyone who shared feedback and ideas. Your input genuinely drives how we evolve Mews, and this release is very much a joint effort.
Hey Mews community!
I’m happy to announce that we’ll soon go to beta testing with our enhanced billing automation We’ve improved the billing automation that will now route items based on these additional new conditions:
Guest profiles
Groups
Individual reservations
Thanks to this functionality, we’ve made it possible to increase the use cases that billing automation can cover from routing items during private events for specific guests to route items on the reservation level. You will also be able to create the billing automation from the reservation module and availability blocks that will pre-fill the group IDs so that you can quickly prepare routing on a reservation/group level!
If you want to know more details, you can review this Loom video to understand all the functionality
What’s in it for you:
Access to the latest improvements in the routing rules
Saved time for front staff moving bill items especially for large groups
Flexibility to route items on the reservation level and on availability blocks
Easy setup of new billing automation for complex use cases
Quick access to create billing automation from reservations and availability blocks
What you should know:
We’re looking for properties and staff with Admin roles to create and manage billing automation in this phase as not all roles can create the billing automation now
We lined up 2 additional improvements for billing automation that might interest you as well:
Routing additional services through integrations such as POS - coming soon to general availability as well
Creating 2 billing automations with similar conditions but small differences (routing in specific time period or based on guest classification) - in development, coming soon to beta
How you can get in?
You can fill out this very short form to provide a bit of context of who you are. It’s important to us to reach out and talk through your feedback and also get answers to some of our questions. The beta is open to anyone so don’t hesitate to enrol!
Let me know below if you have any questions or comments. Thank you!
Looks like a great improvement! Looking forward to trying this one out - filled in the form already.
Whats the plans for keeping the billing automations page tidy? As otherwise you will end up with hundreds and hundreds of automation and if you’re ever looking through, it would be hard to track/identify the one you’re looking for.
Thank you, it will help a lot if we could automate from within the group (makes it much easier) and also after it was booked!
for example:
We have a lot of meetings/groups which were booked a year in advance and we get the message two weeks prior to the function, that overnight stay will be paid by the company but everybody is responsible for their own parking. => perfect!
What an awesome update! Being able to manage billing at the reservation level is such a game changer. Right now we barely use billing automation at all, simply because there are so many exceptions at reservation level.
The thing is: in our hotels, nobody has admin rights. And honestly, I don’t think creating a billing automation should require admin rights —it feels like part of the daily job of a reservations manager/employee.
That’s why I’m a bit hesitant to join the beta: it would mean I have to create the automations, even though I’m not involved in daily operations (and I am not adjusting billing at the reservation level myself ).
On the other hand, I’d really love to try this great new feature and help out with the beta. So my main question is: when is the official rollout planned? That way I can decide whether it’s worth waiting.
And to other community members: if you’re facing the same issue with rights for creating billing automation, give this comment a like .
Hey @JoshuaE, thanks for the feedback! We’ll start enabling the beta very soon - we found a small thing to solve and we want the best experience for everyone.
We also implemented on the billing automation page these filters that should make it easier to find the billing automation you need.
Yeah, we know that this shouldn’t require the Admin rights to create billing automation so once one of our teams implement a new permission framework, we’ll rework it. Does it mean that you want to choose which roles should have the access or should all roles have the access to create billing automation? Maybe here it depends on what conditions they can set - guest profiles, groups, reservations, companies, travel agencies, rates. So I’m wondering what’s the ideal scenario from your perspective
The rollout is planned in October with the new conditions and creating them from availability blocks and reservation module. The permissions will come probably in November but I can’t guarantee that. It’s hard to tell how long it will take us to implement it.
Thanks for the engagement with the community, I love it!
So cool that you guys are already working on adjusting the permissions for billing automation . With so many different types of properties using Mews, I really think billing automation should be its own little checkbox in user permissions.
Why? Because it could be a finance person taking care of invoicing, a front office employee in a small hotel also handling reservations, a sales manager closing a company contract and setting up the config , or even a revenue manager creating rates. Basically, I can imagine a scenario for almost every role in any type of property.
Since the rollout is planned for October, I’ll hold off on joining the beta for now. Instead, I’ll use the time to do some internal research on needs and wishes, so that in October we’ll be ready to start using this across our hotels .
From an operational point of view, I can see a few use cases. But as @JoshuaE points out, over time it could turn into a mess with too many automations. In my opinion, if you keep your rates strict, you can create automations for rates/companies and keep it much simpler.
When creating new billing automations, it’s also important that the front desk really knows what they’re doing – otherwise it can easily make things worse. That’s why I understand why billing automations currently require admin rights.
On another note, but still relevant to this; if billing automations could also take payment policies into account, that would make a huge difference. For example: if a billing automation moves everything to the company, and the company needs to be invoiced, the payment policy “doesn’t care” and charges a credit card if present.
Hello, we would like to be in BETA with all Bühlmann Hotels.
Please notice here, now only admins can manage billing automations, we need to give the permission to staff level - choosable permission to users and roles. Thank you.
i have sent you an e-mail. Your update here is not working in ipad version. The screen on the right is too wide. Can you please get back to me? Thank you!
Hey @Johannes_Rott, thanks for reaching out! I added your property to beta and it’s now available on production for you Let me know if you have any feedback!
We’ve improved the billing automation that will now route items based on these additional new conditions:
—it feels like part of the daily job of a reservations manager/employee.
).
And to other community members: if you’re facing the same issue with rights for creating billing automation, give this comment a like 
.
