Search the Community

Okay, Fresh off of a bad night at work, I gotta get it out of me, so here it goes. I actually love my job. Really, I do. My manager is one of the finest I've ever worked for. I can't say I have a problem with any of my fellow employees either, which I have found to be a rare situation. It's even a decent company to work for that owns the hotel franchise where I work. But....they totally fumbled on the final inches of a touchdown when it comes to I.T. and last night I, and *every other desk clerk that works there* caught it in the teeth at the same time. We have an old server that was due to be replaced in the first quarter of the coming year. Only problem is that it has either crashed, overheated and shut down, or just decided to restart itself out of the blue at least twice a month since last June. The tech support company, and the hardware support company have both been excellent until yesterday. Corporate's second in command, a really good guy as well, sent us the company "temporary server" to hold us over until our new one comes in next month. He gave us one day's notice...the day before our manager was to head to San Diego and her Father for Christmas for two weeks. (Our issues had apparently moved us to the front of the line) So, the Front Desk Supervisor was at the property for 13 1/2 hours with Hardware Support trying to get the 'temp' server online as our current server could not stay powered up. Once it was online, he had to change calls to tech support to get all the files, histories, authorizations, and security permissions transferred and/or established on the new machine so we could keep running. We had over 40 rooms check in during the day, all of which had to be done the old fashioned way, by hand, as the computers were flat useless until 10 minutes before I showed up. At that point, another night auditor had been called in to begin entering all of them into the system. That way at least the computer would accurately show who was in-house for the night.Yay data entry!!! I did the cash count so the swing shift clerk could go home for the night. I began prepping for the regular night audit process, which I wasn't convinced would actually happen at the time. I ended up getting most of it done, but more on that in a bit. Then the swing shift clerk came back in and asked the FD Supervisor to help him as he had locked himself out of his truck. The FD Supervisor was small enough to crawl through the open back window of the truck to open a door from the inside, then get back on the phone with Tech Support. The Assistant General Manager was there by corporate rule, which sucked for her as both her children are autistic and would not go to bed until she went with them. They all checked into a room at the hotel with the AGM's mother as well...oh, and their little dog too. The 'temp' server was now online and we could begin the night audit process. Good. Then the FD Supervisor appeared to try and strangle a phantom in front of him as he talked with tech support. For some reason, the software that allows us to charge credit card accounts had not been installed on the 'temp' server. Before I get to that, the other night auditor had finished checking everyone in, but then faced an even worse task. To explain, when you check into a hotel on a credit or debit card, the computer sends an authorization request to your bank to verify that adequate funds are available to cover the expected charges. As soon as it comes back as good to go, the check-in process finishes. Your account isn't actually charged until check-out, or the middle of that night, as with our system. Well, we didn't have the interface to do the authorizations during check-in, so she had to get on a cordless phone, and manually authorize each and every check in for total expected charges, being room rate, taxes, and related fees, times the number of nights they expected to stay. She needed two hours to do that little task. But, back to the FD Supervisor on the phone. He had it on speaker in the manager's office. "Okay, so can't you pull it from our server and install it on the temp?" "No we cannot. It seems that your version of that software is three updates old. By law we can't install an older version of currently available software, especially when dealing with direct financial access to personal bank and/or credit accounts." "Okay, so then if you have the new version, can you just download it to the temp?" "No we cannot. You have to contact the owner of the software and request it from them." *ends the call with tech support in a friendly and grateful tone of voice and then furiously dials the new number* "Yes, it seems we need the current version of your software downloaded to our new server here at the hotel." "Certainly, sir. I'll send you an email. Included with that email is a PDF that you need to print, complete and sign by hand, then scan and email, or fax back to us. The email will have all the details for you." *call ends* Only when we read the email, did we discover that the form was merely and application for permission to buy the software....oh, and it came with a $300.00 processing fee. Only when they were certain we weren't some shaky fraudsters would they consent to sell us the software (for who knows how much more money) and download it onto our system for tech support to tie into the system. Now, the reason this is serious is because the software we use for managing the guests in our hotel, from reservations, to past guest stay history, does not actually charge credit cards. That step requires an interface with the software we apparently didn't have. If the system can't process a credit card, and close out a guest's folio to zero due, it won't let us check them out of the room in the database. Even when the guest leaves, the next guest to come into that room can't be checked in, because the computer thinks the former guest is still there. What this also means is that since the guests that have checked out are still seen as in-house, until we can check them out, their room rate has to be set to 0.00 so as to avoid charging them for another stay. The charges are posted every night automatically. And finally, once we've booked someone into every 'clean/vacant' room in the hotel in this situation, on the computer we are then sold out. Every clean/vacant room on the property (in the real world) is seen by the computer as occupied by guests that aren't really there because they left but we can't check them out. We can't check them out because the computer can't verify the CC authorization for the charge. It can't verify the charge because we don't have the current version of the software needed for the interface. Without that we can't close out the balances due on the guest's folios. Until we can close them out, we can't open a new folio for the room to check a new guest into a room that is, in reality, ready for occupation. So, what to do? Well the immediate solution may have to be to revert to completely manual paperwork and just leave the computers out of it until everything is in place to get back on track. Let me tell you how fun that sounds to a night auditor for a 108 room hotel...not very. I had to do it for a 60 room hotel on Microsoft Excell for 5 1/2 years and I'd still almost rather have my teeth pulled out by rabid alligators. Corporate is in the loop on the whole situation, so I doubt it will be long before the situation is cleared up. If worse case scenario happens, we are 'sold out' and missing nearly half the property in revenue daily until it is corrected. Like I said, I needed to vent. I have observed that I'm a brooder by nature. I've learned to take comfort in that awareness. I immediately reason out the worst case scenario and then before long I calm down with the assurance that it is most likely going to be much better than what I fear. And believe me, I can come up with some pretty bad scenarios. Thanks for your time. Carry on I'm going to bed now.