Bookacamp - camp booking backoffice

YAGNI & KISS 2020/11/12

Bookacamp is a software product for the (youth) travel industry and combines excellent knowledge of software development with professional knowledge of the requirements and processes of the travel industry. But there is always the question of which features and functionalities are required in which form in order to make the communication and administration of bookings / events as easy and quick as possible. Since Bookacamp was founded in 2015, we have been working very closely with product owners and pilot customers. That's nothing special - that's how agile software development works. The special thing is that the product owners are users and partners of Bookacamp themselves, i.e. the tour operators and travel agents whose requirements arise from day-to-day business. Bookacamp is very happy to receive this open input.

In order to keep an overview of all requirements, we use a ticket system. In the last 5 years, 1811 tickets have been created in this way, 94 of which are currently open in different sizes. Bookacamp uses two principles to decide which problem a ticket is going to be developed and for what there may be a different solution.

YAGNI - You Arent't Gonna Need It

Every feature and every problem solution has different characteristics and there are often dozens of ways to expand a feature. The tightrope act is to decide which functionalities will be used later and whether there is someone who needs a solution. Unless a requester exists, we often decide not to implement something at the current time and wait to see how usage develops.

KISS - Keep It Simple & Stupid

Some things are easier to do than others - but the general rule is that a simple and understandable solution is preferable to a complex and complicated one. This applies to decisions in software development as well as in the structure of user interfaces and processes.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Updates in October 2020/10/20

✨ Our Updates

Saved filters
Many table can be filtered and sorted directly on the website. Bookacamp's backoffice is now able to save those filters locally. After reload those filters are re-applied on the table.
Filtered booking list in agency login
Some agencies are only allowed to sell specific camps. In the agency settings you can decide to apply a filter for the agency, which makes the bookable camp lists a filtered subset for this agency.
Voucher amount for cancellation
If you cancel a booking and transform the already paid amounts to a voucher, you now have the possibility to change the voucher amount directly in the cancellation process.
Shortened booking form
Diectly when setting up a camp, it it possible to decide, if the selection of non-mandatory services is hidden during the booking process, which makes the booking simplier and faster. Especially when your travels are total package travels it makes sence to have a look at this.

😎 Counselor Addon

Individuel contracts
If you have your contract in Word format (docx), it is possible to replace special placeholders within this document for personalization and send it as pdf via an email. That features makes paper handling much more simplier. Get in contact with us to get more information about that.
Waitinglist
Also counselors now have the possibility to be moved to a waitinglist, if all placements for the travels where already made.
Image Upload in questionnaire
The questionnaire has been extended to support an image upload directly in the questionnaire. You now can decide to place this upload in the registration form or in the questionnaire.
Documents with expiry date
The requirement upload features an expiry date, where you can set the end date of a document and get an reminder for umcomming expiries on your dashboard.
If neccessary the counselor addon has its own setting for a privacy declaration.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Updates in July 2020/08/08

June usually is a bit quieter, so major changes to processes and new features do not disturb the ongoing season. A few minor things are still worth mentioning:

Automatic booking confirmation
To save more time for standard processes, bookings can now be automatically confirmed by the system. The invoice is generated and sent as soon as a new registration arrives. The new feature can be (de-)activated in the settings menu as required.
Minimal event registration
For free (information) events it can be useful to keep the hurdle for registration as low as possible. This minimal registration only requires the name and e-mail of the applicant.

Hostel Summary / Accommodation Information 2020/07/08

At the latest shortly before the trip, it is necessary to inform the hostel about the number of people arriving, times, information for the kitchen and bookable extras such as meeting rooms and disco. There are so-called hostel messages, with the help of which you can send all the information to a hostel at the push of a button. A particular strength of this notification is noticeable when the assignments of the counselors to the camps have been made in the system, because then all information is bundled together.

This feature is immediately activated for all users and can be accessed via the administration of the sessions. Is there a lack of easy mailings in your current system? You can start a non-binding demo directly on this page.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Updates of June 2020/06/05

43 tickets have been closed and implemented since March. A selection of the most important innovations follows here:

Temporary VAT reduction
From july 1st to december 31, 2020, the federal government of Germany decided to cut 3% on the standard tax rate and 2% on the reduced tax rate. What effects this has on the invoicing of the travel industry, whose service period often does not correspond to the invoicing period, must now be clarified. Bookacamp will make the adjustments to the software available before first of july.
RSS - Don't miss any news
Many mail programs and browsers have a feed reader to subscribe to news. Bookacamp's german blog now delivers the newsfeed readable for feed readers. So you don't miss any more information.
Automatic synchronization between agency and organizer
In order to further minimize the coordination effort between the travel agent (agency) and the organizer, the availability of the free spots can now be automatically synchronized in the background. The current cycle is 1x on the hour.
Yes / No answers with consent
It happens, that information is important when booking. An example is the question of whether a child can swim or can participate in certain sports. Consent has been expanded to request a decisive answer on the last page of the booking process.
Various options per session
Among other things, it is possible to decide per session, whether information about the t-shirt size or class level of the participant should be obtained. All in all, it is worth looking at the entire Expert Mode tab when creating a session to get to know Bookacamp's high degree of customization.