Reservations updates: clearer payments and fewer clicks
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Release notes, practical improvements and the latest updates from the MeisterCRM team.
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Product updates
The latest improvements and releases, published here as they ship.
Reservations updates: clearer payments and fewer clicks
This week, we’re delivering Reservations page updates, driven entirely by your feedback and our observations of how you interact with the system. We continue to deliver improvements that make everything more intuitive, help you work faster and save you clicks!
Summary
- Supplier payments on the Booking page are now ordered chronologically by date, with the nearest at the top.
- Supplier payment and invoice status dropdowns have improved styling and colours.
- You can now change the status of a reservation from the Booking page, saving you 2 clicks!
- Instalment payments can now be marked as Paid or Unpaid directly from the Booking page, saving you 2 clicks!
- You can now upload multiple documents under each supplier payment, including invoices and receipts.
- Many UI improvements to the Booking page and payment drawers make navigation easier.
- You can now change the cost of a supplier payment without affecting the customer quotation.
- The Payment Schedule Editor has received an upgrade for a more intuitive user experience.
- The Booking page now has 3 distinct views of your payments: Table, Calendar and Board.
- Table view Shows all your confirmed proposals. Click one to see its invoices and supplier payments.
- Calendar view Shows your scheduled payments across all proposals for the selected month.
- Board view Shows the same data as Calendar view, highlighting items that are overdue, due today or due later.
- Paid and Unpaid instalment payments now use distinct red and green colours, while Void payments appear in an inactive grey.
- The Booking page now includes monthly statistics on the Calendar and Board tabs, showing metrics for paid and unpaid items, as well as total monthly profits, revenues and costs.
Other changes
- The Proposal Builder now displays ‘Overnight’ and ‘Camping’ labels on location timeline cards when these supplements are included in the price.
- The Insights / Analytics page has been temporarily disabled while our team works on improved insights based on your sales, invoices and vouchers. You can expect better analytics about your sales and team performance in the next week or two.
A reliable infrastructure and flexible proposal templates
This week, we’re releasing performance updates for a faster application, alongside better testing infrastructure to help us keep delivering our service reliably. Things may look familiar, but there’s plenty of new technology behind the scenes. You should notice page loads that are around 25% faster! Our latest features also bring more flexibility to proposal templates and location fees.
Combine templates in one proposal
- You can now use multiple templates in the same proposal. Create separate templates for different parts of a trip, then combine them as needed.
- Previously, you might have maintained: Template 1: 6-day safari + 3 days in Zanzibar; Template 2: 6-day safari + Kilimanjaro Machame Route.
- Now, you can maintain: Template 1: 6-day safari; Template 2: 3 days in Zanzibar; Template 3: Kilimanjaro Machame Route.
- Combine Templates 1 and 2 in a proposal for a safari and Zanzibar trip, or Templates 1 and 3 for a safari and Kilimanjaro trip. This reduces the number of template combinations you need to create and maintain.
Multiple per-person location fees
- Location contracts now support multiple PAX (per-person) fees using the description field, following the same logic as group fees.
- Your existing PAX park fees with blank descriptions continue to fall into one group. Give additional fees unique descriptions to treat them separately. This helps you handle more complex combinations, such as WMA and Lake Natron village fees.
Other updates
- Clearer reservation statuses. Invoice and voucher statuses now use more intuitive colours, with red and orange highlighting items that need attention.
- See activity durations at a glance. Activities in customer proposals now show their duration in a badge. Edit the duration in Catalog → Activity → Settings → Duration.
- Room capacity editing. We fixed an issue that prevented users from editing room capacity.
- Format included and excluded details. The included and excluded sections of customer proposals now support Markdown formatting, including bold and italic text and bullet points. You can also add emojis.
- Consistent exchange rates for confirmed proposals. Clicking Generate for a customer web or PDF proposal locks in the quote currency exchange rate at that moment. We fixed an issue in the itinerary builder so that reopening a confirmed proposal now shows that same saved exchange rate from the last time you clicked Generate.
Redesigned bookings, clearer payments
Your confirmed proposals, reservation documents and scheduled payments are now easier to manage from the Bookings page. Thank you for your feedback: this release brings clearer supplier requests and practical improvements to the tools you use every day.
A redesigned Bookings page in your main sidebar:
- One table for every confirmed proposal. The redesigned Bookings page brings them all together. Click the chevron to the left of a proposal to expand its row and see its invoices and vouchers.
- Edit documents without leaving Bookings. Click any invoice or voucher to open a drawer, edit its details and update payment information.
- More flexibility for each lead. You can now confirm multiple proposals for the same lead.
- Track each installment. Mark individual invoice or voucher installments as PAID or UNPAID and add a bank transaction reference, helping your accounting team match payments to bank records.
- Keep track of receipts. Once an invoice or voucher is fully paid, use the new final status, RECEIPTED, to record that a receipt has been issued or received. See which suppliers still need a follow-up.
- Plan ahead with the Payment Calendar. Track scheduled incoming and outgoing payments on the Bookings page. Choose a monthly Calendar or a Columns board grouped into Overdue, Due Today, Within 3 Days and Upcoming. Both views show each installment’s payment state alongside the document’s overall status.
- PDF vouchers are now called Requests. These supplier booking requests have a refreshed layout and more complete reservation details for transfers, hotels and activities, including clearer traveller breakdowns for each vehicle, room and activity group.
Everyday improvements shaped by your feedback
- An easier-to-read proposal timeline. The blue dots now show the day number, and item types are colour-coded so you can distinguish itinerary cards at a glance.
- More room to build itineraries. The collapsed proposal header has a clearer layout. Use the round button at the top of the sidebar, beside your logo, to expand or collapse it and free up screen space.
- More useful proposal rows. See the trip’s end date and public proposal ID directly in each row.
- Automatic traveller checks. Creating or editing a lead in quick create mode now checks your traveller setup and warns you if something needs attention.
- Lead addresses save correctly. Changes to the Address field in the Create or Edit Lead drawer now update the lead as expected.
- Clearer catalog price simulations. The Catalog → Item → Simulate tabs have an improved layout and pricing statistics that mirror proposal results, helping you test your catalog prices with confidence.
A quick guide to your IDs
- The updated IDs help sales and reservations teams trace documents back to the customer’s lead and proposal. Here is how each ID is built, with an example of each format.
- Public proposal ID
ME-21-55-dfHAsCompany initials + lead ID + proposal ID + five random characters. - Booking ID
ME-21-55-dfHEr-BKCompany initials + lead ID + proposal ID + five random characters + BK. This ID also appears on your supplier Requests, making it easier to connect reservations to the right customer and proposal. - Invoice ID
ME-21-55-dfHEr-1Company initials + lead ID + proposal ID + five random characters + invoice ID.
Smarter pricing, VAT and payments
Thank you for the continuous feedback. This release focuses on clearer currency pricing, VAT handling and payments.
New releases
- This new News page gives us one place to share product updates with richer layouts, images, videos and examples.
- The Proposal Builder and Catalog now support multi-currency pricing with 160 × 160 FX-pair combinations, refreshed daily.
Proposal Builder and Catalog
- Currency codes such as USD and EUR are easier to read, and changing currency updates item prices throughout the proposal.
- Proposals now default to their quote currency, while supplier VAT is managed separately in the quotation widget and proposal header.
- Margin is now called Markup for clearer terminology.
Reclaimable VAT
- Catalog pricing settings now include a Reclaim VAT toggle, off by default, for supplier rates that already include reclaimable VAT.
- When enabled, MeisterCRM removes the configured VAT from the contract cost before applying markup. For example, a $120 rate with 18% VAT has a $101.69 net cost and $18.31 reclaimable VAT.
- Location contracts are not included yet; their VAT will continue to be calculated manually while support is being developed.
Tasks and cost sheets
- Tasks now have a monthly calendar view, and invoicing vouchers or customer invoices can create due-date tasks from their payment schedules.
- Cost sheets now offer a per-traveller breakdown, live base-currency conversions, a conditional discount column, and clear badges for applied or ignored custom proposal markup.
Also improved
- Transfer and vehicle prices can now be calculated per person, and the proposal email experience is mobile-first.
- Our destination Wiki is now live, starting with Tanzania, to bring agents and travellers practical destination information as the guide continues to grow.
Quicker proposal building and clearer pricing
A collection of focused enhancements that help teams find the right items, work with documents, and understand multi-currency costs.
Proposal workflow
- The Proposal Builder now provides search and sorting whenever you add itinerary items, including searches by hotel name.
- The sidebar is more compact to create more room for the work that matters.
Documents and pricing
- PDF uploads now support files up to 25 MB and are automatically compressed, making them quicker to open again after processing.
- Set default proposal base and quote currencies in Settings → Pricing → Proposal Defaults.
- Cost sheets now show the exchange-rate calculations behind multi-currency catalog prices, and proposal search results display their currency labels.
Booking flows, maps and multi-currency
A major platform update spanning day-to-day CRM work, booking control, proposal mapping and international pricing.
Everyday CRM improvements
- Lead rows now show total budgets excluding infants; proposal rows show total gross price; and Quick Add Travellers speeds up adding a group.
- You can delete multiple contracts, add several catalog documents, use a WhatsApp dial pad for a new number, and see agent avatars on lead and task cards.
- Daily transfers now appear as individual cards on proposal timelines, alongside many smaller usability refinements.
Leads, tasks and bookings
- Direct and B2B leads are more clearly supported, with B2B proposals defaulting to whitelabel and improved GDPR deletion of associated lead data.
- Tasks are timezone-aware and now offer a + Add Task button on every pipeline column.
- Version 2 booking flows are available from a proposal, with confirmation controls and split invoices by traveller or percentage.
Maps, domains and currency
- Maps load only relevant country data, cover 66 countries, and include richer points such as beaches, diving spots, heritage sites and Kilimanjaro locations.
- Customer proposals can now run as a complete whitelabel experience on your own subdomain.
- Automatic FX calculations support 160+ currencies, with separate base quotation and customer-facing proposal currencies.