Room block reconciliation
Every year, we have a spreadsheet in Google Docs to help us make sure that we're on target for getting enough rooms to meet our minimums and reconcile hotel-provided delegate lists with digital records provided by hotel reservation services.
We need to perform this reconciliation because the GSR allows for people to book online or by phone. BACON has a system built in that allows people who book online through the links we provide to automatically get VIP status. We can also login to the GSR's online booking system, Passkey, to pull a list of all the people who booked through their online system, even if they did not go through our links. However, Passkey cannot give us a list of people who booked by phone. For this, we need the "delegate list": a complete list of all of people who book rooms and then we need to reconcile it against the records from Passkey.
Creating the Spreadsheet for a New Year
- As the SCIENCE records Google account, copy last year's sheet and share with the same people
- On the Prices sheet, update the 100% room-night target and the price schedule
- On the Previous Year Comparison sheet, archive the old year:
- Move the chart out of your way so you can see columns A-G
- Select columns B-D, right-click the column header, and select "Insert 3 right"
- Select columns B-D and press Ctrl+C. Select cell E1 and press Ctrl-V, then click the paste popup and choose "values only". Do the same thing again but choose "format only". This gives you a copy of the previous year with static values instead of the formulas.
- Update the header in cells B1 and D3 to the current year
- Set the last cell in column B to the date of the Wednesday before con this year, then fill upwards with earlier dates
- Move the chart back to the top left
- Double-click the chart
- in the side panel click "Setup",
- Add G3:G203 to the data range list between D and J (You can type it into the text box or click the little grid to see a nicer looking interface)
- Under "Series", click "Add Series" and choose the prior year which is now missing from the chart
- On the Master Account sheet, delete all the data - leave the headers and formulas (gray cells)
- On the Passkey sheet, delete all the data - leave the headers and formulas (gray cells)
- On the Phone sheet, delete all the data - leave the headers and formulas (gray cells)
- On the GSR sheet, delete all the data - leave the headers and formulas (gray cells)
- On the BACON sheet, delete all the data - leave the headers
- On the Reconcile sheet, delete the confirmation numbers in columns A and B
Importing from Passkey
- Log into Passkey
- Open the event for the current year
- Click "Room List Report" under the room count
- Hover "Actions" in the top right and click "Export"
- In the export dialog select "Comma Separated Value (.csv)" format and click "Export"
- In the Google Sheet, navigate to the Passkey tab and select cell H1 (the header of the first non-gray column)
- Click File → Import and upload the CSV you downloaded from Passkey
- In the import dialog, set the import location to "Replace data at the selected cell" and click "Import data"
- Extend the formulas in A:G (the gray columns) as necessary
- Ctrl+Click to select the "ResAckNo" for each row with "No" for "Reconcile" (highlighted yellow), then copy with Ctrl+C
- Switch to the Reconcile tab and paste special as "values only" at the end of column B
- Extend formula columns C:M as necessary.
- On the "Prices" tab, check that the Passkey total in B2 matches the total room nights picked up on the Passkey dashboard.
Importing from BACON
- In PMA, select the snafucon db and run
SELECT * FROM `roomblock` WHERE year = (SELECT id FROM years WHERE current = 'current')
- At the bottom of the results page under "Query results operations" click "Export"
- Set the format to CSV and click "Go"
- In the Google Sheet, navigate to the "BACON" tab and select cell A2 (the first data cell)
- Click File → Import and upload the CSV you downloaded from PMA
- In the import dialog, set the import location to "Replace data at the selected cell" and click "Import data"
- Extend the formulas in A:B and M (the gray columns) as necessary
Importing from the delegate list
- Email our contact with Convention Reservations at the GSR for a delegate list as a spreadsheet (Joi Cerveri for 2021 - entering their name in the Requestor box in RT will bring up their email). It's good to also copy our sales rep (Daniel Pferschy in 2021) so that if staff has changed in Convention Reservations they can find us the right person.
- Import and reconcile Passkey (see above), so that's up to date.
- Take the spreadsheet they give us and copy it into the GSR worksheet. It will not necessarily match the columns, so just try to make them match.
- Extend formula columns A, B, and L as necessary.
- Open up the GSR worksheet and the Reconcile worksheet, side by side.
- For each item in the GSR worksheet where the Reconcile column is "No" (highlighted yellow), try to find matching Passkey confirmation code in the Reconcile worksheet, using the name and dates.
- If you find it, put the GSR confirmation code in the GSR confirmation column (column A) next to the matching Passkey confirmation code.
- If you don't, put the GSR confirmation number at the end.
- Extend formula columns C to M as necessary.
- For all the red rows that are marked missing, check if they match any of the master account rooms, add the GSR confirmation number to the Master Account Rooms table in the Confirmation column (column A).
- For all the remaining missing rows, put those confirmation codes into the confirmation column of the Phone worksheet (column A).
- Extend formula columns B to I as necessary.
- Add the Phone confirmation codes to BACON, using the raw database.
- Check VIP tickets in RT and handle appropriately.