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More payment gateways now available for international customers

October 8, 2012, 8:34 pm
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In the last week we've been quietly adding support for more payment gateways, with a particular eye for our international customers.

It is now possible to accept payments with Ogone ( http://www.ogone.com ) and Payment Express ( http://www.paymentexpress.com ).

Both payment gateways cover many countries around the world. Ogone in particular is specialized in serving merchants located in Europe, but also Russia, China, South America, India, Middle East and parts of Africa. For a full list, please see this document.

Payment Express covers Oceania, Asia, South Africa, USA and UK, and they can even connect to new bank partners on request. for more information, see here.

Both payment gateways support full online payment and card storage functionality, so you can even collect card details and charge the card at a later time.

Our help portal, as usual, contains detailed instructions to integrate with both gateways.

More international support for payment processing was requested by many of our customers - now it is available! Stay tuned as we plan to add even more gateways to the list.


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Automatically show your time zone to your customers

November 22, 2012, 8:55 pm
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Working across time zones? Customers spread around the world? You can now easily show your timezone to your customers to avoid any confusion.
Simply enable the new apposite option in Settings/Regional settings page


The timezone will be shown in the booking process, and in the confirmation and reminder emails.
A small feature, but important in many cases!
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New reports now available. More flexibility with prepaid packages

November 25, 2012, 9:04 pm
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We've recently added two new reports to your arsenal:

  • Promotions: list all your promotions and their associated stats (how many time a promotion has been used,  what is the limit of usages, etc)
  • Prepaid credits: list all the prepaid credits currently owned by your customers, what services they cover, when thy expire, etc. This report is especially useful for schools that rely mostly on prepaid packages for their payments, to remind customers when credits are running low, and so on.

Following popular demand you can now decide to retroactively apply changes to a prepaid package to credits already purchased - for example if you add a new type of class and you want to offer it to customers that already purchased credits, it is now possible.
To do so, simply check the apposite option in the page where you set the prepaid package properties.


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Japanese language now supported

December 2, 2012, 7:35 pm
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We're pleased to announce the availability of Japanese (日本語) as supported language for the customer interface!

Your customers can now select Japanese when booking (or you can simply make Japanese the default language), and enjoy the booking process in their own language.

As usual, you can also add a Japanese translation of all your tour and service names, descriptions, etc.

To enable Japanese support for your customers, simply click on Settings/Regional settings.


With the latest addition, Bookeo now supports 23 languages!


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Faster login with remember me

December 4, 2012, 9:11 pm
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Some of you may have noticed a small check box in the login page, called 'remember me'.

By clicking this option before you login, you can tell Bookeo to remember you login in your browser for a week, so that next time you want to access Bookeo, all you need to do is to visit the signin page (always https://signin.bookeo.com) and you'll be whisked through without delay.

Of course you should not use this option when accessing Bookeo from a public computer, and in any case there are several safeguards to protect your account. To read about this in more details, visit the tuorial in our help portal: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/842210-sign-in-process

Remember me is a useful addition to Bookeo to make it work more like any other desktop application. You can even place a shortcut to Bookeo directly in your desktop, and launch it with a double-click!


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New Mobile Booking Interface

April 4, 2013, 9:22 pm
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Bookeo now sports a brand new mobile booking interface!

Your customers can make and change bookings, check their profile, enroll in memberships, and much more, all from their smartphone and tablet devices.

Bookeo will automatically detect mobile devices and will present them an interface designed appositely for the device's capabilities and screen size.

The new interface sports large controls, simplified navigation, and an overall "mobile" feel with which your customers will be immediately familiar with. And all this without sacrificing any of the powerful features offered by Bookeo, such as secure online payments and deposits, booking cart, prepaid credits, promotions, gift vouchers, photo and video galleries, options, and so much more.

As for the desktop version, the new mobile interface is so easy to use that there is no need for instructions on how to use it. Just try it by visiting your booking page using your smartphone or tablet!

Do I need to change anything in my settings or in my web site to use the new mobile interface?
No. You do not need to change anything. Bookeo will automatically detect mobile devices and will automatically display the interface optimized for the device.

I embedded the booking widget in my web site. Does the widget still work for mobile devices?
Yes. If the widget detects a mobile device it will automatically "zoom in" so that the booking interface takes full screen on the device, allowing larger controls, and easier navigation for your customers.

Following are some random screenshots that show the various functionalities in mobile devices. But best of all... try making a booking using your smartphone yourself, to see how it works!


The new mobile interface has been in beta testing for a while, and was progressively rolled out to our customers around the world during March. Thanks to all the customers that provided feedback and suggestions to improve the interface!

booking a personal appointment


choosing a tour


viewing a list of upcoming classes


accessing the customer area











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New features released

April 22, 2013, 10:17 pm
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As part of our ongoing development, we've just introduced several new features in Bookeo.
  • added option to enable/disable a resource so that it cannot be seen or booked by customers. This is useful for example when a staff member resigns. For a full tutorial, see http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1087998-what-should-i-do-when-a-staff-member-resigns-
  • added in gift vouchers settings an option to allow customers to purchase vouchers for events even if there are no future dates scheduled yet
  • Bookeo will now show a customer his money credits when he signs in to the Customer area
  • added an option to automatically accept all bookings in a tour/class when a minimum number of participants is reached. This will be illustrated in more detail in the next post.
  • added application periods for taxes. You can now tell Bookeo that a tax only applies during certain periods (ex. a new tax being introduced, or an existing tax being removed)
As usual, all these improvements were suggested by our customers over time.

Thanks for your ideas, and keep them coming!

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New feature: run a tour or class only when a minimum number of participants is reached

April 22, 2013, 10:17 pm
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It is a fairly common requirement for many tour companies: you offer a very special, unusual tour, which may not always attract many visitors. To run the tour costs time, money, fuel, etc.

Or you may have a one-off class or a course, and you are not sure about how much interest it will attract, and you only want to run it if there are enough participants.

So how do you make sure that you remain profitable, by running a tour or class only when a minimum number of participants is reached?

This is now easy with Bookeo.

It has always been possible to enable the "Accept/deny" feature for a tour or class. When this is enabled, customers do not make a booking online, but only a "Request". It is up to you then to accept pending requests. When you accept, an email is sent to the customer, and if there is a payment required, the customer must pay within a certain time to confirm the booking.

It is now possible to go even further. You can tell Bookeo to automatically accept pending requests for a tour or class, when a minimum number of participants (across all bookings and pending requests) has been reached.





This makes the handling of special tours and classes with minimum participants requirements totally automatic:

  • bookings are just pending requests (not confirmed)
  • when the minimum number of participants is reached, bookings are automatically confirmed, pending payment

As tour operator/school manager you can now set all this in auto-pilot, and focus on running your business rather than tracking requests, pending payments, and all the boring administration!


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New payment gateway for the UK and for all Euro (€) countries!

June 6, 2013, 10:01 pm
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We are pleased to announce that the integration with Authorize.net, leading payment gateway in the US, now supports merchants in the UK and in all the countries using the Euro (€). 




In detail, the supported countries are:

•Austria
•Belgium
•Cyprus
•Estonia
•Finland
•France
•Germany
•Greece
•Ireland
•Italy
•Luxembourg
•Malta
•the Netherlands
•Portugal
•Slovakia
•Slovenia
•Spain
•UK

Click here to see the fees charged by Authorize.net and to apply for an account. 

Fees are charged in pounds for the UK and all the Euro countries.


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New PayPal integrations available

August 12, 2013, 11:28 pm
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We're pleased to announce that Bookeo now supports two new integrations with PayPal.
You can now accept online payments using PayPal Payments Pro and PayPal PayFlow Pro accounts.

PayPal Payments Pro

PayPal Payments Pro is the step up from what is normally known as "PayPal", i.e. PayPal Website Payments Standard.

With PayPal Payments Pro, your customers are not redirected to a PayPal page to pay, and you can also charge credit cards directly from within Bookeo. PayPal Payments Pro also supports credit card storage, so that with Bookeo you can ask for credit card details that you can then charge at a later time.

PayPal Payments Pro is the ideal solution if you already have a normal PayPal account and intend to streamline online payments for your customers. PayPal Payments Pro integrates a payment gateway and merchant processor in one entity, so that you only need to deal with PayPal for the setup of all you need.
PayPal Payments Pro is currently available in North America and UK.

PayPal Payflow Pro

PayPal Payflow Pro is another product offering from PayPal, which lets you integrate your PayPal account with an existing merchant processor/acquiring bank.
This is the ideal product if you already have a merchant account with a financial institution, or if PayPal Payments Pro is not available in your country.
PayPal Payflow Pro offers the same functionalities as PayPal Payments Pro. PayPal Payflow Pro is currently available in US, Canada, Australia.

To enable integration with wither of these two new gateways, simply login to your Bookeo account, click on Settings/Online payments, and select the payment gateway desired. Simple!

In any case, support for all the other payment gateways continues unchanged. For a full list, please see http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/918936-payment-processing-and-payment-gateways
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New: support for Stripe payment gateway

September 20, 2013, 1:50 am
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We're happy to announce an important new integration available to our customers.

As you know, the ability to accept online payments for your classes, tours or personal appointments has always been a key strength of Bookeo. Bookeo also offers advanced features such as automatically charging any cancellation fees and the ability to securelystore your customers' credit card details so that you can charge the card later (ex. for outstanding balance), your customers can make new bookings faster, you can offer recurring memberships, and so on.

Over the time we've also added support for more and more payment gateways, both in North America and in other regions, and we will continue to do so.

One thing we've consistently noticed though is that many small businesses find it complex to set up a full merchant account to accept credit card payments. There are often different companies to talk to, many forms and questionnaires to fill in, and so on.

This is one reason why PayPal Payments standard is often very popular amongst our customers, because of its relative simplicity to set up.

However, the world of payment gateways is improving fast.

We've now added Stripe - a relatively young entrant to the market - as supported payment gateway, and we are very excited about it, because of the extreme simplicity by which it can be set up.

With Stripe it is literally possible to start accepting real online payments within minutes. Moreover it is not necessary to set up a merchant account: all you need is a normal bank account.

On the other hand, Stripe offers a full payment gateway functionality, so that for example your customers are not redirected to a different web site to pay - which can cause confusion and lost sales. Stripe also supports the 'remember credit card' functionality, so that all the advanced operations that are offered by Bookeo are possible as well.

Setup could not be simpler - you can in fact sign up for a Stripe account directly from within Bookeo!


this is how easy it is

There is really not much need for instructions, but just in case, here they are: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1281324-integration-with-stripe-us-canada-and-uk-

Stripe is currently available in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland. However they're already beta-testing support for other countries including Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain. Just ask them about entering their testing program.

So if you're new to Bookeo, or if you're considering starting taking online payments but were too scared by the possible complexity, give the new Stripe integration a go - you may be surprised!







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New feature: recurring appointments

March 30, 2014, 9:54 pm
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After a busy period of development and testing, we're happy to announce a new major feature for Bookeo: recurring appointments.

You can now let your staff and your users book recurring appointments with ease, with the flexibility to set repeat frequency (every x days, weeks, months, on fixed days of the week, etc.), and total number of visits.



Bookeo handles automatically all the rest, including calculating the price, the deposit due at the time of booking, balancing the usage of prepaid credits, money credits, promotions and so on.

Another important functionality is that when the booking is made by a staff, Bookeo will automatically show which dates and times are available for every appointment in the series, and if one time is not available it can show you available times around that date to manually reschedule a single appointment in the series.



When customers make a booking, you can allow them to book repeat appointments, and set how many repeats they're allowed to book. Bookeo will let them choose settings for the recurrence, and will automatically calculate what times are available in every recurrent date.

We have strived to keep the process extremely simple and intuitive, even if there is a lot of flexibility. In beta testing we found that most users and customers found the process so intuitive that they needed no help in making a complex recurring appointment.

Once a recurring series of appointments is created, you and your staff can change it very easily. You can change a single appointment, or the whole series, and cancel one particular appointment, or all remaining appointments.



If you have enabled online changes and cancellations for customers, they can do these operations on recurring series as well.

Finally, recurring appointments are available not just for one-to-one services, but also for classes, workshops and group tours.

This was one of the most requested features, and we certainly took the time to implement it well, in a flexible yet intuitive way. We'll hope you'll find it useful!

For more information, please see these online tutorials:

For Bookeo Appointments:
http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1453412-enable-recurring-appointments-for-services-and-workshops-in-your-bookeo-appointments-account

For Bookeo Classes and Courses:
http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1453421-enable-recurring-bookings-for-classes-in-your-bookeo-classes-and-courses-account

For Bookeo for Tours and Activities:
http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1453429-enable-recurring-bookings-for-tours-and-activities-in-your-bookeo-tours-and-activities-account



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New Feature: Pay Balance. Your customers can now pay the balance of their bookings online!

April 4, 2014, 3:16 pm
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Based on numerous feedback and suggestions from our users, we are pleased to unveil Bookeo’s Pay Balance feature: your customers can now pay the balance of their bookings online.

We believe that flexibility is very important, and keeping this in mind, our developers designed the Pay Balance feature so that you can decide for which class, tour or workshop you want to enable it. If enabled, the feature will apply to all your services, personal lessons and personal tours.

So how does this feature work?


Once you've enabled the Pay Balance feature and your customers make a booking, a Pay Balance link will be automatically included:
  • in the booking confirmation and reminder email sent to your customers
  • in the customer area, where customers review their bookings



When customers click on the Pay Balance link, they are automatically redirected to a web page where they can review their booking: a Pay Balance button will show.



They can click on the Pay Balance button to finalize their payment



When a payment is made, you will immediately receive a notification in your Bookeo’s home page. Sounds easy? Because it is!




For more information on this new exciting feature, please see our tutorials:



Let us know what you think of this new feature and what else you'd like to see us working on to make Bookeo even better! As always, we’re listening and we encourage your feedback. If you have thoughts or suggestions, please email help@bookeo.com


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Bookeo NOT affected by Heartbleed bug

April 9, 2014, 4:10 pm
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3 days ago a major vulnerability has been uncovered in OpenSSL, a popular software library used in many Heartbleed bug".
web sites to encrypt communications with browsers. This has been commonly referred to as the "

This is a potentially dangerous vulnerability, and has been widely reported in mainstream media.

Unfortunately some media reports have been rather misleading and alarmist, and in some cases even alerted that "the whole Internet is affected". Although an attention-grabbing headline, this is incorrect.

Many of our customers have recently contacted us worried about this issue and the reports they've read.

It is important to know that the vulnerability does not affect the SSL protocol itself, which is the mechanism by which web browsers and web servers encrypt their communication.

This vulnerability only affects a software library, called OpenSSL, that many web sites use to implement SSL encryption.

So a web site is affected by this bug only if it uses OpenSSL for its data encryption. Unfortunately there are many such web sites, but they're certainly not all the web sites out there.

To reassure our customers: Bookeo does not use, and has never used, OpenSSL for its communication encryption. So Bookeo is NOT affected by the "Heartbleed Bug".

We recommend however to enquire about this issue with your web hosting company, your mail service provider, your payment gateway, and any other online service that you regularly use, as they may have been affected by this bug.

A change of password may be a good idea (it is always a good idea to change passwords regularly, anyway!)

On our end, all our servers are tested every day for vulnerabilities from a third party security scanner, and we have also collaborated (and will continue to do so) with "white hat" hackers to probe our systems for possible other complex vulnerabilities. Security is an ongoing process, and we'll keep working to monitor developments in this space.

If you have any further question about this issue, please contact our support team at http://help.bookeo.com .

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Yahoo changes may affect email deliverability

April 10, 2014, 5:52 pm
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Yahoo has recently changed its policies to authenticate emails sent from yahoo.com addresses.

This may affect the deliverability of emails to your customers if you use a yahoo.com email address.

What does the change mean

Since last weekend, Yahoo has changed its email authentication policy (using a protocol called DMARC), so that if an email is sent with a yahoo.com address in the From field, but it was not sent directly by Yahoo's own servers, it will be reported as spam.


Any receiving mail server that checks such email details with Yahoo will believe that the email is spam, and reject it. It is not clear how many mail providers/ISPs perform this check but for example Yahoo itself obviously does, and so apparently Comcast.

Does this change affect you?

Bookeo sends email to your customers using as "From" address your business email address, as set by you in Settings/Business details and logo.

- If you have set a yahoo.com address as your business address, then this change affects you. Many of your customers may not receive confirmation emails, reminder emails, etc.

- If you have not set a yahoo.com address as your business address, then this change does not affect you, and you may ignore the rest of this post.

This problem is obviously not specific to Bookeo. It has affected every service that sends email on behalf of its users. This change has been analyzed (and criticized) widely in recent days. See for example:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/08/yahoo_breaks_every_mailing_list_in_the_world_says_email_guru/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2141120/yahoo-email-antispoofing-policy-breaks-mailing-lists.html

http://blog.mailchimp.com/yahoo-changes-may-affect-your-deliverability/

http://blog.getresponse.com/alert-change-yahoo-dmarc-policy-affects.html

How to solve the problem

Login to your Bookeo account as manager, then click on Settings/Business details and logo.
If you have not set a yahoo.com address in the field "Email address", then this problem does not affect you. You do not need to take any action.

If you have a yahoo.com address in that field, then we recommend simply using a different email address. You can for example sign up for a free address at Gmail, or Outlook.com, and use that address as "Email address" in Bookeo.

For example you can also consider setting up a filter in a Gmail account so that any email sent to yourname@gmail.com gets automatically forwarded to your old yahoo.com address, so that you can still receive all emails as usual.




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Two New Payment Gateways Supported by Bookeo

May 29, 2014, 5:46 pm
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Don’t say we don’t spoil you!

We have recently integrated 2 new payment gateways to give you even more choices for processing credit card payments:

Paymill – A very popular payment gateway for European Merchants - Paymill can be used in 40 European countries.

2Checkout– Another very popular payment gateway! A great option, easy to set up, that lets you accept credit card online payments directly in your booking page. 2Checkout is available to merchants in 196 countries (almost every country in the world, really).

You can integrate these payment gateways - and many others - in your Bookeo account, in Settings>Online Payments.

More information about the integration with these two new payment gateways can be found in our Help Portal:


You can also download a detailed list of all supported payment gateways by country at http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/918936




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New feature: Booking search function for admin interface

June 11, 2014, 5:52 pm
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We have recently rolled out a significant new feature that you won’t be able to miss. Bookeo now offers a search feature for the admin interface, very similar to the search function offered in your booking page. Scheduling or rescheduling a booking will now be more user-friendly, quick and error-proof, even if your booking uses multiple resources.

When you create a new booking in your Bookeo calendar, or when you open an existing booking, you will see a new Find button.




When you click on the find button, a pop up window will open to show available timeslots.

Search function for services, personal lessons and personal tours


Search function for workshops, classes and tours


You can search for a slot in upcoming days, weeks or months, and click to select a slot and assign it to the booking. You can then complete the booking process as usual!

That’s all for now. Please do let us know your thoughts!
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Bookeo now supports 32 languages

June 18, 2014, 5:57 pm
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We are pleased to announce that Bookeo customer interface is now available in 3 new languages:

  • Brazilian Portuguese
  • Bulgarian
  • Korean 

You can let your customers select one of these languages - or others - in Settings>Regional Settings.

Default language and language selection


With Bookeo, you can set a default language for your booking page.
In Settings>Regional Settings, you can select the default language for your booking page from the "Your customers' language" scroll down menu.

If you tick the checkbox "Allow customers to change language", you can also let customers select other languages.






Embed Bookeo booking widget in a specific language


If you have multiple versions of your website, each in a specific language, for example in English, Korean, and Japanese, you can embed the Bookeo widget in Korean in your website in Korean, and in Japanese in your website in Japanese. For more information, please see our tutorial at http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/457569


We have plans to translate Bookeo into even more languages, so watch this space for further news!
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Virtual Rostering: offer group and private tours/classes on a first-come, first-served basis.

June 26, 2014, 11:12 pm
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Over the last few months we have had many inquiries asking for a very unique feature that would allow booking of resources for a group tour/class (where you accept multiple bookings from different customers) or for a private tour/lesson (where you accept one single booking, even with multiple participants), on a first-come, first-served basis.

Today, we are extremely excited to announce that this major feature is now live! Virtual Rostering will allow you to optimize the use of resources, maximise your revenue and make your customers happy.

What exactly is Virtual Rostering?


Virtual Rostering means that resources - for example your guides - are not actually allocated to a tour/class until a booking is made for that specific tour/class.

With Virtual Rostering, you virtually assign resources to a tour/class, without making them unavailable for other tours/classes running at the same time.

Resources are available for bookings on a first-come, first-served basis: the first booking for a specific tour/class will automatically cancel other group or private tours/classes using the same resources in virtual rostering.

Still not clear? Let's try with an example


The tour company Lovin’ Fishing offers private (one booking per tour) and group boat tours (multiple bookings per tour) with different itineraries, duration and prices.

However Lovin’ Fishing has only one boat, which can be used for one tour at a time.

Lovin’ Fishing can set up its private and group tours as usual in Bookeo. They simply have to tick the Virtual roster checkbox in the Schedule page of the group tours.



When virtual rostering is enabled, the boat is not allocated to a group tour until a booking is made for that specific tour.

So Lovin’ Fishing can schedule group tours A and B and private tour C to run on Monday at 10AM, even if they would all use the same boat.

As soon as a booking is received for one of the 3 tours, the boat is allocated to that tour, and the other 2 tours are automatically cancelled by Bookeo.

As soon as a booking is received for one of the 3 tours, the boat is allocated to that tour, and the other 2 tours are automatically cancelled by Bookeo.

For example, if a customer books group tour A for next Monday at 10AM, group tour B and private tour C would no longer be available at that time. Any other customer visiting Lovin’ Fishing's booking page would only see group tour A available for booking at 10AM next Monday - if there are enough seats left of course!

For more information on this new exciting feature, please see our tutorials:

Bookeo Appointments: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1597797
Bookeo Classes & Courses: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1597796
Bookeo Tours & Activities: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1597795

We hope this new feature will make Bookeo even more flexible to meet the needs of many of you!

Thank you to you all for your continued feedback to help us improve Bookeo even further.




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It's now easier to add and cancel tours/classes from a weekly schedule

July 14, 2014, 9:05 pm
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Running a small business can be challenging and here at Bookeo we work hard to make your life easier!

We have recently rolled out two new very useful features that will allow you to easily:
  • add extra tours/classes to a weekly schedule, and 
  • cancel a tour/class

Add a tour/class to a weekly schedule


Sometimes a tour/class is fully booked and you want to easily add an extra tour/class, without having to create a new schedule.

You can now simply go to the Schedule tab of your tour/class and add extra tours/classes with a specific date, start time, resources and number of seats!


For more information on this new exciting feature, please see our tutorials:



Easily cancel a tour/class 


Sometimes you have to cancel a tour/class because your staff member is sick or because of bad weather. You can now cancel the tour/class directly from your Bookeo Calendar, with one click.

Simply go to your Bookeo Calendar, click on the tour/class, then hit the Delete button.

Bookeo will ask you if you want to notify your customers and/or the other users of your account. If you want, you can also add a specific message that will be included in the cancellation email. 




As usual, Bookeo offers you maximum flexibility: you can decide if you want to show the canceled tour/class in your Calendar and in your booking page.

How Bookeo shows canceled tours/classes in your booking page.
You can also hide canceled classes if you prefer


For more information on this feature, please see our tutorials:



Let us know what you think of these new features and what else you'd like to see us working on to make Bookeo even better! If you have thoughts or suggestions, please email help@bookeo.com

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