What's New - Release Notes

WOW its been a very busy few months, where we have received lots of great feedback from a lot of our new and existing clients to help us make the system better for everyone. As normal we have made a few changes to the user interface to keep it as simple and easy as possible for everyone to use and understand. Here are the features and changes we have made to the system in this latest release.

1. Property Managers - New Features

• Ability for property managers to add properties under their own DC/SES, where we can pull all their property data from their SES Hospedajes account into their new SESAdmin account.
• Ability for property managers to add properties in their SESAdmin account, using the their owners own DC/SES Account details along side the PM's properties under their own SC/SES account as above
• Ability for property managers to open an account on SESAdmin without first having their own SES Hospedajes account, where they are ONLY permitted to add their owner clients properties using their owner clients DC/SES Hospedajes accounts

We have done this because we have a growing number of professional property managers joining us, who want maximum flexibility using our platform and the services it delivers for them, without being locked into their PMS platforms. 

Property Managers can view an article that is specifically for them here:
https://help.sesadmin.net/article/property-managers-features 

In addition, we are preparing the system to be able to add some additional features for property managers. We will update you in the next release.

2. Integrations with Property Management Systems (PMS)

After lots of discussions with various people who are using various PMS platforms for various reasons, a lot of whom are property managers, we with a dedicated developers started to integrate directly with the popular PMS platforms, which is now ready for our clients to use at no extra cost. 

We have added a new section to the main menu on the left side, you will have seen this when you log into you SESAdmin accounts, where we have also added a request for our clients to vote on which integrations you would like us develop next, we can integrate with 1 - 2 per month at this moment in time.

The following has been added already:

• Lodgify
• Smoobu
• Holidu - Will be ready at the end of March 2025
• Avantio - Will be ready by the 20th of April 2025
• More coming soon

3. Additional iCal Management Features & More New Feeds

After receiving lots of feedback from our valuable clients, we have now upgraded the iCal feed management in the SESAdmin system to include:

• Auto update when number of guests changes in an existing booking
• Auto update when arrival/departure dates change in existing bookings

However, currently we are not able to easily update the SESAdmin system in this upgrade to include cancelled bookings, this is due to a limitation with the feed providers such as the OTA and PMS platforms, although SESAdmin has a possible solution for this, and it is planned for a near future release.

Also in this update we added an additional feature, which will appear as a greyed out button named "Auto Convert" to the right of the iCal feed provider list which is shown in the image below this section.

The purpose of this new feature within iCal management is, where an iCal provider is able to push the lead guest name and their email address into their iCal feed URL data, SESAdmin is now able to collect that data and instead of automatically creating DRAFT bookings from the data we receive in your iCal feeds, SESAdmin can now automatically create LIVE bookings so there is even less work for you to. Only the "Hostfully" iCal feeds can support this, but we hope others will be able to also in the future, as well as custom iCal feeds. 

We are of course continuing to add support for several more OTA and or PMS platforms iCal feeds as follows:

• Micazu
• E4JConnect
• HostAway
• Holidu
• Avantio
• Hostfully - With the new "Auto Convert" to LIVE booking feature

Keep your suggestions coming to us, the ones with the most requests get done first, and we are now trying to add at least 2 per week from hereon.

4. Billing & Invoicing System Upgrade

Due to a whole set of problems caused by our existing card payment processor which is Stripe.com we have had to bring some of the subscription management functionality that Stripe was supposed to be providing in-house, and we only redirect our clients to the Stripe system and pages to deposit their card details for future recurring payments and or make an actual payment. 

NOTE: SESAdmin does NOT store any credit/debit card details of our clients!

• Packages - Show/Download your invoices for one off help package orders
• Invoices - Show/Download your invoices for your subscription payments
• My Account - Dashboard to manage your future subscription payments

5. Guest Registration Form Updates For Better User Experience (UX)

In this release we have several small changes to the way the guest registration form works to make it more intuitive for your guests, so they know when they have completed the form correctly, with some traffic light colours to make it more obvious primarily when they have not completed the guest registration form correctly, as follows:

• Red = They have not yet completed the form correctly, please complete it
• Green = They have completed the form correctly and nothing more to do

We have also removed pre-loading the forms for all the guests in the group, and pre-filling them with the same details of the lead guest, we had feedback that this was confusing for some guests, so we have inserted a button "Copy lead guest details" so if the lead guest is completing for their own family, they can simple copy their own details and then edit them for each guest in their group. Individual guests can do the same if they wish to.

We no longer pre-load the forms with the individual guests names other than the lead guest, as these other guests may change closer to arrival dates. Now we have added a "Save & Continue" button at the bottom of each form for each guest. It will only allow the number of forms to match the number of people in the booking/reservation, and after they have all been completed, only then with the "Sign Your Check In Form is Completed" button becomes active.

After "Save & Continue" is clicked a pop up appears confirming the form is completed for the name guest, as follows:

After the guest clicks the "OK" button only then will the next form load for the next guest whoever that may be, as follows:

Finally, we have made some improvements and optimised our code for the guest registration pages part of the system, to speed up the loading time of the pages in general, and to make the guest experience as good as we can.

Additional new features are currently being worked on and will be in the next release before Summer starts. Should you need help of any kind, you can create a ticket in the link at the top right of this knowledge base pages or you can email us at any time [email protected] 

The first week in 2025 sees us adding a series of small additions and field label changes, and some small bug fixes, as there will not be another upgrade now until the end of January, where we plan to add some very cool & useful major features for everyone.

1. Send ALL Booking Data to SES

On the basis that we know the big booking platforms are NOT sending your booking data to SES Hospedajes on your behalf as they are required to do by the new laws. It is impossible for these big businesses it is just too complicated for their huge and complicated platforms to do.

We consulted with our legal guys, who stated that we should provide all our owner/manager client users with the extra peace of mind, by sending the booking data to SES within 24 hours of it being added to the sesadmin.net platform.  

This started as of 2nd January 2025, and today the 3rd January, we updated the system to add in:

"Booking Data Status" column. 

We then renamed the existing Booking Status column to "Guest Data Status" which is more appropriate and understandable for most users.

2. Changed the time Guest Registration data sent to SES

Due to some guests being late arrivals and for last minute bookings, or guests are travelling for long periods of time, and not able to fully complete their guest registrations before they arrive at your property's, or some last minute changes have to be made to guest data for other reasons, we have now changed the time window when sesadmin.net sends the updated booking information if it needs to be updated and the associated guest registration data, to between 03.00-05.00am the day following arrival.

We have now set the cut-off time for any guest or booking changes to 23.59pm on the day of guest arrival at your property's.

3. Changed Tabbed Data Labels

In addition, to the above user interface changes above, we hope we have made it easier for people to find their "LIVE Bookings" and their "DRAFT iCal Bookings" by changing the labels for the tabbed data.

Later we will be adding other tabs for other types of bookings that will be sent from various platforms into the sesadmin.net system. 

Please tell us which management platforms you are using and or want our system to connect/integrate with, so we can add them to our planned list? 

4. Create/Update Booking Form

• We have added the ability for our users who are not using iCal import and auto creation of LIVE bookings, to create manual direct bookings, and add a "Source" so owners/managers know where the booking came from.
  
  
• In addition, we have added a field so users can insert any reservation or booking "Reference ID" from wherever the booking came from, so our users know which bookings are which if there are several on the same or next days.

See the image below:

5. Resend Welcome Email to Lead Guest

Just in case lead guests say they have not received the emails our system sends, most of the time this is not the case, they just lost it or it went in their spam/junk folders. Our system users can now open the booking, and click the "Resend Guest Welcome Email" button to have our system resend this email.

6. Added an additional guest registration chaser email

We have no added into the email alert schedule an additional guest registration chaser email, which is now sent 14 days before the due arrival date, as long as the booking was made 15 days or more before the due arrival date.

Bookings can be made even 1 day before a due arrival date, however the lead guest will only receive the appropriate emails that apply to a booking being made X days before a due arrival date. 

This weeks system upgrade/release to V0.8.8 is a mixture of some small bug fixes, User Interface (UI) changes including wording, as well as the addition of some good new features, as shown below, all based on the excellent feedback we have received from our users in the last Two weeks.

1. New VERY IMPORTANT notification text

2. Automatic SES registration verification

We have added to the sesadmin.net system auto SES verification at random intervals mostly at night time, after new users have entered their correctly formatted credentials into the SES Account verification page, but have received a 401 unauthorized error message which comes from SES Hospedajes it is NOT from the sesadmin.net system. This is so new users don't have to keep logging in to try their new SES Hospedajes web services (WS) credentials.

New users whose credentials do NOT comform to the required format will be notified by an email alert from sesadmin.net to rectify the format of their data.

3. Added support for more system languages

We have added a Language chooser with Spanish, Dutch and German languages for the application for now, we will add more soon, you can find the language chooser in the top header bar on the right next to your username

• Up to 3 x different ical feeds can now be added to each property
• Support for Vrbo is also now active in the system
• We have also updated the layout and added a "Cancel Sync" option

5. Bookings dashboard layout changes

We have added tabs where you bookings are listed so you can easily find the source of your bookings, such as the ones that you created directly via the Blue "Create Booking" button, and for now which bookings were created in to both DRAFT & LIVE modes by your iCal feeds. The Logo of the iCal feed provider is shown against every booking when it is auto created into DRAFT mode for you to update and move into LIVE mode by clicking Create 

6. Direct booking label added for easy viewing in list mode

7. iCal Imported DRAFT to LIVE Bookings to start Real-time status updates   

8. Create/Update bookings screen

We have been asked a lot how to tell SES Hospedajes when the owners friends, family or both are visiting their own property where there is no payment, we have therefore added a new function for this if this is the case for some bookings. It is available in both the Create and Update Booking Screen 

9. Advanced features for multi property owners and managers

Pull SES Properties is a feature within a clients profile to pull any properties which have already been registered in a single account under a single digital certificate. It relies on a good fast working SES Hospedajes system, so when their system is not working well, nor will this "Pull SES Properties" feature, we are working on this to hopefully make it work better for advanced users only.

10. When "Pull SES Properties" button is inactive

Should anyone have any issues with any of the above or any other issues then please do open a ticket, where we have live agents ready to answer your questions and help you in anyway we can in both English and Spanish.

Post Launch Bug & Issue Fixes - No Version Change

• iCal import/sync, on a per property basis to show feed providers logo so users know which feed is which, and auto create draft bookings from the ical feeds.
  
  These iCal feeds were added to the system this week:

• Booking.com
• TravelNest
• Your.Rentals 

• We also fixed a small bug in Airbnb iCal links, where it will now allow all types of country specific Airbnb iCal links such as airbnb.se or airbnb.es 
• Please let us know what systems iCal feeds you would like us to add for you via the "Quick Feedback" form within our application. We will add the most popular ones for you, you can see which are the ones we are working on adding next in the image below this update.
  
  

Various small bug fixes reported by our users over the last week since the previous weeks update.

Pre-Live Launch Feature Release

• iCal import/sync, on a per property basis to show feed providers logo so users know which feed is which, and auto create draft bookings from the ical feeds. We added Airbnb first.
  
  More to come over the next few weeks including:

• Booking.com
• Vrbo
• Smoobu
• TravelNest
• Your Rentals
• Others
  
  
• New email templates for Owners to send to Guests on the day of arrival if guest registration is still not complete by 09.00am or 12.00 on arrival day.
  
  
• New email notifications from the system to the Owners especially for and on arrival day where guests have not pre-registered as required.
  
  
• Delete a guest button in the guest registration forms in case number of guests reduces. The Lead guest can not be deleted.
  
  
• Ability for property managers to send bookings and registered guests processed through to the property owners SES Hospedajes accounts instead of property managers SES Hospedajes account, on a property by property basis.
  
  
• Removed the default filter "end date" issue our users reported to us, so all future bookings shown by default in Calendar and List view not just the current month only.
  
  
• Updated booking status names to make more sense to everyone.
  
  
• Moved the link to the "Quick Start Guide" to the top of the main menu on the left side.
  
  
• Updated "Secure Uploads" page making it easier to upload digital certificates and their associated passwords.
  
  
• Various other minor user interface changes to make operation easier for our users. 

We initially released the BETA version number 0.8.5 of sesadmin.net to provide SES Hospedajes compliant automated guest registration and SES data submission system on the 16th November 2024 offering it for free use until January 2025, this is still the case.

Below are details of each of our releases and summary descriptions of what we have added to the system for your benefit in addition to these basic initial features:

• Built to connect to SES Hospedajes to make it easy & save you time
• Automatic submission of all guest data required by SES Hospedajes
• Designed to remove the complexity of the SES Hospedajes system
• Manages compliancy to all regulations required to accept guests in Spain
• Fully web based for everyone no apps to download or install
• Secure and encrypted system to process all data as required by GDPR
• Create & store your digital guest books, you can download anytime
• Integration with using an API & web hooks
• Advanced features for multiple property owners/managers
• Technical support in English and Spanish as required