Overall, it's a terrific system. Discovering how good it is takes time and frustration. Going from manual pricing to online quoting taught me that the human brain can do things so much more easily than an automated system which has its limits. It took me a while to figure out what I could do and could not do in the pricing possibilities that I could offer. Having said that, the Checkfront system is pretty damn impressive in what it can do but a slog to find out the limitations.

The invoicing and notification system is excellent. It allows for a sequence of events - the initial request and removal of item from inventory, the paying of a deposit and the sending out of a reminder for the balance. It has also allowed us to record bookings that come from another listing site. The notification system is good but , as with with all automatic sequences, you need to think carefully before setting a sequence in train because the same message notification might not be right for everyone. It takes a lot of thought to set up the generic sequence that will most often be used. However, it is very easy to make adjustments to the message before it goes out.

Checkfront may be used more for booking tours rather than holiday homes but it's flexibility allows for many different set-ups. Therein lies the problem with regard to the help pages. They are quite helpful with regard to what any particular feature is but most examples tend to be about booking tours rather than accommodation. I spent a lot of time working out what I could do and how I should do it, more or less by trial and error. In some ways that is a good thing because I learnt so much more about the system by the sheer repetition of trying so many ways to do something. However, it would have saved me a lot of time to have some real examples of how to set up and overcome particular problems. So far, I have only two irritations with the software. One is the mobile phone app which could be much improved but is not actually a bother because I really do not need to carry my office in my pocket. The other is the Inventory calendar. I wish I could highlight the row that I am working on because it is very easy to start making alterations to the wrong row. I also wish that I could highlight a period of time to add or remove a property from inventory. You can only do that one day at a time which is tedious and non-intuitive. There are other ways round this and perhaps there is a good programming reason for the limitation.

Great, because even if not perfect Checkfront helps you improve your business and has the great quality to listen to their customers trying to help everyone with their own demands! this is priceless!

The flexibility. You are in the condition to bend the software depending on your demand. And this is great! Another GREAT quality is not the software but relate to that and is the customer service. one of the best I even dealt with. every time you have a doubt they are responsive and always will help you at the best of their abilities to achieve your goal. is this an ENORMOUS quality!

It's not totally optimized for a business like ours that sells cruise, there are software that give you the possibility to have a graphic visual of the boat with all the cabins. but Checkfront is young and I'm sure that in the future these features will be implemented!

Checkfront is, honestly and truly, the worst product I have ever used. Unfortunately our company requires it.I truly dislike every aspect of using Checkfront. As bad as it is for the customers and guides, the backend administrative side is even worse. Everything you'll want to do to set up tours will take at least three times as long as you expect. You'll be making frequent contact with customer service when the product fails. And even with all that work, it still lacks extremely basic functionality.

Customer service is generally helpful when the software or back end service fails. Unfortunately I need to use this a lot.

The user interface and user experience is entirely nonsensical. The most basic, basic thing a guide needs is to check in guests on a tour. Checkfront doesn't even show the guide how many people are on the tour. It doesn't alphabetize the guests, so the guide has to search through a list of randomly sorted names every time a guest comes in. Many guides in our company have refused to use Checkfront at all, and simply don't check in the guests. Many customers show up on our tour without booking, because they said they couldn't figure out the Checkfront booking system. How many customers and how much money have we lost because of the Checkfront UI? We'll never know.

Very very good customer support team

Checkfront allows us to customize our reservation system to fit our specific business needs

There is a definite learning curve to using this product.

It is the first sofware that is really easy to use and understand. I know IQWare, Crystal, Otello, FileMaker and another one I don't remember but this one is the best for our needs.

The help support online. Chat with somebody to help you with a problem is really really good.

Some issues for dates that we don't want check-in and check-out but finally was fixed lately.

Checkfront allows me to have a customer website to take bookings but also the ability to take bookings and payments from a variety of other sources and manage them all in one place.

Checkfront allows you to set up a tour guide website relatively quickly without the hassle of knowing how to code. Although the designs are limited they are perfect for displaying tours available for your clients and making it easy for them to check availability and book tours. The backend system is what makes this powerful, allowing me to manage my tours whether they were booked through the site or via agents.

Some of the set-up if requiring special options is rather complicated but the help notes are clear and comprehensive. It is just a matter of persevering and checking to make sure you've got it set up right.

I book over a hundred volunteers each year and it's a one-person show here. I don't know how I did it before CheckFront, I really don't. So many steps are now automated for me and it's a breeze to keep track of bookings. I use notifications a lot to send volunteer handbooks, orientation videos and other important documents that I used to have to track and send manually. What a relief to be done with that and to be using notifications instead.

I am able to integrate nearly my entire workflow in one place from reservation to payment, notifications and more. For me, it just works.

Can't think of anything off hand. If it could take my volunteer application as well, that would have 100% of my work in one package.

I wanted to make a few extra tweak's to my platform after 2 years. I contacted the support team and they arranged a special one on one hour meeting for me. It was all i needed. These folks are great. I appreciate the support.

I'm not very good with computers. Checkfront support helped me implement my program and make changes when I first started. Once I spent time with the program, It became easy to use. After 4 years I feel very comfortable.

I don't have anything that comes to mind.

The ability to embed the purchase screens into our website, so customers do not need to visit another site to make a purchase. Option to connect Tripadvisor system to our items in Checkfront. Connectivity with our games software. Generally the over connectivity to other systems we work with.

Reporting... there lots of report options, but I do not like how you set these up by having to select columns and then this is saved for everyone. Good that you can download to excel but would be nice to have some editing function within Checkfront

Checkfront makes it possible to manage all our daily bookings in one place and it is a practical platform to use.

Only negative aspect I want to mention is support team should return to the cases faster.

Implementing Checkfront has radically improved the efficiency and professionalism of our business, enhancing the customer experience and saving us hundreds of hours.

Online booking, automated inventory control, powerful and flexible customer communications, plug-ins to enable integration with a wide range of other systems

Can’t think of any meaningful cons or problems with the software

Overall our experience with Checkfront has been hugely positive. The support provided by the team throughout the customisation process was always fast, easy to understand and tailor made for me.

After operating our business for years without an online, pre-paid bookings system we had no idea of the positive impact Checkfront would have, not just for our business but for our lives. Red Star Music is a recording studio and rehearsal spaces and there was initial concern that introducing this type of system would 'scare away', deter or frustrate existing customer but to our surprise, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It has been a win/win situation for everyone. Pros for customers: * No longer have to rely on getting in touch with us to book and check availability. * No longer have to request invoices. * Checkfront with the addition of digital access to the spaces means we are able to be open 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. Pros for us: * Protection from financial losses due to people not showing up for bookings, cancelling last minute and refusing to pay. With Checkfront's pre-paid system and our compulsory terms of agreement, the responsibility is placed entirely on the customers to organise themselves. * Protection from human error during the bookings process (on our part). * We are now open 24hrs/7 days a week and no longer are required to have onsite staff members collecting payment whenever there are bookings. * We have more time to focus on other aspects of the business and our lives rather than having to be on call around the clock. Our phones are very quiet these days and we have more bookings than ever.

Understanding that our needs are fairly complicated when it comes to a customised bookings system, there are really only a few very minor things: It'd be nice to be able to set a rule that a certain time slot booking can only be booked when another before it is in place. For example - we'd like to run a 2hr discount session from 9-11pm as a gap filler on week days but we only want customers to be able to book that session if a 5-9pm session is already booked so that we aren't blocking a potential 4hr 7-11pm, higher value session. Does that make sense? No biggie though! There are a couple of things with the mobile app however: 1. If I'm away and I want to check tomorrow's bookings on my phone to see whether I need to be there or not, I can open the app and see in the list of customers from earliest to latest (top to bottom), but I have to tap into each individual customer to see what time they are actually booked, making it difficult for me to get and overall visual of how I'm going to organise the day, hire gear etc. 2. I often want to be able to contact customers when I'm away to give them instructions but there doesn't seem to be any way for me to access contact details, phone/email for the bookings in the mobile app. Being able to tap copy their phone numer and send a quick text would make life much easier.

I own and operate Stellar Micro Creations, in Rome, Italy. I have absolutely no experience with systems and programming. The check front booking system was incredibly over my head because it was very complicated but in the end it is good that it was so complicated because now I know that it can accommodate every complicated need of booking for my products.. I learn more and more options as I go along. The thing that has made this all possible for me to do is the fantastic support team at Checkfront. Once I got into the groove of communicating with Checkfront I have made hastened the development of my learning curve and am WAY more relaxed and not worried because I know that there is a support team that can help me. Anyway, I have so much more to say. There is also support in the Blogs. I had changed my approach to how I would start my business by reading one of the blog posts about referral business instead of using the costly Adwords which were not really working with my small companies start up budget. I consider the support team and the system as a partner of my business.

I like that this software can accommodate any complicated idea that I want to achieve when it comes to booking my tours.. and also I have just discovered the power of the Partners accounts. It has broadened my idea of how I can sell and increased my success potential. I do not have a lot of experience in this field but the featured of check front has given me a platform of growing my business and gives me a vision of what I can accomplish..

I haven't really discovered anything so far that I like least because I am in such a learning curve.. I am in the mode of discovering all the new things that I can do so far.. I might have a comment on this in a year or so. Oh yes!! It would be fantastically helpful if Checkfront would send a notification to my cell phone from the app or something that I have got a booking.. I have to log into check front all the time to see if I have a booking..

The software is clearly developed by people who can incorporate a lot of needed functions into one space. The visual design of everything, however needs work - it's clunky and there are too many pages to navigate through when booking. It's not attractive to incorporate the online booking forms into our existing website. Fantastic customer support, great array of booking features, lots of details can be adjusted once you figure out how to navigate the admin sections.

There are A LOT of ways to customize booking forms on check-front. We run a multi-purpose community center, with multiple rooms at different rates. This software is able to handle all of it and is one of the few programs available where I can adjust payments manually. Customer service is also excellent - I've received so much help from the team online. The customized videos that they have sent to me have been most helpful. All of my queries have been answered within an hour or two of asking.

- We hire out on space on an hourly basis to limited English speakers. Our customers repeatedly say that the red and green days (for customer online booking calendar) are unclear. It would be great to have a yellow option that shows SOME times are still available during a day if the whole day isn't booked. - Very difficult to set up from the beginning - Would like more report functionalities (ie. basic monthly breakdown of who booked how many times, income generated for a particular period, calendar print out of bookings) - A drag and drop feature for adjusting bookings would be appreciated.