Checkfront Reviews

Easy software for Booking Tourist Activities / invoice

Comments: - I decided to say with checkfront, because their team is very helpful, there is a community and a forum to get inspired, to get help if you are a beginner in the tourism industry

Pros:

+ All in one place : Booking / customers / invoices + You can customize every detail of the Activity you are selling to your customers + The support team listens to your needs

Cons:

- During covid, the hibernation plan means that your website goes offline

Easy to use and customize

Comments: Excellent. Easy to use and customize.

Pros:

Being able to adapt for our individual needs

Cons:

Our pricing plan is excellent with Checkfront. But I recently received notice it was going to increase significantly. This is very disappointing. If we utilized of the abilities of the program I would pay more but we use a very minimal amount as I do most work in house. The program is great though.

aeffective booking system

Comments: professional and helpful. more than what I need. but quite happy. other than a few issues.

Pros:

simple efficient. keeps track of chats easy to cancel and make bookings. very helpful online troubleshooting the techs are very knowledgeable and easy to follow their help.i love the banners paid and unpaid or cancelled very cool.

Cons:

the home page is clunky. would be better if your arrivals and departures were in list form on this page. the calendar would work better if you could drag and drop bookings to gain a day here and there.

Absolutely love Checkfront

Comments: When we first started out we took reservations in a paper book....yes you read correctly, on paper...knowing there had to be a better way I researched different software to use. Since then we have been so happy with Checkfront. The support from their team has been amazing. From setting us up to answering my everyday questions, their team is always friendly and helpful. I highly recommend them to anyone.

Pros:

We have been with check front for 7 years now and we love everything about it. It's simple to use, training new employees to use it is easy, the booking process just flows nicely so it makes sense. Customers also compliment us on how simple and straightforward it is to use. I also feel like they are there when I need them to help me out with any issues I'm having.

Cons:

I would like to use the waivers section but it didn't quite work for our set up. There's a couple of little things that would be nice to be able to do with the calendar etc. I also which the app was a bit more useful. I usually always send suggestions in when I come across something that I think would be beneficial for everyone.

Very responsive customer care

Comments: Very positive experience with Checkfront - nothing seems to be a problem, always supportive response from Support staff. Really very happy with product and overall support.

Pros:

The software has many really useful functions e.g. waivers; group waivers; integration with Xero. The developements in terms of the calendar and manifest are great improvements but little tweaks in layout would declutter the view. Some of the details functionality is brilliant - often not easy to find how to do something but just ask the Support folks and they usually have a very neat solution to offer. The customer support is fantastic, so responsive and are very wiling to take a suggestion/issue back to the developers.

Cons:

Find the Inventory calendar a bit cluttered and the mobile app could be done with a little refinement in terms of daily manifest. Integration with Xero needs a little refinement - would be excellent if an admin could choose which Payment Methods are integrated, at the moment every transaction creates a Xero invoice which is not always appropriate (e.g. gift vouchers, cash, face-to-face card payments) so there can be quite a bit of voiding in Xero to correct position. The Partner Accounts are too restrictive for the way we work with our partners so we had to provide User accounts to provide the functionality.

Comprehensive system with good support

Comments: I have been very impressed that Checkfront has been able to manage all aspects of our reservation system (online booking, calendar, inventory, waiver forms and integration with our POS). We were able to switch from a paper/whiteboard whiteboard model to completely digital this year thanks to our Checkfront implementation and it has been a game changer. Support has been very good and makes all the difference with configuration questions and minor system issues.

Pros:

I have an IT background and was able to install and configure this system mostly on my own. I needed help with a few more complex configuration questions but pretty impressive that a system this sophisticated can be setup by the end user. It is very flexible and powerful but this also means that setup can get quite involved.

Cons:

Reporting is a weakness with no custom reporting options. Ongoing development of the product is slow and currently with no transparency on the roadmap. They have promised to share more info on this though.

Easy On Line Booking System

Pros:

The systems are in place to send email reminders and confirmations of items booked. The booking is easy to set up so your customers can go through the form themselves

Cons:

When checking on a customer name you have to be exact - it doesn't show similar names like it use to, would love that back

Great service for the small tour opperation like my business

Comments: Great, good service and most of the time I can figure things out without any help from customer service.

Pros:

At first it took some time to understand the platform, but their people made that process easier with various videos and instructions

Cons:

Kinda expensive on a monthly basis, and oftentimes I'll have no tours, but still have to pay Checkfront

Eagle Wings Lodge

Comments: Generally good except when changes need to be made to bookings or refunds.

Pros:

The many reports and options available.

Cons:

Two calendars are confusing. Making changes to reservations. Difficult to figure out even with directions creating frustration and lots of time spent trying. Not user friendly- too many terms that are not easy to learn. Sorry to complain.

Bike Hire, Annie

Comments: It's very good.

Pros:

Easy-to-use. Reports are helpful when reviewing my business

Cons:

Changing an inventory item when aliased . It takes a long time to set up inventory items. If the parent number is changed, it would be good if aliased would automatically change.

My review

Comments: I like it.. I just don't like the app. I wish the app was better. I would prefer to use the app on my phone and for our employees - but it's limited and it kicks you out on a daily basis. Pretty frustating.

Pros:

Lots of great stuff about this. Pretty easy to use..

Cons:

The app is awful. Kicks me out daily. Needs to be improved big time.

Booking and Build With Ease!!

Comments: Great the support guys have been fantastic in helping me refine the application and adjusting it to our requirements.

Pros:

I managed to build an entire booking system from scratch and can maintain it without and army of tech prople.

Cons:

I was being billed for users i did not require but the team have now resolved that issue.

Best software for small business

Pros:

User friendly, more information than other software

Cons:

We have no dislikes about this software.

Checkfront Has Changed The Game

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Accommodation Management using Checkfront

Comments: Checkfront has met our every business need, so far. Yes, we have had to reach out to Checkfront support for assistance from time to time, but they have come to the party with a solution every time. Make no mistake, this is a great product.

Pros:

Flexibility to meet our business processes, automated customer communications via "Notifications" (which you can tailor to your needs), calendar functions, ability to specify requirements for the booking page and guest lists. We also like the different look and feel options for your booking page.

Cons:

If I had to make a criticism, and I mean "had to", I would say that because Checkfront is so flexible in its design features, there is a learning curve to understand how the functionality works. That is why you need good customer support, which you also get with Checkfront.

Haliburton Forest Review on Checkfront

Comments: Overall, we have been extremely satisfied and find that checkfront has more benefits than cons, but it would be nice if the cons could be improved. We have only been using checkfront for a little over a year and couldn't ask for an easier program to use. It has definitely improved how we manage our reservations and are constantly learning about new features and how others work.

Pros:

This is very user friendly, both on the back end/set up side as well as the user side. The reservation system we used to use is extremely limited. We love that we can create a reservation and easily make changes. Our old system was not as user friendly and we would have to delete a reservation and re-create it even if we wanted to something as simple as change a date.

Cons:

The website version is awesome, but the mobile app is not as user friendly as we would like and we are not thrilled with the reports. For the app, we are unable to check booking documents or update the reservations. That's great that we can check them in, but if they need to add a feature or change their dates at time of check in, we have to switch over to the web version, then switch back for payment. Which is another issue. We have connected checkfront with square, and a lot of the payments don't register with checkfront, so we have to first take the payment, and then record the payment. Very frustrating. We already had a few issues with the checkfront reports, which we have been able to work around, but now that we have connected to square, we are finding it extremely difficult to balance and now our bookkeeper has to refer to multiple reports, which of course does not help. One huge thing that would help is that our items in checkfront be able to communicate with square directly. Right now they convert over and say 'Custom Amount'. In one square report the booking id is referenced, but not others. Very, very frustrating. But if an item, like snowmobile passes, could actually transfer over as snowmobile passes, that would be huge. There are a few other issues, but those are the main setbacks we have currently.

Checkfront is a great fit for us

Comments: Overall, we're happy with our experience with Checkfront.

Pros:

- Having a dedicated website that is easily controlled from the backend - Collecting the payment is very nice - The product builder is easy to use

Cons:

- We would like to be able to put our items into groups of types of items on rentals. This is great for large rentals

A powerful tool to manage your guest house bookings

Comments: Despite some small shortcomings I am quite happy with Checkfront product and support service.

Pros:

Very well thought out and feature rich to accommodate the quirks of your business with good booking calendar and discount options. The support is also great and response times are less than a day. We been using Checkfront for 7 years now and have no plans to move away despite some small shortcomings. Highly recommended.

Cons:

The ability to make integrations to other services like accounting systems are limited. With the rise of functional programming like AWS lambda, I think its trivial to add some capability to integrate to other systems using similar event triggered functions or webhooks. Checkfront does have something like this but its quite limited. There is no support for multi item discounts as yet so customers are unable to get a discount if they book multiple inventory items. This is a key feature that I hope they will have in future. The ability to style the embeddable iframe booking page is also a bit limited and I can't get it to match my website style.

Easy-to-use booking software made in Canada

Pros:

The software is easy to use for clients and staff alike. As a result, we spend less time answering emails and the phone as people book themselves in. I also love that the company is based in Canada, and that the team is very responsive and the software is constantly developed. There is an affordable option if you just wanted to get started with booking software that does not break the bank.

Cons:

A few very specific things would be great to straighten out. For example, we offer 2 different overnight tours - the 2-day Seal Cove Adventure and the 3-day Cape Chignecto Adventure. We cannot run those tours parallel or overlapping - it is either one or the other -, so we set the availability to 0 by hand in the inventory the other tour every time an overnight tour gets booked. This way, however, we also have to block out the day before to ensure no overlapping tour gets booked even though in reality the date is available as the last day of a potential trip that starts earlier. It's not a huge impact, but we might loose a few bookings to this. Also, we cannot accept single bookings for tours where nobody else is booked on yet as we require a minimum of 2 guests for any tour to run. We have set the booking form (at least for the overnight tours) so that the field 'Adults' is automatically filled with the number 2. We do, however, accept single bookings if other people are booked on already, and we also would accept a pair of Adult/Child as a minimum. I wonder whether there is a way to streamline this.

Complicated systems for Dummies :)

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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..

Cons:

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..

Checkfront = Next Level

Comments: Checkfront affords is the ability to automate so much of the reservation process that not only do we have extremely organized and fluid interaction with customer’s reservations but we can streamline so many other elements of our system such as housekeeping as well.

Pros:

Multiple configurations allow us to customize our back and front facing reservation database even though we are not a traditional hotel. Support is usually very detailed and forward thinking. If what we want can’t be accomplished, we always get good insight on workarounds and temporary solutions, that sometimes work better than what we had planned. CF constantly works to improve itself. We get monthly updates that bring new funtctions and extension platforms into the mix. It’s about 75% of the way to eliminating the rest of our internal support platforms - loyalty rewards, staff scheduling, & customizable customer profiles are the remaining topics we’d like to see incorporated into CF.

Cons:

We hold little hope that our feature requests will ever be developed. Configuration on the backend comes with a significant learning curve. One can get lost in the labyrinth of configuration options. I understand it’s necessary for all the functionality on the front end but if hotels are configuring this themselves, the labyrinth could be a little less complicated (topics re: parameters, & alias are very confusing).

Great Features, Design Needs Work

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

- 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.

Checkfront review

Comments: The Checkfront platform has improved my overall customer experience and improved the workflow for my staff. We have integrated waivers, automatic notifications and the ability to take reservations when the office is closed.

Pros:

Checkfront offers the best value for money of any online reservation software I've explored. They offer great functionality for very reasonable monthly rates - and they offer prices in CAD, which is rare.

Cons:

I have virtually no complaints. As is the case with any software that isn't fully custom you will never find a perfect solution to match a unique business. I think Checkfront has done a great job of ticking enough boxes that I can workaround any challenges that they don't address directly.

Friendly and great support team.

Pros:

The support has an amazing actitud and vibe. They are on top of things to help the user. So easy to learn how to use check front.

Cons:

Love it, maybe just less complicated to add a tour or product.

Rating Checkfront

Comments: We have managed to provide a quicker and better customer service which is great. We are always able to track and account our bookings a lot better. All experience is positive!

Pros:

I love many things about this software. Most of all, I love 2 things - that it is really easy to navigate from the back end, therefore allowing even our instructors who aren't necessarily the most techy to navigate it and make bookings. I also love love love the customer service. We use many different systems for our business and this always provide the best customer service - even personalised videos when needed.

Cons:

Least - we have so many products it does take time to input them all. There is a little bit of a learning curve in setting up the fine details for each products, but i think this is inevitable.