Removing test data before going live

While setting up, you make trial bookings, test customers and perhaps a few invoices. Before going live, you want them gone. Otherwise they count in your reports and occupancy figures, test customers end up receiving mailings, and your invoice numbering does not start at the beginning.

The rule of thumb: you remove the test data, your configuration stays.

What to remove and what to keep

In doubt about a customer or reservation? Keep it and mark it, for example with "TEST" in the name. What is gone does not come back.

Prerequisites

• You have the right bulk_booking_delete for reservations, bulk_customer_delete for customers and bulk_invoice_delete for invoices.
• No real bookings come in on the environment any more. Do it as close to going live as possible.

Step 1: build the filter

The bulk action works on the results of your filter. Whatever is in your filter gets deleted. Go to Reservations > Search and filter on the period in which you tested, or on the test customers. If real reservations are already mixed in, make the filter narrow enough that only the tests remain.

Go through the list and note the number of results. That is your workload. Save the filter (see Save filter) so you can bring it back each round.

Step 2: delete the reservations

1. Click the three vertical dots at the top right and choose Bulk action.
2. Click the checkbox in the header of the first column. Up to 250 reservations per round are selected.
3. Click Next.
4. Under 'Select an action', choose Delete and click Next.
5. Check the list of reservations that will be deleted on the confirmation screen.
6. Click Execute.
7. A message at the bottom right says the task is complete. Click Seen and close.

Step 3: check and repeat

Click the blue search button to refresh the filter result. The number should have dropped by the number of reservations you deleted. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the filter returns no results.

Step 4: delete the test customers and test invoices

Delete the reservations first, then the customers. A customer with reservations attached cannot simply be removed. Go to Customers > Search, filter on your test customers and follow the same steps. If you have test invoices, do the same from the invoice search screen.

Working with activities? Clean up the test activities too

If you created activities to test with, for example a tour on a made-up date, they are part of your test data too. Otherwise they stay in your schedule, on your website and in your occupancy figures. Real activities already planned for the season stay.

1. First delete the reservations on those activities (steps 1 to 3).
2. Go to Activities > Search and filter on the product and period of your test activities. Check that no real activity is among them.
3. Set them to the status 70 Cancelled with a bulk action. How that works is described in How do I change the status of several events at once?. You need the right bulk_event_change_status for this.

A cancelled activity can no longer be booked and does not count in your planning.

Step 5: check the result

Look in the schedule and your reports to see that the test period is empty, and that your products and activities are still there.

Restarting the invoice numbering

If you created invoices while testing, your invoice number has already moved on. For your bookkeeping you usually want to start with a clean sequence. That is possible as long as your environment still has the status Implementation. After going live it is not: the sequence must then stay unbroken.

Want the numbering reset? Ask support, after you have removed the test invoices and before the status goes to Live.