internet whiteboard software cheap?

[groundbum]

I run a B&B and we get quite a few group bookings, say an organiser books fifteen rooms and then we have to start organising which rooms for which people, which if any nights they eat in, special diets, packed lunches, yada. And the worst thing is this changes constantly all the way up to arrival. Right now all this correspondence etc is done by email, and then important changes like rooms etc are entered into the booking diary. Trouble with email is we have at what they said and what I said in the sent folder and try and correlate it all.

It strikes me that life would be a lot easier if each group booking could be assigned a "whiteboard" on a webpage where the organiser and I can chat back and forth, and we're looking at the same hymn sheet all the time.

Is there any such software/hosted service out there?

It would need to be cheap
it would need to be easy to use, probably with next to no security since creating more user accounts and logons would be more hardware
it would need email notification to interested parties once a change was made on the board
it would need to be able to have word documents etc posted on it
it would need to be web based and accessible, no software installed on PCs etc

uhm, that's it! All recommendations welcomed..

Simon

[izod tester]

You could try Google Calendar. You can create specific calendars to share with specific groups of people. You might be able to put appropriate notes into it to do what you need.

[bnt]

openmeetings (http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/) might be what you're after: web-based, totally free. You can either install your own server, or use someone else's such as OpenMeetings (http://www.openmeetings.de/)

They have a demo server you can check out:
Demo-Server: http://www.openmeetings.de:8090/sugar/crm/
User: test
Pass: test

[mixture]

It strikes me that life would be a lot easier if each group booking could be assigned a "whiteboard" on a webpage where the organiser and I can chat back and forth, and we're looking at the same hymn sheet all the time.

Sounds like you're talking about a web meeting type environment....

There are some well known names out there, e.g. :

WebEx (WebEx:Web Conferencing, Web Meeting, Video Conference, Online Meeting Services (http://www.webex.co.uk/))
GoToMeeting (Web Conferencing | GoToMeeting (http://www.gotomeeting.co.uk/))

As well as countless other me-too solutions (ProjectPlace (http://www.projectplace.com) , Flash Meeting (http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/) etc.etc. etc.)..... google is your friend.