The system runs the daily life of your hotel from a single screen set. A reservation made at the front desk becomes a room to prepare for housekeeping, a folio for accounts, a guest profile for the CRM and a line on tonight's night audit, without anyone re-typing anything.

• Operations: Bookings, Rooms, Housekeeping and Maintenance keep the house running.
• Guests & team: Guests (CRM), Staff (rota, attendance, leave) and User Roles (who may do what).
• Revenue: Payments & invoices, the POS terminal, Restaurant & kitchen, and Inventory.
• Insights & system: Reports & exports, Notifications, the Audit log and Settings.

Everything is multi-tenant: your hotel's data is isolated at the database level, and each person signs in with a role that decides which modules they see and whether they can view, edit or fully manage them.

The guide has four parts:

1. 1
   Start here

   Signing in, moving around quickly, and what your role can do.
2. 2
   Your day

   One walk-through per kind of job, in the order a real shift runs: the front desk, the till, the pass, the rooms, and the manager's week. Signed in, you see the one written for you.
3. 3
   Modules

   One chapter per sidebar entry, in sidebar order. Each covers purpose, who uses it, the screen, workflows, statuses, fields, permissions, tips and the errors you may see.
4. 4
   Reference

   Offline mode, speed tips, troubleshooting for every error message, and a glossary.

Conventions used throughout:

• ⌘K / Ctrl K style keys mean “press together”. The shortcuts that exist: ⌘K / Ctrl K focuses global search, ? opens this guide, Esc closes what is open, and inside the guide / focuses the guide search while [ and ] page between chapters.
• Role tags next to a heading show who the section is mainly for. Anything marked Full needs full access to that module.
• Status diagrams show every state and the arrows between them, if an arrow is not drawn, the system will refuse that move.

• Press ? on any screen, click the book icon in the top bar, or choose User guide at the bottom of the sidebar.
• Every chapter has its own address, for example /guide/bookings. Use the link icon next to a heading to copy a link to that exact section and paste it to a colleague.
• The guide is public: share /guide with new staff before their account exists. Signed-in users see it inside the app; everyone else gets a light frame with a Sign in button.
• Use Print in the chapter header to save a chapter as PDF for the staff room, the layout switches to a clean single column.

Email and password

1. 1
   Open the app address

   The address your administrator gave you for your hotel, e.g. operations.yourhotel.com. On the public demo the sign-in form is at the top and the demo role dropdown sits below it.
2. 2
   Enter email and password

   Passwords are set by an administrator in Staff → Accounts, and you can change yours later in Settings → Account.
3. 3
   You land on your screen

   The desk and the managers open on the Dashboard; a waiter opens on the till, the kitchen on the kitchen display, a room attendant on the housekeeping board. The sidebar shows only the screens your role can open, and a one-screen role has no dashboard at all.

Staff PIN

Busy front desks share a hotel PIN of 4 to 8 digits. Pick your name from the staff list, type the PIN on the keypad and you are in. The PIN can never sign in as a Super Admin or Hotel Manager, those accounts always use email and password, and only a Settings-Full user can change the PIN.

The first time you sign in, a welcome card offers a three-minute tour written for your job. It walks your own screen control by control, spotlighting the real buttons: the shift pill, the menu grid, Send and Pay for a waiter; the shelves and station tabs for the kitchen; the board and the checklist for housekeeping; the pipeline, the folio and the reports for the desk and the managers. It moves between screens as it goes and ends with a short practice list.

1. 1
   Start the tour, or Skip the tour

   Skipping records that you have seen it; nothing else changes.
2. 2
   Move with Next and Back, or → ←

   Press Esc at any point to skip the rest. Each module card has an Open link that takes you straight there.
3. 3
   Finish

   The last card lists practice tasks for your job, such as opening an order on the first table and taking cash for it, or creating a walk-in and checking them in.

There are 13 standard roles. Each one has a level for each of the 13 permission modules; the matrix below is the default; administrators can adjust it in User Roles.

• View: open the module, read everything, export nothing. A small lock icon marks view-only modules in the sidebar.
• Edit: create and change records (new booking, mark a room clean, add a menu item).
• Full: also delete, approve, refund, export and change configuration.

Some screens map to a module you might not expect: Housekeeping and Maintenance sit under Rooms; POS, Restaurant and Inventory under Payments; User Roles, the Audit log and hotel-wide Settings under Settings. Security officers can always read the Audit log.

On the demo host the sign-in page shows a Demo role dropdown under the form. Pick a role and pressEnter demo to sign in as that role inside a sandbox that only your browser can see, pre-loaded with rooms, guests, hundreds of bookings, invoices, POS tickets and stock. Change anything, nobody else sees it. A purple Demo chip in the top bar shows how long the sandbox has left; Reset throws it away and starts a fresh one.

• Dark mode: click the moon/sun icon in the top bar, or Settings → Account. The choice is remembered per browser.
• Install as an app: in Chrome or Edge choose Install app from the address-bar menu; on a phone use Add to Home Screen. Installed, the app opens without browser chrome and keeps the front-desk screens available when the connection drops (see the Offline chapter).
• Device alerts: Settings → Notifications → Device alerts asks for permission to show system notifications for new alerts even when the tab is in the background.

Keyboard: ⌘K global search, ? this guide, Esc closes any drawer or dialog.

The breadcrumb always names the module you are in. The bell shows a live count of unread alerts; click it for the last few and a link to the full feed.

1. 1
   Press ⌘K (or Ctrl K)

   Focus jumps to the search box in the top bar.
2. 2
   Type at least two characters

   Booking codes (BK-1042), guest names or phone numbers, room numbers, invoice codes.
3. 3
   Pick a result

   Results are grouped; choosing one opens that module. Esc clears the box.

• The address bar is the source of truth: /guests?q=ann&tier=Gold&page=2 can be bookmarked, shared or reopened with Back/Forward.
• Typing in the search box waits a moment before querying, so you can keep typing.
• Live updates refresh the page you are looking at when someone else changes a record.

• Inline cells: click a status, priority or assignee cell to change it. It saves on change; Esc reverts; an error shows a toast and rolls the cell back. A guest's tier is a read-only badge in the list; change it in the guest drawer form.
• Kanban cards: drag a card to the next column; the card's drawer offers the same moves as buttons. Moves the system does not allow are refused with a message.
• Roles matrix: each cell is a dropdown from 0 to 3 (None, View, Edit, Full). Pick the levels for a row, then click that row's Save button. Changes bite within seconds for signed-in users.
• View-only roles see the same cells as plain text.

• Drawer (slides in from the right), a single record with its actions: a booking, a guest, a work order. The list stays visible behind it. Esc or the × closes it.
• Dialog (centre), wizards and confirmations: the new-booking wizard, check-in, taking a payment, supervisor authorisation. Destructive actions always confirm first.
• Page: the POS terminal, kitchen display, reports and settings tabs, which need the whole screen.

The Dashboard is the app's start page (and the page a phone opens when the app is installed). It greets you by first name (“Good morning, Fatima”), shows today's date, and lays out the numbers a front desk or manager needs before doing anything else. Nothing on it is edited; every tile and card links onward to the module that owns the data.

Every role can open the Dashboard. Which tiles and charts appear is decided by your levels for Rooms, Bookings, Payments and Staff, an Accountant sees revenue but no room tiles; a Maintenance user sees the room tiles and little else.

The role banner

Under the greeting a card shows your role, “Signed in as …” and one tag per permission module (Dashboard, Bookings, Rooms, Guests, Payments, Staff, Reports, Settings, Inventory, Restaurant, Kitchen, Finances, Analytics) coloured by level, grey with a lock for no access, blue for view, amber for edit, green for full. Hover a tag to read the level. It is the quickest way to see why a module is missing from your sidebar.

• Available rooms (Rooms = View), rooms whose projected status is Available, “of N total · M in maintenance”.
• Occupied rooms: rooms with a checked-in guest; the sub-line is occupied ÷ all rooms as a percentage.
• Arriving today (Bookings = View), bookings in the board's Arriving Today column: confirmed, check-in today or earlier, not yet checked in. Sub-line: how many guests are in-house now.
• Upcoming reservations: every New or Confirmed booking whose check-in is after today, however far ahead, with how many still await confirmation and the next arrival date. Click it for the list, soonest first (Status: Upcoming).
• Pipeline value (“all open bookings”): the stay totals of every booking on the board (the working set of stays touching the seven days either side of today, plus everyone in-house) added together, in the hotel currency.
• Staff on duty (Staff = View), “on duty / total”, derived at the moment you load the page from approved leave, today's attendance sheet and rostered shift windows. It is never stored; see the Staff chapter for the reasons shown per person.

• Revenue (Payments = View), “Collections · last 14 days vs previous 14”. Payments received per hotel-local day, refunds subtracted; the purple line is the 14 days before that.
• Occupancy (Bookings = View), “Rooms occupied per night · last 14 nights”, as a percentage of all rooms. Only bookings that have a room assigned count.
• Check-ins & outs (“Last 7 days”): stacked bars of actual check-in and check-out times per day.
• Room type performance (“Occupied nights · last 30 days”): for each type, occupied nights as a percentage of rooms × 30. Types with no rooms are hidden.
• Booking sources (“Last 90 days”): a donut of bookings created per source (Direct, Walk-in, Booking.com…), largest first, with the total in the middle.

Cards you are not allowed to see are simply absent; the remaining cards stretch to fill the row.

Today's arrivals

“N guests expected” lists every booking in the Arriving Today column: guest name, “Room 204 · Deluxe” (or just the type when no room is assigned yet), a Pending tag and the number of nights. Click Board to open the Bookings pipeline and check them in. The empty state reads “No arrivals expected today.” Late arrivals from earlier days stay on this list until they are checked in or marked no-show.

Quick actions

New Booking, Check In and Check Out open Bookings; Add Guest opens Guests; Create Invoice opens Payments; Assign Room opens Rooms; Report Issue opens Maintenance; Add Staff opens Staff; Notifications opens the alert feed. Only the actions whose module your role can open are shown.

Housekeeping status

Four bars over the total room count: Ready for guest (Available rooms), Cleaning in progress, Occupied, and Maintenance / out. The last bar counts rooms whose projected status is Maintenance; rooms flagged out of service are excluded from every bar.

Whenever a room, booking, invoice, housekeeping task, work order or staff record changes anywhere in the hotel, the Dashboard silently refreshes. You never need to reload it.

Each visit also saves a snapshot (rooms, board, summary) on the device. If you open the Dashboard with no connection, the snapshot is shown with an amber banner: “You're offline. Showing cached data from 4 Sep, 07:12.” When queued offline actions are sent, the page refreshes again.

• Rooms ≥ View: Available / Occupied tiles, Housekeeping status, the room counts in the KPI row.
• Bookings ≥ View: Arriving today, Upcoming reservations, Pipeline value, Occupancy, Check-ins & outs, Room type performance, Booking sources, Today's arrivals.
• Payments ≥ View: the Revenue chart.
• Staff ≥ View: the Staff on duty tile.

The Dashboard reads only; it has no actions of its own and returns no module-specific errors.

Staff answers two different questions. Who works here, and when?: the Directory, Rota, Attendance and Leave tabs. Who can sign in, and what may they open?: the Accounts tab. As the screen puts it: “a staff record is the person's job, an account is their way in. Link the two from the directory when someone needs both.”

• A room attendant may have a staff record and no login (they use the shared front-desk PIN, or none at all).
• An outside accountant may have a login and no staff record, they are not on the rota.
• A receptionist has both: a record with job title “Receptionist” in Front Office, linked to an account whose role is Receptionist. The job title is free text; the role is the permission set. They do not have to match.

HR managers own the directory, rota, attendance and leave. Department heads with Staff Edit mark attendance and request leave for their teams. Administrators manage accounts and approve leave. Everything on this page emits live updates, so two HR screens never disagree.

The tabs: Directory, Rota, Attendance, Leave, Accounts. Retired records are hidden from the directory and rota but can be restored from their drawer.

1. 1
   Click Add staff

   The dialog is titled “Add staff, A staff record. A sign-in account is optional and separate”.
2. 2
   Full name, Job title, Department

   Name and job title need two characters or more; department is a dropdown of the hotel's departments. Phone and Alternative phone are optional.
3. 3
   Linked account (optional)

   A dropdown of active accounts not already linked to someone else, shown as “Name · Role”. Leave it at “No login” for staff who do not sign in.
4. 4
   Click Add staff

   The person gets an S-code and appears in the grid; the toast reads “Jane Doe added to the team”.
5. 5
   Edit later from the card

   Click a card to open the drawer. Name, job title, department, phone and Linked account are editable; Save writes them (“Staff record updated”). The right-hand column shows phone, email, hire date, today's shift and attendance.
6. 6
   Retire record

   Red button in the drawer → confirm “Retire record”. “They disappear from the directory and rota. You can restore the record later.” A retired record cannot be rostered, marked or booked on leave. Restore record brings it back.

Shift times

At the bottom of the Rota tab, Shift times lists the templates the rota can use, “Morning 07:00 – 15:00”, “Night 18:00 – 06:00”. With Staff Full you can rename a shift, retime it (hh:mm), or add one with the row at the bottom. “An end time at or before the start makes it an overnight shift” and gets an overnight tag. “Retiming a shift moves every rota entry already using it.” Start and end must differ. Without any templates, “every rota cell is empty”.

Filling the rota

1. 1
   Pick the week

   The card head shows “Mon 7 Sep – Sun 13 Sep · one shift per person per day”. Use ‹ › to move a week, This week to come back. Today's column is highlighted.
2. 2
   Choose a shift in each cell

   Every cell is a dropdown: the blank “off” choice or a template “Morning · 07:00 – 15:00”. It saves on change and is written to the audit log as rota.assigned or rota.cleared.
3. 3
   Find the gaps

   Filter Coverage → “Has unfilled days” to list only people with at least one empty cell this week; combine with Department.

1. 1
   Pick the date

   The date box tops out at hotel-local today; the card head reads “7 of 12 marked for today · unmarked people read as off duty”.
2. 2
   Click a status chip

   Present, Late or Absent on the row. It saves immediately and is audited as attendance.recorded.
3. 3
   Clock in / Clock out

   Type hh:mm and leave the field. Typing a time on an unmarked row marks the person Present as well, because a record needs a status. A bad value shows “Enter the time as hh:mm, e.g. 07:30” and reverts.
4. 4
   Note

   Free text up to 200 characters (“doctor's appointment”), saved when you leave the box.
5. 5
   Work down the unmarked list

   Filter Status → “Not yet marked” to see who is left. The Shift column shows the rostered window so you can judge Late.

Attendance % on the directory (per person and hotel-wide) is the share of marked days over the last 30 that are not Absent, Late counts as attended. People with no marks show “not marked yet”.

1. 1
   Click Request leave

   On the Leave tab. The dialog says “Pending until someone with Staff full access decides”. Choose the Staff member, Type (Annual, Sick, Unpaid, Other), First day, Last day and an optional Reason.
2. 2
   Submit request

   The request gets an LV-code, appears under Pending requests, and a blue alert “Leave request: Jane Doe” goes to the feed. A request that overlaps a pending or approved one for the same person is refused.
3. 3
   Approve or Reject (Staff Full)

   Green Approve / red Reject on the pending row open a confirmation titled “Approve LV-…” or “Reject LV-…” with an optional Note “kept on the record”. Approving warns: “Approved leave outranks the rota: this person reads as On leave on every day in the range.” Rejecting: “the rota untouched. The request stays in history with your note.”
4. 4
   Withdraw (Staff Edit)

   For requests raised in error. Confirm “Withdraw request”. The row “disappears from the approval queue and is filed as cancelled. … use Reject to turn one down.”
5. 5
   History

   Decided and withdrawn requests, newest first, with Decided by and the note. Filter by Status, Leave type and Department; search by code or name.

Rejections are final. Approved leave can be withdrawn by HR (Staff · Full access) when plans change; the person is back on the rota and on duty at once. Attendance is checked after leave, so an approved day still reads as On leave; ask an administrator if that matters for records.

The badge on every card is recomputed on each request, in this priority order. The first rule that applies wins, and the card's tooltip tells you which one it was.

1. 1
   On leave

   On approved leave today
2. 2
   Off duty

   Marked absent on today's attendance sheet
3. 3
   On duty

   Marked present on today's attendance sheet, or marked late on today's attendance sheet
4. 4
   On duty

   Inside a rostered shift right now (by the hotel's clock)
5. 5
   Off duty

   Rostered today, but outside the shift window, or no shift on today's rota

• An attendance mark is an explicit statement about today and outranks the rota: someone marked Present at 06:50 is on duty even before their 07:00 shift starts.
• Overnight shifts work across midnight: a “Night 18:00 – 06:00” rostered for Monday shows the person on duty from 18:00 Monday until 06:00 Tuesday.
• Nobody on the rota today and no mark → Off duty with “No shift on today's rota”. This is why a brand-new hotel shows everyone off duty until the rota is filled.
• The KPI tiles and the page-head “on duty right now” use exactly the same rule, so they always agree with the cards.

The Accounts tab lists every login with Name, Email, Role, Status (Active / Deactivated) and Last sign-in, with four counters (Accounts, Active, Deactivated, Roles in use) and filters for Role and Status. Your own row is tagged “you”.

1. 1
   New account

   The “New staff account” dialog (“They sign in with this email and password”) asks for Full name, Email, Temporary password (“min 8 chars, share it securely”) and Role. Click Create account. The email must be unique in the hotel.
2. 2
   Change a role

   Open the account and pick a new Role; it saves at once (“Role updated”) and takes effect on the person's next request. You cannot change your own role.
3. 3
   Reset password

   Type a new password (8+ characters) and click Set. The toast reads “Password reset. Existing sessions revoked”, so the person is signed out everywhere.
4. 4
   Deactivate account

   Confirm “Deactivate account”. The dialog warns: “They will be signed out immediately and will not be able to sign in until you reactivate the account.” Reactivate account reverses it. You cannot deactivate yourself.
5. 5
   Link it to a person

   Go back to the Directory, open the staff record and choose the account under Linked account.
6. 6
   Retire the person

   Marking the staff record inactive in the Directory deactivates the linked account at the same moment and signs it out everywhere (audited). Re-activating the record does not reopen the login; do that deliberately here with Reactivate account.

• Staff View: all five tabs read-only (drawers say “View-only access …”).
• Staff Edit: Add staff, edit / retire / restore records, fill the rota, mark attendance, Request leave, Withdraw; create accounts, change roles, reset passwords, deactivate and reactivate.
• Staff Full: additionally Approve / Reject leave and add or retime shift templates.
• Settings Full: required on top of Staff Edit to create, re-role or edit a Super Admin / Hotel Manager (admin-tier) account.

Defaults: HR Manager has Staff Full but Settings View, so HR can approve leave yet cannot touch admin accounts; Housekeeping Mgr has Staff Edit; Restaurant Mgr and Security can only look; Super Admin does everything.

• Tiles filter. Click On leave to see who is away today; it also resets the department chip because tiles count the whole hotel.
• Hotel time. “Today” for attendance, the rota and duty status is the hotel's own calendar day and clock, not your laptop's.
• Everything is live. Approving leave on one screen flips the person's badge on every other open Staff page within seconds.
• Start-of-day routine: Attendance tab → filter “Not yet marked” → chips down the list; then Directory to confirm “on duty right now” matches the floor.
• Pending queue. The page-head link “N leave requests to decide” jumps straight to the Leave tab.
• History is capped. The Leave tab shows the 200 most recent decided requests; pending ones always show in full.

Records, rota, attendance

Leave

Accounts

Staff record

A person on the payroll: S-code, job title, department, rota and attendance. May have no login.

Account

A sign-in (email + password) with a role. May have no staff record.

Duty status

On duty / Off duty / On leave, derived live from leave, attendance and the rota; never stored.

Shift template

A named time window (e.g. Night 18:00 – 06:00) that rota cells reference. Retiming it retimes every cell.

Admin tier

Super Admin, Hotel Manager, or any role with Settings Full. Needs Settings Full to grant; never PIN sign-in.

Payments & Invoices is the money side of a stay. Every booking that is confirmed or checked in has an invoice, the folio: that collects room nights, taxes, deposits, fees and restaurant charges. This screen lists those invoices, shows what has been paid, lets you record a payment or a refund, and prints or emails the invoice.

There is no card gateway: the system records money that has already changed hands (cash, mobile money, card terminal slip, bank transfer) and keeps the reference you type. Amounts are whole shillings, the hotel currency label can change in Settings, but there are never decimals.

Receptionists can open the screen and read every folio; recording money needs Payments at Can edit (Accountant, Hotel Manager, Restaurant Manager by default) and refunds need Full.

The page has two tabs. Stay is the folios: the invoice list in three shapes plus a Receiptsview that lists every payment and refund across invoices with the receipt PDF on each row. Restaurantlists every tender taken at the till (cash, mobile money, card, and room charges marked as such) with the ticket receipt on each row; clicking a row opens the ticket. Both tabs live in the address bar.

The folio drawer

Clicking a row opens a drawer titled with the invoice code (e.g. INV-0412) and the guest and booking under it. Left: status badge, issued and due tags, the line items (Item · Qty · Amount) and a dark totals card (Total · Paid · Balance). Right: the Payment history: one entry per payment or refund with method, network, reference, code, date and who received it, and a print and a download icon for that payment's receipt. Footer buttons: Close, Print, Download, Email,Record payment (only while a balance is owed) and, once the payment form is open, Save payment.

Empty state: “No invoices yet. A folio opens at check-in, and a deposit invoice when a booking is confirmed”.

An invoice is a header (issue date, due date, totals, a cached status) plus lines of a kind:room, tax, deposit, fee, pos,adjustment, other. Where each comes from:

1. 1
   Confirmation, deposit invoice

   If the hotel has a deposit % (Settings → Hotel), confirming a booking opens an invoice with one line “Deposit <pct>% · BK-…”. Issue and due date are the hotel-local day it was raised. The guest can pay it now; it shows as Pending, Partially Paid or Paid like any other.
2. 2
   Check-in, the stay lands on the same invoice

   Check-in appends “Accommodation · BK-… · <room type> × N nights” and the tax lines “Service charge X%”, “VAT X%”, “Tourism levy X%” (only those with a non-zero rate). If a deposit invoice already exists it is reused: every deposit line is offset by an equal negative line “Deposit applied to stay · BK-…”, so total = the stay, and whatever was paid on the deposit already counts toward it. The deposit is never charged twice.
3. 3
   During the stay, POS room charges

   A restaurant or bar ticket closed with Charge to Room posts “POS · TKT-… · <outlet>”, “Service charge · TKT-…” and “VAT · TKT-…” lines onto the open folio and raises its total. A folio that was already Paid becomes Partially Paid again.
4. 4
   One bill for everything

   The PDF button on the folio prints the guest bill: Accommodation (nights, deposits, fees), Restaurant & Bar (every ticket charged to the room with the items actually ordered, their accompaniments and who served), Other charges, then the totals box, payments received and the balance banner. It is the one receipt a guest takes home for the room, the kitchen and the bar.
5. 5
   Cancellation / no-show, the money comes back first

   Every deposit or prepayment line on the open invoice is offset by an equal “Deposit released · BK-…” credit, then the fee posts with its tax: cancellation as the hotel's percentage of the stay, no-show as the percentage of the first night. Each fee posts once per booking. If the guest had paid more than the fee, the folio shows “Refund due UGX …”; issue it from Payment history.
6. 6
   Fees, comps and corrections

   Adjust (Payments Full) posts one line by hand: a Fee (late check-out, damage, extras) or an Adjustment (a comp or a correction, negative to credit the guest), taxable or not. It works on a closed folio too, so a bill can be put right after check-out; every line is audited as invoice.adjusted.
7. 7
   Leaving early, a longer stay

   Moving the dates of a checked-in booking, or checking a guest out before the booked date, posts the difference as one “Stay adjusted · BK-…” room line with its tax, positive or negative. The folio's due date follows the new check-out, so an in-house guest is never overdue.
8. 8
   Check-out, the folio closes

   Check-out closes every open invoice on the booking: no more charges can land on it, but it stays payable until settled. Adjust can still correct it afterwards.

The tax chain

Totals are computed in one fixed order and rounded at every step: discount on the subtotal → service charge on the discounted subtotal → VAT on (discounted subtotal + service) → tourism levy on the discounted subtotal → total. Rates are the hotel's percentages in Settings; a POS outlet may override the service % for its own tickets.

1. 1
   Open the folio

   Click the invoice row. Check the Balance figure in the dark card, that is what can be collected. On a tax-inclusive hotel (Settings → Hotel) the tax rows read “Includes VAT 18%” and are part of the lines above them, not added on top.
2. 2
   Click Record payment

   The button is in the drawer footer and only shows while the balance is above zero. The Amount field is pre-filled with the full balance.
3. 3
   Enter the amount

   Whole shillings only; commas and spaces are stripped. A part-payment is fine, the invoice becomes Partially Paid and Record payment stays available for the rest.
4. 4
   Choose the method

   Cash · Mobile Money · Card · Bank Transfer. Mobile Money asks for the Network (MTN or AIRTEL). Every method except Cash shows a Reference no. field (“Transaction / slip reference”), type the MoMo transaction id, card auth code or transfer reference so the audit trail can be matched to the bank.
5. 5
   Save payment

   A PAY-… code is issued, the invoice status is re-derived, a notification is raised (“Payment received on INV-…” or “Invoice INV-… settled”) and the toast reads “Payment of UGX … recorded on INV-…”.

A refund is a payment entry with a negative effect, linked to the payment it reverses. It cannot exceed what is still refundable on that payment, nor what has been collected on the invoice overall.

1. 1
   Find the payment in Payment history

   Each non-refund entry with something left shows a Refund chip; if part of it was already returned the chip reads Refund rest. A fully returned payment shows a Refunded badge instead.
2. 2
   Click Refund

   A confirm dialog titled “Refund PAY-…?” explains: “This refunds whatever is still outstanding on the payment. The guest balance will increase.”
3. 3
   Issue refund

   The refund is created with the same method and reference as the original, a new PAY-… code, written to the audit log as payment.refunded, and the folio status is re-derived (Refunded once net paid reaches zero).

The rule lives on the booking, but it is a payments rule: Check out on the booking drawer refuses while any open folio on that booking has a balance. The 409 names the invoices and the total, for example “INV-0412 still owes UGX 240,000. Collect it before check-out, or a Payments manager can check out and bill later”.

1. 1
   Usual path, collect first

   Open Payments, record the balance, then check the guest out. The folio is closed at check-out and shows Paid.
2. 2
   Exception, settle later

   Bill-to-company or a disputed charge: a user with Payments Full sees a confirm on the booking drawer to check out anyway. The booking is checked out, the action is audited as booking.checkedout_unsettled, and the folio is closed to new charges but stays open for collection here.
3. 3
   Collect afterwards

   The invoice keeps its status (Pending, Partially Paid, and Overdue once the due date passes). Record payment works exactly as during the stay.

• Pending: nothing received yet.
• Partially Paid: net paid (payments minus refunds) is above zero but below the total.
• Paid: net paid ≥ total.
• Refunded: at least one refund exists and net paid is back at zero or below.
• Overdue: Pending or Partially Paid and the due date is before the hotel's today. This one is derived on every read: list, drawer, PDF, search, the booking drawer and the night audit, and is never written to the database.

• Open the list, open a folio, Print (PDF): Payments · View only.
• Record payment, Email invoice: Payments · Can edit.
• Refund: Payments · Full access.
• Check out with a balance (settle later): Payments · Full access, from the booking drawer (Bookings · Can edit for the check-out itself).

The POS terminal, Restaurant and Inventory share the Payments module, so a Restaurant Manager (Can edit) can record a folio payment here even though their day is spent on tickets.

Folio

The invoice attached to a booking that collects the stay, taxes, deposits, fees and POS charges. Opens at confirmation (deposit) or check-in; closes at check-out.

Deposit

A percentage of the stay requested at confirmation as a deposit line. At check-in it is offset by an equal “Deposit applied” credit so it is never charged twice.

Net paid

Payments minus refunds on an invoice.

Balance

Total minus net paid, never below zero.

Overdue

Derived: unpaid or part-paid and due before the hotel's today. Never stored.

Settle later

A Payments-Full override that checks a guest out with a balance; audited; the folio stays collectable.

Reports & Analytics shows revenue, occupancy, attendance, loyalty and stock as live queries, nothing is pre-computed, so what you see is what the database holds right now. From here you can queue an Excel or PDF export, print the page, and close the business date (the night audit).

You only see sections your role can read elsewhere: revenue, payments and inventory need Payments view; occupancy, booking sources and room-type performance need Bookings view; housekeeping and maintenance need Rooms; attendance needs Staff; loyalty needs Guests. Exports follow the same rule, so a workbook never contains a sheet you could not see on screen.

• Net receipts: payments received minus refunds per hotel-local day, for the whole period; the dashed line is the same series for the previous period when Compare is on.
• KPI definitions: Occupancy = room nights sold ÷ room nights available (rooms × days). ADR = room revenue ÷ nights sold. RevPAR = room revenue ÷ nights available. Average stay = nights ÷ stays that arrived in the period. Room revenue = the agreed nightly rate × nights that fall in the period for confirmed, in-house and departed stays. Outstanding is the balance of every open folio right now, not a period figure.
• Occupancy: rooms occupied per night as a share of all rooms, with the previous period dashed when comparing.
• Check-ins and check-outs: arrivals and departures per day over the last two weeks. Room type performance: occupied nights per type as a share of that type's capacity over the last 30 days.
• Staff attendance: daily attendance % with Present / Late / Absent totals in the header. The card only appears once attendance has been recorded.
• Guest loyalty: guests on file, loyalty members, the returning-guest rate, a bar per tier (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) and how many guests are in-house right now. Spend figures are collected payments.
• Inventory position: Healthy / Low stock / Out of stock counts and how many items carry expiry dates. Full detail is on the Inventory page.
• Booking sources: a count per source (Direct, Walk-in, Booking.com, Expedia, Travel Agent, Corporate) for bookings created in the last 90 days.
• Operations tiles: rooms cleaned and the average clean turnaround (task created to Ready), open work orders, attendance % (present plus late over everything recorded) and guests created in the period.

The page refreshes itself whenever a booking, invoice, housekeeping task, work order, room or staff record changes anywhere in the hotel, you do not need to reload.

Every card under Reports by area opens its own page. The period bar at the top is the same one the hub uses and travels in the address, so a bookmarked area report always reopens on the same dates. The arrows in the page head step through the areas in order; Excel and PDF (Reports Full) export exactly what the page shows, one sheet per chart or table, plus a Summary sheet with the KPIs.

• Front office (Bookings view): occupancy per night, ADR, RevPAR, average stay, arrivals and departures, cancellations and no-shows, lead time with a histogram, sources, room type performance and ADR by type, group versus individual.
• Revenue & payments (Payments view): net receipts per day, invoiced versus collected per week, methods and mobile money networks, refunds, receipts by cashier, and outstanding balances by age (right now, not for the period).
• Restaurant & POS (Payments view): sales per day, a weekday by hour heat map, sales by outlet and server, top items by quantity and by revenue, voided lines, kitchen status at close, covers and average ticket.
• Rooms (Rooms view): occupancy by type and by floor, revenue per room, rooms by status right now, and the open work orders that keep a room out of sale.
• Housekeeping (Rooms view): tasks per day, by type, status, priority and floor, rooms readied per attendant and each attendant's turnaround.
• Maintenance (Rooms view): orders per week, by category, priority, status and technician, estimated cost by category, time to repair, and the orders that block rooms.
• Inventory (Payments view): quantity in and out per day, out by reason and department, most consumed and most received items, and a low-stock table for right now.
• Staff (Staff view): attendance per day and by department, late marks and absences per person, marks by kind, leave by type and status.
• Guests (Guests view): new guests per week, arrivals split into first stay and returning, tiers, top countries, VIP and corporate counts, top spenders for the period.
• Night audit (Reports view): every close in the period as recorded at the time, occupancy and money at close, movements, and the closes table. Closing the day is refused while the till still has an open shift or ticket (“2 shifts and 1 ticket are still open on the till”); a manager may confirm Close the day anyway, and the snapshot records that it was forced together with the overdue arrivals and overstays of the day.
• Security & access (administrators and Security): events and denied requests per day, events by role, top actions and people, the most recent denied requests.

Open Custom report from the toolbar (or go to /reports/custom). The left column describes what you want; the right pane runs it as you change things, so there is no Run button to remember.

1. 1
   Pick a source

   Bookings, Room nights, Invoices, Payments, POS tickets, POS lines, Stock movements, Housekeeping tasks, Work orders, Attendance or Audit events. You only see the sources your role may read; Audit needs the same access as the Audit log page.
2. 2
   Choose the date field and the period

   Each source offers one or more dates (a booking can be counted by arrival, departure or creation). The period bar is the same one the hub uses, presets or custom dates, up to 366 days.
3. 3
   Filter

   Add a filter per column: pick values from a list for statuses and types, type a number for amounts, or ask for empty and not-empty. Filters combine with AND.
4. 4
   Group and measure

   Group by a day, week or month bucket and by up to two columns (room type, source, department, payment method and so on). Add up to eight measures: count, distinct count, sum, average, minimum or maximum of a numeric column.
5. 5
   Pick a chart

   Table is always available. Bar, line and donut need at least one group and one measure; line needs a date bucket.
6. 6
   Save and share

   Save report asks for a name and an optional description. Tick Share with the hotel so colleagues can open it from the Saved reports card; they run it with their own access, so a shared report over payments still shows nothing to someone without Payments view.

• Room nights is a virtual source: one row per room per night in the period, with occupied and available flags, so occupancy by floor or by type is a one-line report.
• Money is whole shillings; percentages are rounded to one decimal. Results are capped at 1,000 rows or 400 buckets and the preview says so when it truncates.
• Ownership: only the person who saved a report, or someone with Reports Full, can rename, edit or delete it. Your own reports and the shared ones appear on the hub; private reports of other people never do.
• Export: a saved report has Excel and PDF buttons (Reports Full). The file carries the report name, the resolved period and the row count, and lands in the Exports tray like every other export.
• Demo sandboxes: saved reports are copied into a sandbox with the rest of the hotel; a filter that names a specific room or guest by id still points at the template hotel and simply matches nothing there.

1. 1
   Click Export Excel or Export PDF

   Needs Reports Full. The toast reads “Export queued. It appears below when ready”. The request carries the current period (30 days).
2. 2
   Watch the Exports tray

   The row starts as Queued, moves to Running while the worker builds the file, then Ready (or Failed with the reason next to the badge). The tray refreshes on the export.done live event, so there is nothing to poll.
3. 3
   Download

   Click Download on a Ready row. Anyone with Reports View can download; the file is named reports-2026-09-04.xlsx or .pdf. A “Export ready, reports-2026-09-04.xlsx. Download it from Reports” notification also arrives in the System category.

• Excel workbook sheets: Overview, Revenue, Occupancy, Check-in out, Room types, Booking sources, Staff attendance, Guest tiers, Inventory, each only if you may see that section. The hotel name, address and generation time sit in the title block.
• PDF: the same sections laid out as a printable report.
• Guest list: the Export button on the Guests page queues a guests-xlsx export (code, name, phone, email, country, tier, stays, lifetime spend). It needs Reports Full and Guests view, and it downloads from this tray too.
• Retention: files are stored for 30 days; older ones are pruned whenever a new export is queued. The tray lists the 20 most recent. Files above 5 MB fail rather than store.

1. 1
   Check the business-date strip

   It shows today's hotel-local date (from the timezone in Settings → Branding & locale) and whether it is still open.
2. 2
   Click Close 2026-09-04 in the toolbar

   Needs Reports Edit. The button is hidden once the day is closed.
3. 3
   Confirm “Close 2026-09-04?”

   Dialog text: “This freezes a snapshot of occupancy, cash and open invoices for the hotel-local business date. You cannot close the same day twice.” Click Close business date.
4. 4
   Done

   Toast “2026-09-04 closed”; the strip changes to “Closed 23:58” and an audit-log row night_audit.closed carries the snapshot.

• View: open the page, read every section your other module levels allow, list and download exports, see the night-audit status.
• Edit: Close business date. By default this includes the Accountant and HR Manager.
• Full: Export Excel, Export PDF and the Guests page Export button. The Export action is a Full-level action everywhere in the app, so by default only Super Admin and Hotel Manager produce files; Accountants download them.

Business date

The hotel-local calendar day (per the timezone in Settings), which is what the night audit closes.

Night audit

The daily close: a frozen snapshot of rooms, bookings, cash and open balances, plus a room-state re-sync.

Export tray

The Exports card listing the last 20 generated files with their status.

Notifications tell the team what just happened: a new booking, a payment, a room turned dirty, a stock item running out, an export ready. Most entries are hotel-wide, and each person sees those that belong to a module they can open: a waiter sees kitchen and order alerts but not “Payment received on INV-…”, an accountant the reverse. Personal ones (“Order ready: Table 4” for the waiter who took the order, your test notification) reach one person only, on every device they are signed in on. Read state is per person: marking an alert read for you does not clear it for a colleague.

There is no permission gate: the feed, the bell and the preferences are available to every role, because the feed only tells you where to look, the module you click through to still enforces its own access.

The bell

• The bell in the top bar carries a live unread count. Clicking it opens a panel, a popover on desktop, a bottom sheet on phones, titled Notifications with the twelve most recent entries, Mark all read, a close ×, and View all to open this page.
• New alerts are prepended to the panel as they arrive. Esc or clicking outside closes it. When empty it reads “Nothing new. Events appear here as they happen.”

The feed loads the latest 100 entries. Empty states: “No payments notifications.” when a chip filter has nothing; otherwise “Nothing here yet. Bookings, check-ins and payments will appear as they happen.” or, if you have not turned on device alerts in a browser that supports them, a prompt to do so with an Open notification settings button.

1. 1
   Open Settings → Notifications

   Or click Preferences on the feed page.
2. 2
   Click the chip beside a category

   It toggles between On (green) and Muted (dimmed). The change saves immediately and rolls back with a toast if it fails.
3. 3
   Muted means gone from every channel

   “Muted categories are hidden from your feed, badge, toasts and device alerts, for this account only.” The rows are still written for the hotel, so un-muting brings history back.

• Tab focused: a toast slides in with the title, body and a link; the bell count goes up by one. No OS banner.
• Tab open but hidden (another tab, minimised), with Device alerts on, the browser shows a system notification from the live event. Clicking it focuses the app and opens the linked module. This path needs no server configuration.
• App closed or phone locked: the server sends a Web Push message to every device you enabled; the service worker shows the banner unless a focused app window already exists. This needs VAPID keys on the server, Settings tells you when they are missing: “OS banners work while a tab is open. Ask your admin to set VAPID keys for alerts when the app is closed.”
• All three respect your category mutes.

1. 1
   Open Settings → Notifications → Device alerts

   The card reads “Off for this browser” or “On for this browser” with a hint that explains what will happen on this device.
2. 2
   Click the Off/On chip

   The browser asks for notification permission. Allow it. When server push is configured the device is registered too. Toast: “Device alerts on, you will get banners when the app is in the background” (or “…on for this browser (server push is not configured yet)”).
3. 3
   Click Send test

   A “Test notification, Device alerts are working on this browser.” entry is written to your personal System feed and pushed to your devices even if System is muted. The toast says “Hide this tab (or lock your phone) to see the OS banner as well.” when the tab is visible, or “Check your notification tray.” when it is not.
4. 4
   Turn off any time

   Click the chip again: the device is unregistered and you see “Device alerts off for this browser”. The setting is per browser and per device, not per account.

Clicking marks the alert read first (optimistically, the page does not wait for the server), then navigates. OS banners and Web Push banners carry the same link and open it in the app.

Toast

The small in-app message that slides in while the tab is focused.

OS banner

A system notification shown by the browser or phone outside the app window.

Web Push

Server-sent notifications that arrive even when the app is closed; needs VAPID keys on the server.

Device alerts

The per-browser switch in Settings → Notifications that enables OS banners and Web Push.

Settings has six tabs: Account, Hotel, Branding & locale, Ops config, Notifications and Numbering. Account and Notifications are personal and open for every role. The other four describe the hotel and need Settings access: View to read, Edit to change most fields, Full for the handful that can break things, currency, timezone, the front-desk PIN and the numbering counters.

By default only the Super Admin has Settings = Full. The Hotel Manager has Edit, the HR Manager has View, and everybody else sees just Account and Notifications. Every hotel-level change is written to the audit log as a settings.* event.

Deep link a tab with /settings?tab=notifications (ids: account, hotel, branding, ops, notifications, numbering); the Preferences button on the Notifications page does exactly that.

1. 1
   Click Change password

   Three fields unfold: Current password, New password (min 8) and Confirm new password.
2. 2
   Click Update password

   The page checks “New password must be at least 8 characters” and “Passwords don't match” before sending. The server verifies the current password.
3. 3
   Other devices are signed out

   Toast: “Password changed. Other devices were signed out”. Every other session's refresh token is revoked; this browser gets a fresh one and stays in. The change is audited as user.password.changed.

Appearance: Light or Dark. “Theme is saved per device”, meaning it lives in this browser, not on your account, and the moon/sun icon in the top bar toggles the same setting.

Edit any field and click Save changes (top right; Settings Edit). Toast: “Settings saved”.

Amenities on offer is the list the room-type picker shows (M9.1). Press the box, tick what this hotel has: the dropdown is grouped and every row is a checkbox, and each ticked one also appears as a chip with its icon and an x. Leave it empty and every amenity the system knows is offered, which is what a full-service hotel wants; a lodge narrows it to the handful it has. Taking one off the list never strips it from a room type that already carries it. It saves with Save changes.

Rate plans lists every plan (code, name and kind, BAR, weekend, promo…) with its percentage adjustment; change the number and click Save on that row (toast “WKND saved”). New plans are created from the rate-plan API, not here. The bin deletes a plan no booking was quoted on.

Logo

• “PNG, JPEG or WebP. Downscaled to 512px; max 200KB after that.” Click Upload logo, pick a file; the browser scales it to 512 px on the long edge and saves it at once (toast “Logo updated”). Remove clears it (“Logo removed”). Settings Edit.
• Too complex an image after scaling gives “Logo too large even after downscaling. Try a simpler image”; an unreadable file gives “Could not read that image”.
• The logo is stored with the hotel profile (no file server) and appears in the sidebar and on exports. The audit log records “(image updated)”, never the image.

Theme

• Theme picks the colour set and the display font for every screen and every PDF letterhead; the change applies as soon as you save (toast “Theme saved”).
• Tagline is the headline on the sign-in page of a live hotel (up to 140 characters); leave it empty for the standard line.

Locale

• Timezone (IANA): a list of every zone the browser knows (Africa/Kampala, Africa/Nairobi…). It defines the hotel's business date for check-ins, night audit, reports and the audit log.
• Currency code: three capital letters (UGX, KES…). Client check: “Currency must be a 3-letter code like UGX or KES”.
• Both need Settings Full: the fields are disabled otherwise and the note adds “Changing currency or timezone needs full Settings access.” Click Save locale (toast “Locale saved”); the sidebar and money labels refresh immediately.

Everything on this tab needs Settings Edit. Rename fields save on blur or Enter; the + button beside each “New …” box adds a row.

• POS discounts: “Deactivate rather than delete. Tickets copy label & %”. Each row: label (2–60 chars), whole-number % (0–100), an Auth chip (amber when the discount “Requires supervisor authorization” at the till) and Active / Off. Add with “New discount label” + “%”.
• POS void reasons: “Offered when a ticket line is voided”. Label (2–80 chars) with Active / Off. Add with “New void reason”.
• Housekeeping checklist: “Template applied to every new cleaning task”. Steps with Active / Off; add with “New checklist step”. “Changes apply to tasks created from now on; open tasks keep their checklist.”
• Outlet service charge: “Overrides the hotel service % on POS folios”, with one “% svc” box per POS outlet (0–50). Shows “No POS outlets configured.” when there are none.
• Departments, suppliers & categories: “Create and rename only. Rows stay referenced by history”. Staff departments, Suppliers and Inventory categories, each with a rename box per row and a “New department” / “New supplier” / “New category” box. Names must be unique (2–60 characters; suppliers up to 80).

Two cards: Device alerts (the On/Off chip and Send test) and Categories (Bookings, Payments, Operations, System with On / Muted chips). Both are personal, no Settings access needed. Full detail in Notifications → Turning on Device alerts.

“Prefixes are fixed; the next counter can only move upward (lowering it would duplicate codes)”. The table lists Documents, Prefix, Next code and Next value for: Bookings (BK-), Invoices (INV-), Payments (PAY-), Guests (G-), Housekeeping tasks (HK-), Maintenance orders (M-), POS tickets (TKT-), Purchase orders (PO-), POS shifts (SHF-), Staff records (S-) and Leave requests (LV-).

1. 1
   Type the new Next value

   Settings Full only; others see the number and “Editing counters needs full Settings access.”
2. 2
   Press Enter or click away

   The counter saves on blur. Toast: “BK counter moved to 5000”.
3. 3
   Lower values are refused

   “Next value must be above the current 1042. Lowering it would duplicate codes”. The change is audited as settings.sequence.updated with from/to.

• None: Account and Notifications tabs only.
• View: read Hotel, Branding & locale, Ops config and Numbering.
• Edit: Save changes on Hotel, logo upload/remove, rate-plan adjustments, every Ops config list.
• Full: additionally currency, timezone, the front-desk PIN and numbering counters. Full also makes the role admin tier: it can manage roles and users and read the audit log, and the shared PIN can no longer sign in as it.

Business date / hotel day

The calendar day in the hotel's timezone; check-in dates, night audit and reports all use it.

Sequence

The per-hotel counter behind a document prefix such as BK- or INV-.

Soft delete

Switching a list row to Off so it stops being offered but stays referenced by past tickets and tasks.

The app installs a small service worker that caches its own files and every screen you have openedon this device. If you reload one with no network, the page still opens. Every list the app fetched while online is also kept on the device, so the menu, the open orders, the rooms, the bookings and the rest render from the last copy the screen saw; the pill in the top bar then reads Offline · saved 14:05(or Showing saved 14:05 once the connection is back but a screen still shows old data) so nobody mistakes a stale list for a live one. Installed as an app, it opens in full screen like a native till.

• Dashboard: shows the cached rooms, bookings and summary with a “saved at” time.
• Bookings: the pipeline board and drawers open from the cached window; queued check-ins and check-outs are already projected onto the cards.
• Rooms: the room grid with cached statuses; queued out-of-service changes appear immediately.
• Housekeeping: the task board and checklists from the cached task list.

Every other page (Guests, Payments, POS, Reports, Settings and the rest) reopens from cache too, showing the data it last loaded; anything that needs the server, such as searching or turning a page, waits for the connection. The API and the live-update socket are never cached, so nothing you see offline is ever older than the moment it was last fetched.

POS keeps selling. If the network drops mid-service the ticket panel switches to an Offline draft: you keep adding items from the cached menu and tap Pay as usual; the ticket is queued and posts when the connection returns, priced again from the live menu. Send to kitchen, Split, discounts and tables need a connection and are greyed out on a draft. The total shown on a draft is an estimate, before VAT.

When you press a button and the request cannot reach the API, the system checks whether that action is on the offline whitelist. Whitelisted actions are written to a local outbox in your browser (IndexedDB), the screen updates optimistically, and the toast says the action was queued rather than failed.

Everything else stays online-only: new bookings, new guests, new housekeeping tasks, work orders, payments, POS tickets, edits to dates or rooms, cancellations and no-shows. These mint new codes or move money and would duplicate on replay, so the button simply reports that you are offline. Take the details on paper and enter them once the Offline pill disappears.

The pill appears next to the quick-add button only when something needs saying:

• Offline (grey), the browser is offline or the live socket is down. Hover: “Working offline. Actions are queued locally”.
• Syncing (amber), you are back online and queued actions are being sent.
• Needs attention (red), at least one action could not be applied and is waiting for you.

The number on the pill is queued plus needs-attention rows. Click it to open the Offline activitydrawer, which has two lists:

1. 1
   Queued (n)

   Each row shows its label and “Captured 14:05”. Sync now forces a replay; the toast answers “All queued actions sent” or “Still offline. Will retry automatically”.
2. 2
   Needs attention (n)

   Rows the server refused, with the server's message and the context (guest, room). Resolve them manually, for example re-room the guest from Bookings, then press Dismiss.

Replay is triggered automatically when the browser comes back online, when the tab becomes visible again, when the live socket reconnects, and three seconds after the app starts. You rarely need Sync now.

The outbox groups rows by record, booking:…, room:…, hk:…: and replays each group strictly in order, so a queued check-out can never run before its check-in. Groups are independent: a problem on one booking does not hold up the room changes. Every flush starts by refreshing your session so the replay runs with a fresh cookie, and ends by reconnecting the live socket so every open screen refetches.

• Success: the row is removed.
• Converged: the server answered 409 but a quick check shows the record is already where you wanted it (the booking is checkedin, the task is already in that column, the room is already out of service). Another desk did it first. The row is dropped silently; nothing to do.
• Genuine conflict: a 409 whose state does not match, typically Room is already booked for those dates or Room 204 is unavailable. The row moves to Needs attention with the server's message. Open the booking, pick another room and check in again, then dismiss the row.
• Other refusals: 400, 403 (your role changed), 404 (the record was deleted) or a booking that was cancelled meanwhile. Also parked under Needs attention with the message; they can never succeed as queued.
• Network failure: the row stays queued and the whole flush stops until the next trigger.
• 401: the session could not be refreshed. The queue pauses and you are taken to sign-in; the rows are kept and replay after you sign in again.

Queued check-ins and check-outs carry an occurredAt stamp taken the moment you pressed the button. On replay the server uses it for the booking's check-in/out time and for the arrival-day rule, so the folio and the night audit reflect when the guest actually arrived, not when the network came back.

• The stamp must be within the last 48 hours and never in the future; older rows are refused with occurredAt must be within the last 48 hours and land in Needs attention.
• The booking's status history and the audit log keep who did it and when it was captured.
• Housekeeping and room changes do not carry a stamp; they take the time they are applied.

1. 1
   Desktop (Chrome or Edge)

   Open the app, then choose Install app from the address-bar menu. It appears as “HMS” in your apps and launches on the Dashboard.
2. 2
   Phone or tablet

   Use Add to Home Screen from the browser's share or menu. iPad Safari is supported; the queue works there too.
3. 3
   Updates

   When a new build is deployed, a bar at the bottom says “A new version is available.” Press Update to reload onto it, or Later to finish what you are doing first.

• ⌘K / Ctrl K: jump to the global search box on any screen. Two characters start the search; results are grouped into Bookings, Guests, Rooms and Invoices and only include modules you may see.
• ?: open this guide. Ignored while you are typing in a field or a dialog is open.
• /: while reading the guide, focus the guide search box.
• [ and ]: while reading the guide, go to the previous or next chapter.
• Esc: clears and leaves the global search; closes the mobile sidebar; closes the drawer or dialog on top; cancels an inline text edit without saving.
• Enter: saves an inline text cell (so does clicking away). In the Rooms and Settings number fields it also commits the value.
• Tab: the staff directory cards, inventory department chips and report shortcuts are keyboard-focusable; Enter activates them.

• Every paged list writes its state to the address: /payments?q=okello&status=overdue&page=2. Bookmark the “overdue invoices” view and open it each morning; paste it to a colleague and they land on the same rows.
• Defaults are stripped, so an untouched list has a clean address. Clear in the filter bar resets search and filters in one click.
• Back and Forward walk through your filter history without reloading the page.
• Column sort is in the URL too (sort=, dir=). Tap a column title to sort: first tap ascending, second descending, third clears; dates and amounts start descending. The small filter icon on a title opens a popover with that column's values, counts and presets.
• If rows disappear while you are on page 9 of 8, the list snaps back to the last real page by itself.

Views

• Every module opens on its table (list) view. Modules with more views (List, Cards, Pipeline, Board, Calendar, Grid, Floor and so on) remember your last choice per module in a cookie on this device; phones default to Cards.
• Add ?view=kanban (or grid, calendar…) to a link to force a view for whoever opens it; the URL wins over the remembered preference.

Rows per page

Change Rows (25 / 50 / 100) under any table once and every paged list on this device opens at that size from then on, including the very first server render, so there is no flash. The preference is a small cookie, like your theme.

• Inline selects: click a status, priority or assignee cell and pick; it saves at once with a small spinner. An error rolls the cell back and shows the server's message as a toast.
• Inline text: cells with a pencil on hover open an input; Enter or clicking away saves, Esc cancels. Money cells are right-aligned and formatted.
• Toggles: yes/no switches (active, blocks room…) flip and save on click.
• View-only: with View access the same cells render as plain text titled “View only”; nothing to unlearn when your role changes.
• Kanban drag: press and move a card more than a few pixels to start a drag; the target column highlights as you hover. Works with a mouse, touch and pen. Columns the card may not enter do not highlight. Clicking a card (without moving) still opens its drawer.
• Drag on a button, link or field inside the card does nothing, so you can use the card's own controls without accidentally moving it.

• Bookings, rooms, housekeeping, maintenance, POS tickets, invoices, staff, exports and notifications all refetch when someone else changes them. Paged lists refetch the current page in place, keeping your filters.
• The bell badge, toasts and the notifications page all update from the same feed; muted categories (Settings → Notifications) never toast.
• When the tab is in the background and device alerts are on, new alerts arrive as system notifications instead of toasts.
• The socket reconnecting is also what flips the Offline pill back and replays queued work (see the Offline chapter).

• Quick add (the plus icon), jumps to Bookings, where New booking is the first action. Fastest route to a walk-in.
• Dark mode: the moon/sun icon. The choice is a cookie, so it applies to the very first paint after a reload; no flash.
• User guide: the book icon or ?. The guide is public: send /guide/bookings#check-in to a new hire before their account exists.
• Bell: the last few alerts and a link to the full feed; the count is live.
• Sidebar: the panel icon collapses it to icons on desktop and slides it in on phones; Esc closes the mobile sidebar. A lock on a module means view-only for your role.
• Demo chip (demo sandbox only), shows the time left, switches you to any role in one click, and Reset my demo data throws the sandbox away and starts fresh.

• Print an invoice: open it in Payments and press Print in the drawer footer; the PDF opens in a new tab ready for the browser's print dialog. Email sends the same PDF to the guest's address on file.
• POS receipts: closed tickets have a receipt PDF the same way.
• Exports: Reports queue PDF/Excel files in the background; the Exports card lists them with status, kind and requester, and a live event marks each one done. Generated files are kept for 30 days.
• Print this guide: the chapter header has a Print button; the layout collapses to one clean column.
• Install as an app: Install app in Chrome or Edge, Add to Home Screen on a phone. Full-screen, on the home screen, offline-capable front desk.

• Lists use a numbered pager (“Showing 26–50 of 313”, Prev / Next, page numbers with gaps). Compact pagers inside drawers and card views show Prev / Next and “3 / 12”.
• The Audit log pages the same way since M4.14; the page, sort and filters sit in the address bar, so page 3 of a filtered trail can be bookmarked.
• Nothing scrolls infinitely, so the browser's Find (Ctrl F) always searches exactly what is on screen.

• Your sandbox lasts 24 hours and is private to your browser. Change anything, nobody else sees it.
• Open the Demo chip to switch role without signing out; the page reloads as that person.
• Reset my demo data discards every change and clones a fresh hotel (a few seconds). Handy after a training session. Ten resets an hour per address.
• The sign-in page's demo panel can also prefill the classic email/password or PIN forms with a demo account, so you can show both sign-in flows inside your own sandbox.

• 400 Bad request: the form has a value the server will not accept. Fix the value and retry. Validation failures list the field and reason (“Validation failed”).
• 401 Unauthorised: the session is gone. The app refreshes it silently once; if that fails you land on sign-in.
• 403 Forbidden: your role may not do this. Ask an administrator or a supervisor.
• 404 Not found: the record vanished (deleted, or another sandbox). Refresh the list.
• 409 Conflict: the action is not allowed from the record's current state, or another desk got there first. Read the message; refresh; act on the new state.
• 429 Too many requests: throttled. Wait the stated time.
• Offline / 502: nothing reached the API. See the Offline pill section below.

You were sent back to sign-in

Your access cookie lives 15 minutes and refreshes silently while you work; the refresh token lives 30 days. You are bounced when the refresh is refused: you signed out elsewhere, an administrator deactivated your account (This account has been deactivated), your password was changed (all sessions are revoked), or the refresh token expired. Sign in again. If the API was merely unreachable, the app keeps your cookies and treats it as offline instead.

“You don't have access to …”

A module page shows a lock and “Your role (Receptionist) isn't permitted to view this module” when your level for that module is None. User Roles needs Full on Settings; the Audit log is for Super Admin, Hotel Manager, Security or anyone with Settings Full. Role changes take effect within about 15 seconds without signing out. Contact your administrator if you need access.

Too many sign-in attempts (429)

Ten failed attempts for the same email (or the same hotel PIN) from your address within 15 minutes lock it out: Too many failed sign-in attempts. Try again in 15 minutes or Too many failed PIN attempts. Try again in 15 minutes. Password reset requests are limited to three per address per 15 minutes (Too many reset requests. Try again later). A successful sign-in clears the counter.

The Offline pill, or “Request failed (502)”

When the API cannot be reached, no network, or the proxy answers 502/503/504, the app raises an offline condition instead of an error. The top bar shows Offline; whitelisted front-desk actions queue, everything else shows “You appear to be offline” or “Could not load this page”. Check the connection and wait; the pill turns to Syncing and disappears by itself. If it stays grey while other sites work, the API is down, tell whoever runs the server. See the Offline chapter for the queue rules.

“A new version is available.”

A bar at the bottom means a new build was deployed and downloaded. Press Update to reload onto it (finish typing first, unsaved drawer edits are lost), or Later; the next full reload picks it up anyway.

Demo sandbox expired

Sandboxes live 24 hours. When yours is swept, the next request answers This demo has expired(401) and you land on the sign-in page; the chip may have read “Demo · expired” for a few minutes before. Pick a role again to get a fresh sandbox. If the host is busy you may see The demo is at capacity right now. Please try again in a little while (503) or You have started several demos recently. Try again in an hour (429, six starts per hour per address).

Which module a screen counts under: Housekeeping and Maintenance are Rooms; POS, Restaurant and Inventory are Payments; User Roles, Settings and the Audit log are Settings.

1. 1
   The board says Arriving Today but the list says Confirmed, which is right?

   Both. Board columns are derived from status plus dates: a confirmed booking whose check-in is today (hotel time) sits in Arriving Today. Nothing is stored twice.
2. 2
   Why is a room Cleaning when nobody is cleaning it?

   Room status is derived: out of service wins, then an in-house guest, then a blocking work order, then any open housekeeping task, then a reservation for today, else Available. An open task anywhere on the board shows as Cleaning.
3. 3
   Why does this invoice say Overdue when it was Pending yesterday?

   Overdue is never stored, it is pending or partial with a due date before today. Record the payment and it becomes Paid.
4. 4
   Someone is shown Off duty but they are here.

   Duty is derived: approved leave, then today's attendance mark, then a live rota window. Mark them Present in Attendance and it flips at once.
5. 5
   My change is not showing on another PC.

   Live updates need the socket. If that PC's top bar shows Offline, its connection or the API is down; otherwise refresh once.
6. 6
   I checked someone in offline and now the tray says Room is already booked.

   Another desk sold that room while you were offline. Open the booking, pick another ready room, check in again, then Dismiss the tray row.

Arrival day

The hotel-local calendar date of a booking's check-in. A guest can only be checked in on or after it; an early arrival is a date change first, so the folio charges the nights actually slept. Confirmed bookings whose arrival day is today (or earlier) sit in the Arriving Today column.

Admin tier / super tier

Two capabilities above the permission levels, both read from a role's matrix rather than its name. Admin tier is Super Admin, Hotel Manager, or any role with Settings Full: it manages roles, accounts and the PIN, reads the audit log, and can never sign in on the front-desk PIN. Super tier is Full on all thirteen modules, which by default is the Super Admin alone: it is the only one that can delete past a soft hold, delete a sign-in account or erase a guest.

Audit log

The hotel-wide trail of who changed what, when, from which address. Readable by Super Admin, Hotel Manager, Security and anyone with Settings Full.

BAR / rate plan

BAR is the Best Available Rate: the room type's base rate. A rate plan adjusts it per night, kinds are BAR (rack), Weekend and Promo: by a percentage or a fixed nightly amount, optionally limited to certain weekdays, a validity window and one room type. The booking stores the average nightly rate and the tax-inclusive stay total.

Board column

Where a booking sits on the pipeline board: New Requests, Confirmed, Arriving Today, In-House Guests, Checked Out, Cancelled. Columns are derived from status plus dates and today's date, never stored, cancelled and no-show both land in Cancelled.

Booking group

A GRP- coded block of rooms for one guest (the organiser): a name, dates, an optional rate plan and a list of room types with quantities, capped at 80 rooms. Group rooms start unassigned, so the capacity guard, not the double-booking constraint, protects them.

Capacity guard

The per-night check that stops a room type being oversold: assigned and unassigned active bookings of the type are counted against its sellable rooms (maintenance and out-of-service rooms excluded) for every night of the stay, with the room-type row locked so two desks cannot both take the last room. Refuses with “No Deluxe left for a date”.

Checklist template

The hotel's list of cleaning steps (Settings → Ops), copied onto every housekeeping task when it is created. Falls back to the built-in ten-step list if the hotel has none. Ticks on a task are its own; editing the template does not change open tasks.

Deposit

A percentage of the stay total (Settings → Hotel, deposit %) posted as a deposit line on a pre-arrival invoice when a booking is confirmed. At check-in that invoice becomes the folio: room and tax lines are appended and each deposit line is offset by an equal “Deposit applied” credit, so money paid against the deposit counts towards the stay.

Derived status

Anything computed from canonical fields at read time and never written to the database: board columns, room status, housekeeping state, invoice “overdue”, stock low/out, duty status, attendance %, leave day counts. One shared function computes each, used by both server and screen, so they can never disagree.

Duty status

On duty / Off duty / On leave for a staff member right now, derived in this order: approved leave covering today, then today's attendance mark (absent → off; present or late → duty), then a live rota window (including yesterday's overnight shift before it ends), else off. The reason travels with the status (“No shift on today's rota”).

Exclusion constraint / double booking

The database rule that makes double-booking impossible: for one hotel and one room, no two bookings in status new, confirmed or checked-in may overlap on a half-open date range [check-in, check-out). Same-day turnover is legal. A violation surfaces as 409 “Room is already booked for those dates”. Unassigned bookings are outside it (see capacity guard).

Folio

The guest's running bill for a stay: the invoice (INV- code) opened at check-in with room-night and tax lines, onto which POS room charges and fees post, and which must be settled (or explicitly settled later) before check-out closes it. One open folio per in-house stay.

Hard hold / soft hold

What a record is holding when it refuses to be deleted. A hard hold is money or history, a booking, an invoice, a payment, a bill, an expense, a purchase order line, a day of attendance, a line in the audit trail, and nothing gets past one, at any access level. A soft hold is other configuration, rooms on a room type, people in a department, stock in a category, and a Super Admin can delete past it, moving what was held where the dialog asks.

Hotel-local day

The calendar date in the hotel's IANA timezone (Settings → Hotel), computed once per request. Every “today” (arrival day, arriving column, overdue, night audit, attendance) uses it, and timestamped facts (payments, closed tickets) are grouped by the instants the local day starts and ends, not UTC midnight.

In-house

A booking in status Checked In: the guest is physically staying. Shown in the In-House Guests column; its room reads Occupied.

KDS

Kitchen Display System: the kitchen's view of sent tickets, moving each through New → Preparing → Ready → Served, one step at a time. Lines reach it when the server presses Send.

Modifier

An option attached to a menu item on a ticket line (size, extra, sauce…) from the item's modifier groups. Each carries a price delta added to the unit price; a line's total is (item price + modifiers) × quantity.

Night audit

Closing the hotel-local business day once (Reports, needs Reports Edit). Refreshes room projections and freezes a snapshot: rooms total/occupied/dirty/out of order, in-house, arrivals, departures, no-shows, cancellations today, cash in, refunds, POS closed total, and outstanding invoices. A day can be closed only once.

No-show

A booking marked No Show because the guest never arrived. Allowed from new or confirmed only. Posts a no-show fee, a percentage of one night (Settings → Hotel, default 100%), as a fee line on the pre-arrival invoice. Counts as Cancelled on the board.

Out of service

A room flag set from Rooms (with an optional reason) that removes the room from sale and from every availability list; the room reads Out of Service and wins over every other status. Return clears the flag. Both work offline. Distinct from Maintenance, which comes from a work order that blocks the room.

Outlet

A point of sale, restaurant, bar, pool bar, with its own menu categories, tables, cash shifts and service-charge percentage. Tickets, shifts and menu items always belong to one outlet.

Overdue

Overdue is never stored: an invoice is overdue when it is still pending or partially paid and its due date is before the hotel-local today. Paying it makes it Paid.

Part-payment

A payment smaller than the outstanding balance; the invoice becomes Partially Paid. Payments can never exceed the balance, and net received (payments minus refunds) is what the status is computed from.

PIN sign-in

The shared front-desk PIN of 4 to 8 digits (Settings → Hotel, Settings Full to change): pick your name, type the PIN. It can sign in any active user except admin-tier roles, Super Admin, Hotel Manager, or any role holding Settings Full, which always need email and password. Ten wrong PINs in 15 minutes lock the pad.

Purchase order

A PO- coded order to a supplier for stock items: draft → ordered → partial (some lines received) → received, or cancelled. Receiving books a stock movement per line; received and cancelled orders are final.

Quote

The stay price the wizard shows before you save: for each night, the room type's base rate adjusted by the chosen rate plan, summed, then service charge, VAT and levy applied with the hotel's canonical rounding. The saved booking keeps the average nightly rate and the total; the folio opened at check-in matches it exactly.

Ready for Guest (housekeeping)

The final housekeeping column. Only a room with no open task, no card in Dirty, Assigned, In Progress or Inspection, can be sold or checked into; the check-in room picker offers ready rooms only.

Refund cap

Every refund is tied to one original payment and capped by what is left on it, refunds on a payment can never add up to more than that payment, and by the net amount received on the invoice. Leaving the amount blank refunds whatever remains on that payment. Refunds need Payments Full.

Reorder level

The quantity at which a stock item becomes Low (quantity ≤ reorder level; zero is Out). Crossing it downwards raises a notification (“Reorder level reached. Create purchase order.”). Status is derived, never stored.

Room charge

The Charge to Room tender in POS: closing a ticket posts its subtotal, service charge and VAT as separate POS lines onto the in-house guest's open folio. Needs a checked-in guest in that room; idempotent if the ticket was already posted.

RLS / tenant

Every table is scoped by hotel and Postgres row-level security enforces it on every query, so one hotel can never read another's rows, including demo sandboxes, which are ordinary tenants. Your session carries the hotel; there is no “switch hotel” inside the app.

Sandbox

On the public demo, a private clone of the template hotel created for your browser when you pick a role. Lives 24 hours (the Demo chip counts down), can be reset, and is swept automatically. Same browser → same sandbox; role switches reuse it.

Sequence (BK-/INV-/PAY- codes)

Human-readable codes come from per-hotel counters, one per kind: BK bookings, GRP groups, INV invoices, PAY payments, HK housekeeping tasks, M work orders, TKT tickets, SHF cash shifts, PO purchase orders, S staff, LV leave. Settings → Numbering shows the next value and lets Settings Full move it upward only.

Settle later

Checking out with a balance still owed (bill-to-company, disputed charge). Needs Payments Full, is written to the audit log, and leaves the folio open for collection. Everyone else must collect the balance before check-out.

Shift (POS) vs shift (rota)

Two unrelated things. A POS shift (SHF- code) is a cash-drawer session on one outlet, opened with a float, closed with a cash-up; one open per outlet. A rota shift is a staff template window in minutes since midnight (Morning 07:00 – 15:00, Night 18:00 – 06:00) assigned to one person on one date; it feeds duty status.

Stayover

A guest who stays another night. Housekeeping's stayover refresh task type is the lighter clean for occupied rooms, as opposed to the checkout clean created automatically at check-out and the deep clean requested from Rooms.

Stock movement

One row per change to a stock item's quantity with a reason: receive (from a purchase order), adjust (manual count, cannot go negative), consume (recipe-driven depletion when a POS ticket closes, clamped to what is on hand, with a notification for any shortfall) or waste.

Supervisor authorisation

Some POS discounts (staff meal, manager comp) require a second person's email and password in the dialog. The supervisor must be active and hold Payments Full or Settings Full. The check happens on the server; the ticket keeps only the discount label and percentage, not who authorised it.

Tender

How a ticket is paid: Cash, Mobile Money (MTN or Airtel), Card, or Charge to Room. Closing a ticket records the tender; only room charge touches a folio.

Tier

A guest's loyalty band, Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze, set in the guest drawer form; the list shows it as a read-only badge. Guest CRM counts every non-Bronze guest as a loyalty member.

Void reason

The reason required when voiding a line that has already been sent to the kitchen (unsent lines are simply deleted). The list is per hotel in Settings → Ops; defaults include “Guest changed mind”, “Wrong item rung” and “Item sold out”.

Walk-in

A guest with no reservation who books at the desk: booking source Walk-in in the wizard, usually checked in straight away. Other sources are Direct, Booking.com, Expedia, Travel Agent and Corporate.

Work order

An M- coded maintenance job: title, category, priority (High/Medium/Low), optional room or location, technician or external contractor, due date, estimated cost. Lifecycle Reported → Assigned → In Progress ⇄ Waiting for Parts → Completed → Closed; closed is final. An order that blocks its room makes the room read Maintenance until it completes.