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.

1. Morning
   Open the board

   Sign in with your name and the PIN. The housekeeping board opens straight away. The numbers at the top are today's tasks, completed, in progress and overdue. Switch to Board to see the rooms as columns: Dirty, Assigned, In progress, Inspection, Ready for guest.
2. Morning
   Where the tasks come from

   A room turns Dirty the moment reception checks a guest out, and every morning the system adds a stayover clean for each room with a guest staying on. The supervisor can add a task by hand (a deep clean, a public area). Nobody types a room status: the room is Cleaning until its task is done.
3. Room
   Take a room

   Open a Dirty card and press Assign to me and start, or drag it to In progress. A card cannot sit in Assigned with nobody's name on it; the board asks who is cleaning. Take rooms with a guest arriving today first: the card shows the due time, and an overdue card turns red.
4. Room
   Tick the checklist

   Every task carries the room checklist: bed, bathroom, towels, minibar, floor, and whatever your hotel added. Open Cleaning checklist and tick each item as you finish it. The room cannot be released while a line is still open.
5. Room
   Found something broken?

   A leaking tap, a dead bulb, a broken lock: press Report a fault on the task (or open Maintenance) and say which room and what is wrong, for example “lamp broken in 204”. A fault that makes the room unsafe blocks it, so reception does not sell it until it is fixed.
6. Room
   Inspection, then Ready for guest

   Move the finished room to Inspection if the supervisor checks rooms, or straight to Ready for guest where they do not. Ready is what reception waits for: the room turns green on their grid and can be sold that second. A room that fails inspection goes back to In progress with a note.
7. Any time
   When the internet drops

   The board keeps working. Ticks and moves you make offline are saved on this device and sent when the connection returns; an Offline pill shows in the top bar meanwhile. Do not clear the browser or sign out while it shows.
8. End
   Hand over

   Nothing to write up: the board is the hand-over. What is still Dirty or In progress is the next shift's list, and the supervisor and the manager see the same board from their own screens.

• Assign: open any card to give it to a colleague, change its priority or add a note. The board refuses a colleague who is on approved leave, and warns about one who is off duty.
• Inspect: Inspection is your column. Check the room, then Pass: release the room or Fail: send back to clean again. Releasing a room with checklist lines still open is allowed for you and written to the audit log.
• Add a task: New task creates a clean the system did not: pick the room, the kind of clean and who does it.
• Rooms out of service: on Rooms, Mark out of service takes a room off sale for repairs; Return to service puts it back.
• Leave and the rota: on Staff you see who is on today, approve leave and fill the rota; the board and the rota both refuse days inside approved leave.

Checkout clean

The task created when a guest checks out. High priority, due by the check-in time.

Stayover

A guest staying another night; their room gets a lighter clean each morning.

Board

The tasks as columns from Dirty to Ready for guest. Dragging a card is the same as pressing its button.

Checklist

The list of things to do in the room, ticked one by one. The room is not released until it is complete.

Inspection

The supervisor's check between cleaning and release. Pass releases the room; Fail sends it back.

Ready for guest

The room is released: reception's grid turns green and the room can be sold.

Out of service

A room taken off sale by the supervisor or a manager until repairs are done.

Rooms is where the house is defined and watched. A room type (Standard, Deluxe, Suite…) carries the base nightly rate, bed description and size; a room is a number on a floor that belongs to one type. Bookings are sold by type and assigned to a room; the room's status on this screen tells the desk whether a guest can walk into it.

• Receptionists (Rooms = Edit) watch the grid, take a room out of service and raise housekeeping or maintenance tasks from it.
• Housekeeping Managers and Hotel Managers (Rooms = Full) also add and delete rooms and manage room types and rates.
• Maintenance (Edit) uses the grid to report issues; Security sees it read-only.

Every room carries the stay holding it today: the card and the Guest today column name the guest, say whether they are In-house or Reserved, and show the stay dates. Rooms nobody is booked into read “No guest today”. A room can be Cleaning or Maintenance and still have a reservation waiting on it, which is exactly the case the desk needs to see early.

Out-of-service rooms have no tile of their own, they show with the grey Out of Service badge under All rooms and carry a red “Out of service” badge in the drawer. The Housekeeping dropdown filters on the HK state (clean, pending, in progress, occupied) that the projection stores alongside the status.

Click any card, tile or row to open “Room N”, headed with its type, beds and size, a status badge, floor and an “Out of service” badge when set.

• Occupancy: who holds the room today: guest, guest code and booking code, the status badge, In-house / Arriving today / Reserved, the dates, nights, guests and country, their phone and email, when they checked in, and what the folio has been charged and paid with the balance still due. Open bookingjumps to that booking in the archive. When nobody is booked in it says so.
• Price / night, Housekeeping, Last released, Past stays: the four summary cards. Notes (for example the out-of-service reason) appear below them.
• Next 14 days: a strip of day cells painted by the stays that hold the room (blue = in-house, purple = confirmed), then Revenue for the last 30 and 90 days with the nights behind it, the room type profile (sleeps, beds, size, amenities) and the last Housekeeping and Maintenance events on this room.
• Open work: every open housekeeping task and maintenance order on the room, with its code, status and who it is assigned to. Orders that block the room are flagged.
• Next arrivals: the next five reservations on the room; click one to open it.
• Stay history: every stay this room has ever carried (guest, booking, dates, nights, status, amount and anything still owed), 25 at a time with Prev / Next underneath.

Under Room actions the drawer reminds you: “Status is projected from bookings, housekeeping and maintenance. It is not edited directly.”

• Out of service: flags the room; it disappears from availability and reads Out of Service regardless of anything else. Toast: “Room N marked out of service”. This works offline and is queued until the connection returns. It is refused while a guest is in-house, and when reservations still hold the room a dialog lists them (“Room 12 has 2 upcoming bookings (BK-…, BK-…)”) and offers Unassign them and continue, after which those bookings wait for a room on the board.
• Return to service: clears the flag; the projection recomputes at once (“Room N returned to service”). Also offline-capable.
• Create HK task: raises a deep-clean task at Medium priority on the Housekeeping board (“HK task created for N”). The room reads Cleaning until housekeeping marks it Ready for Guest.
• Report maintenance: opens a work order titled “Issue in room N” (category General, Medium priority) on the Maintenance board (“Maintenance reported for N”). It only blocks the room if the work order is marked as blocking.

View-only users see “View-only access. Status changes need the Rooms edit permission.” instead of the action chips. Rooms = Full users also get a red Delete button in the footer.

1. 1
   Click New room

   The dialog “New room, Appears immediately in availability and the booking wizard” opens.
2. 2
   Enter Room number, Floor and Room type

   Numbers are unique within the hotel (up to 10 characters); floor 0–50. The type list shows the base rate per night.
3. 3
   Click Add room

   Toast “Room N added”. The room starts Available and counts toward its type's sellable capacity from that moment.

Deleting

Open the room, click Delete and confirm. A room a guest has ever slept in, or that a restaurant bill was ever charged to, is refused with the count: the stays have to keep naming the room they were sold. Take it out of service instead, which stops it being sold and keeps everything. Open housekeeping tasks and work orders do not block the delete for a Super Admin; they go with the room.

1. 1
   Click Room types

   The dialog “Room types & rates, Rate changes apply to new bookings only. Existing bookings keep their agreed rate” lists every type with Beds, the number of Rooms and an editable Rate / night (UGX).
2. 2
   Change a rate

   Type a whole figure into the rate cell and press Enter or click away. Toast: “Deluxe → UGX 280,000/night (new bookings only)”.
3. 3
   Add a type

   Fill Name, Rate (UGX), Beds (e.g. “1 King”) and optionally the size (“26 m²”), then click the plus button. Empty required fields give “Fill name, rate and beds”.
4. 4
   Edit the profile

   Each row shows Sleeps (adults + children) and the amenities as icons. Profile opens a dialog for Adults (1 to 20), Children (0 to 10), Amenities (picked from a list, up to 30) and a Description (up to 600 characters). Toast: “<name> profile saved”. The profile shows in the room drawer and feeds the reports.

Room types are ordered by the sequence they were created in.

Amenities

Amenities are picked from a list, never typed: open Profile on a room type and press the amenities box. The list drops down grouped the way a person thinks about a room (Comfort, Bathroom, Media and work, Drinks and food, Outside the room, Service, Hotel facilities, Access and policy), and every row is acheckbox, so the list itself shows what this room already has. Tick and untick as many as you like; the box above says how many are picked, Clear empties it, and each one also appears underneath as a chip with its icon and an x. Saving shows on the room types table behind at once, without closing it.

On the Rooms screens they show as icons alone: the room types table and the room drawer draw the little pictures, with the name on hover and on the accessible name, and a “+3” when there are more than fit. A list of six pictures reads as a room at a glance where six words read as a wall of text.

Stopping a type being sold

Each row has a red bin. What happens when you press it depends on what the type is carrying, and the app says which:

• Nothing points at it: it goes, along with any published prices it had. Bookings are not affected because there are none.
• It has rooms but has never been booked: “Room type “Trial Wing” still has 1 room.” A Hotel Manager is told a Super Admin can delete it anyway; the Super Admin gets a Move its rooms to picker, and one press moves the rooms and deletes the type together.
• A guest has been sold it: “still has 639 bookings, 3 group allotments, 15 rooms and 6 published rates. The 639 bookings and 3 group allotments cannot be deleted with it.” Nothing gets past that, at any access level, because a folio has to keep saying what it sold. Move its rooms to another type instead: the type stays on the old bookings and stops being sold the moment its last room leaves.

Asking “which rooms are free from A to B” returns rooms that are not out of service and have no New, Confirmed or Checked In booking whose nights overlap the requested window (a room under maintenance today still counts for later dates; the ready-only variant used at check-in also drops Maintenance and Cleaning rooms). Optionally limit it to one room type. The booking wizard uses this at Check availability.

At check-in the desk asks for ready rooms only: the same list minus rooms in Cleaning, rooms with an open housekeeping task and rooms where a guest is still checked in (a same-day turnover). That mirrors the check-in rules exactly, so a chip the drawer offers never fails.

The stored status is recomputed from five facts, and the first that is true wins:

1. Out of Service: the out-of-service flag is set (HK state pending).
2. Occupied: a booking is Checked In on the room (HK state occupied).
3. Maintenance: an open work order (Reported, Assigned, In Progress or Waiting for Parts) is marked as blocking the room.
4. Cleaning: an open housekeeping task (Dirty, Assigned, In Progress or Inspection) exists for the room (HK state in progress).
5. Reserved: a New or Confirmed booking holds the room today in hotel-local time: its check-in is today or earlier and its check-out is later than today. A booking three weeks out does not make the room Reserved.
6. Available: none of the above (HK state clean).

Because the Reserved rule depends on the date, the server also re-syncs every room of every hotel on a timer, every 30 minutes by default (ROOM_SYNC_MINUTES; 0 disables it), and again when the night audit closes the business day. Between sweeps, every booking, housekeeping, maintenance and out-of-service action re-syncs the rooms it touches, so the grid is right within seconds of the fact changing.

• Rooms = View: the grid, list and floor views, room types and rates (read-only), the drawer.
• Rooms = Edit: Out of service, Return to service, Create HK task, Report maintenance.
• Rooms = Full: New room, Delete, Room types (add a type, change rates, delete a type). Deleting past rooms that are still on a type needs a Super Admin.
• Bookings = View: the availability search used by the wizard and check-in.

Housekeeping tracks one task per room that needs attention. A checkout at the front desk creates a task on its own; you add stayover refreshes and deep cleans yourself. Each task moves across the board from Dirty Rooms to Ready for Guest, carries a checklist, and, while it is open, puts the room into Cleaning status on the Rooms module so the front desk cannot check a guest into it.

• Housekeeping managers run the board, inspect rooms and sign them off as ready.
• Room attendants (signed in with the front-desk PIN, or on a shared tablet) tick checklist items and move their own rooms forward.
• Receptionists watch the board to know which rooms are back in the sellable pool; they can also raise a stayover refresh when a guest asks.

Housekeeping sits under the Rooms permission module: View shows everything read-only, Edit creates tasks and moves them.

Views

• List (the default): a paged table loaded from the server one page at a time. Adds a Status filter and lives in the address bar (?status=ready&floor=2&page=2), so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Columns: Room, Floor, Type, Assigned, Priority, Status. Click a row to select the task for the checklist view.
• Cards (?view=cards): the same paged archive, one card per task; the view phones open on.
• Board (?view=kanban): the whole working set of tasks, never paged. Filters: search (room, task code, staff, note), Task type, Priority, Assigned to, Floor. Status has no filter here because the columns already are the status.
• Cleaning checklist: the checklist of the task you last clicked; if you have not clicked one, the first task that is In Progress.

Your view choice is remembered per module in a cookie on this browser, and ?view= in the address shares it. Phones default to Cards.

1. 1
   The front desk checks the guest out

   A Checkout clean task appears in Dirty Rooms with High priority, due by the hotel's check-in time (or two hours out when that is closer). An alert “Housekeeping: Room 204 needs cleaning” goes to the notification feed. If the room already has an open checkout clean, no second task is created.
2. 2
   Move the card to Assigned or straight to In Progress

   Drag the card, or click the → Assigned button on it. From Dirty Rooms you may skip Assigned and go directly to In Progress.
3. 3
   Tick the checklist as the room is cleaned

   Open the Cleaning checklist tab (or click the card first so it becomes the selected task). Each line, “Strip & change linens”, “Clean bathroom & restock”, …, saves the moment you tick it and records who ticked it.
4. 4
   Send it to Inspection

   Click Move to Inspection at the bottom of the checklist, or the card button. Inspection can start with ticks still open; releasing the room cannot: Ready for Guest is refused while a checklist line is open (“3 checklist items still open on Room 204”), unless a supervisor with Rooms · Full access releases it anyway, which is audited.
5. 5
   Supervisor signs off: Ready for Guest

   From Inspection the only forward move is Ready for Guest. The room drops out of Cleaning status, a green alert “Room 204 ready” is posted, and the change is written to the audit log. A room that fails inspection goes back to In Progress instead.

1. 1
   Click New task

   Top right of the page. You need Rooms Edit.
2. 2
   Pick the Room

   The list shows every room as “204 · Floor 1 · Deluxe”. Occupied rooms are allowed, that is the point of a stayover refresh.
3. 3
   Pick the Task type

   Stayover refresh or Deep clean. Checkout cleans cannot be created by hand; only a checkout makes one.
4. 4
   Click Create

   The task appears in Dirty Rooms (or straight in Assigned if you picked an attendant) and the toast names its code. The room shows as Cleaning on the Rooms page until the task is Ready (unless a guest is in house, in which case Occupied wins).

When a task is created the system copies the hotel's active checklist steps onto it, in order. If the hotel has never edited its template, the built-in list is used:

• Strip & change linens
• Make beds
• Clean bathroom & restock
• Vacuum & mop floors
• Dust all surfaces
• Empty bins
• Restock minibar
• Restock amenities
• Check lights & AC
• Final inspection

To change the template open Settings → Ops config → Housekeeping checklist(needs Settings Full). You can rename a step in place, switch a step off without deleting it, or add a new one with New checklist step. As the screen says: “Changes apply to tasks created from now on; open tasks keep their checklist.”

Ticks are per task and per person: each tick stores who completed it and when. Unticking clears both. The checklist gates one move only: a room is not Ready for Guest until every line is ticked, unless a supervisor (Rooms · Full access) releases it, in which case the audit log records the override.

• Dirty Rooms: nobody is on it yet. Checkout cleans start here at High priority.
• Assigned: an attendant owns it. Moving a card back to Dirty Rooms puts it up for grabs again.
• In Progress: being cleaned; the checklist is normally ticked during this stage.
• Inspection: cleaned, waiting for a supervisor. Pass → Ready; fail → back to In Progress.
• Ready for Guest: final. Counts towards the “Completed” tile.

What is derived, not stored

• The board column is simply the task status, there is no separate column field.
• Overdue is worked out on screen: an open task whose due time is earlier than now.
• The room's status on the Rooms page is recomputed after every task change: out of service → occupied → blocked by maintenance → Cleaning (any task not yet Ready) → reserved → available. Nobody sets “Cleaning” by hand.
• The check-in room picker only offers rooms that are ready, so a room with an open task cannot be handed to an arriving guest until its task reaches Ready for Guest.

• Rooms View: open the board, list and checklist read-only. The New task button and the → buttons are hidden; cards cannot be dragged.
• Rooms Edit: create tasks, move cards, tick checklist items.
• Settings Full: edit the checklist template in Settings → Ops config.

By default that means Housekeeping Mgr, Receptionist, Maintenance, Hotel Manager and Super Admin can work the board; Security can only look; Accountant, Restaurant Mgr and HR Manager do not see the module at all.

• Use Assigned to → Unassigned together with Floor to hand out a floor's rooms at the start of a shift.
• The board search matches room number, task code, attendant name and the checkout note, so typing “lamp” finds the room whose note mentions it.
• Click a card to make it the selected task, then switch to Cleaning checklist; the header shows “Room 204: Checkout clean” and the code so you know you are ticking the right one.
• The List view sorts by creation date (newest first) and pages 50 at a time (25, 50 or 100); change rows-per-page at the bottom. Esc closes any dialog.
• Dragging a card to a column the workflow does not allow shows “Move to an allowed next column in the cleaning workflow” and leaves the card where it was.

Client-side messages: “Pick a room” (New task with no room chosen), “Could not update task” / “Could not create task” / “Could not update checklist” when the request fails for a reason other than the above.

Stayover refresh

A light service of a room whose guest is staying another night.

Checkout clean

The full turn-around after a guest departs; created automatically by check-out.

Ready for Guest

The final task status. The room is sellable again and can be picked at check-in.

Working set

Every task on the board, regardless of age, the same list the offline snapshot keeps.

Maintenance keeps a work order for every fault: a broken AC, a leaking tap in the lobby, a pool pump. Anyone with Rooms Edit can report one; the maintenance team works it through six statuses. A work order tied to a room can block that room, it shows as Maintenance on the Rooms page and leaves the sellable pool, until the repair is completed.

• Maintenance technicians live in the list and board, moving orders along and recording cost.
• Housekeeping and front desk report what they find (“AC not cooling”, “lamp broken in 204”).
• Managers watch the KPI tiles, open requests, high priority, estimated cost, and use the list filters for a weekly review.

Maintenance sits under the Rooms permission module, the same as Housekeeping.

The Board tab lays the same open orders out as cards in the columns Reported · Assigned · In Progress · Waiting for Parts · Completed. Because it only loads open work, the Completed column is where cards leave the board: drop one there and it reappears in the list. Closed orders never show on the board.

1. 1
   Click Report issue

   Top right. Needs Rooms Edit.
2. 2
   Describe it in Issue title

   At least three characters, e.g. “AC not cooling”. Submitting with less shows “Describe the issue”.
3. 3
   Category and Priority

   Category is free text with suggestions from categories already in use (default “General”). Priority is High, Medium or Low, Medium unless you change it.
4. 4
   Room (optional) or Location

   Pick a room, or leave “Not a room” and type a Location such as “Lobby, Pool deck…”. An empty location is saved as “General area”.
5. 5
   Click Submit

   The order gets an M-code and starts in Reported. A notification “Maintenance: AC not cooling” is posted, red for High priority, amber otherwise. The toast reads “Maintenance request created”.

1. 1
   Assign a technician

   Click the Technician cell in the list (or the field in the drawer) and pick a person, or External contractor. The picker lists active staff, maintenance people first (search by name, job title or department; “Show everyone” for the rest); the technician gets a notification if they can sign in. Assigning an order that is still Reported moves it to Assigned on its own.
2. 2
   Start work

   From Assigned choose In Progress: or Waiting for Parts if you already know a part is needed. In the drawer these are footer buttons; in the list the Status cell offers “→ In Progress” and “→ Waiting for Parts”; on the board drag the card or click its “→ In Progress” button.
3. 3
   Record what it will cost and when

   In the drawer edit Estimated cost (whole shillings; it feeds the Est. cost tile) and Due (a date). Every edit saves as you leave the field.
4. 4
   Waiting for parts

   Move to Waiting for Parts while a part is on order. The room stays blocked. When it arrives go back to In Progress, or straight to Completed if the fit is trivial.
5. 5
   Complete

   The purple Completed button in the drawer. The room is unblocked and returns to its normal status. The technician can no longer be changed.
6. 6
   Close

   A supervisor checks the work and clicks Closed. From here the order is read-only (“Closed orders are read-only.”) and it cannot be reopened.

Every status change and field edit is written to the audit log with the from/to status and the fields that changed. Moving a card to a column the workflow does not allow shows “Move to an allowed next column on this work order”.

• Reported: logged, nobody on it. The only way forward is assigning someone (which happens automatically when you pick a technician).
• Assigned: owned by a technician or an external contractor.
• In Progress and Waiting for Parts: active work; you can bounce between them.
• Completed: repair done. Counts as “Resolved”. Technician is locked; other fields still editable.
• Closed: signed off. Read-only, no reopening. Never shown on the board.
• Cancelled: raised by mistake or overtaken by events. Available from any open column as Cancel order in the drawer (never by dragging); the order leaves the board, stops blocking its room, stays in the List as a record and can no longer be edited. Whether an order blocks its room can only be changed while the work is open.

What is derived, not stored

• Open requests = Reported + Assigned + In Progress + Waiting for Parts. In progress tile = In Progress + Waiting for Parts. Resolved = Completed + Closed. Est. cost sums every order's estimate.
• The room's Maintenance status is recomputed after every change: a room is blocked only while an order on it has Room blocked while open switched on and is in one of the four open statuses. Completing or closing the order, or flipping the toggle to Sellable, releases the room automatically.
• Location reads “Room 204” for room orders and the free-text label otherwise.

• Rooms View: see the list, board and drawer. Cells show as plain text; the drawer says “You have view-only access to maintenance.”
• Rooms Edit: Report issue, every inline edit, every status move including Completed and Closed.

Default roles with Edit or better: Maintenance, Receptionist, Housekeeping Mgr, Hotel Manager, Super Admin. Security has View. Accountants and HR do not see the module; if they need cost figures, use the Reports module instead.

• Tiles are filters. Click Open requests to hide everything completed or closed; click High priority to stack it with the priority filter. The Status dropdown clears the “open only” tile filter and vice versa.
• Edit without opening. Priority, Technician and Status change straight from the table. A refused change shows a toast and the cell snaps back; Esc cancels an open cell.
• Bookmark a view. /maintenance?tech=external&status=parts reopens exactly that list. Your List/Board choice is remembered per browser.
• Weekly review. Filter Status → Completed and close orders in bulk from the Status cell, one click each.
• Live. Any change by a colleague refreshes your list, tiles and board within seconds; the drawer keeps your place.
• Maintenance has no offline queue, if the connection drops, changes fail with a toast and you retry when it returns. Rooms → Out of service is the offline-capable way to pull a room quickly.

Client-side: “Describe the issue” (title under three characters); “Could not create work order” / “Could not update work order” for other failures. A title over 120 characters, a category over 40, or a negative cost is rejected as a 400 validation error before it reaches the server rules.

Work order

One maintenance record with an M-code, from Reported to Closed.

Blocks room

The toggle that keeps a room out of the sellable pool while its order is open.

External

A contractor outside the hotel; the order has no user assigned but counts as Assigned.

Open work

Reported, Assigned, In Progress and Waiting for Parts, what the board shows.

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.