A day at the front desk

1. 06:30
   Handover on the Dashboard

   Sign in (email or the staff PIN). The Dashboard tells you the shape of the day: Available rooms, Occupied rooms, Arriving today with “N in-house now”, and Staff on duty. Scroll to Today's arrivals for the names and room types expected, and to Housekeeping status to see how many rooms are still cleaning from last night. Click the bell for overnight alerts.
2. 07:00
   Walk the room grid

   Open Rooms. The status tiles are the count you hand over: Available, Occupied, Reserved (a booking holds the room today), Cleaning and Maintenance. A room with a fault gets Report maintenance; a room that must not be sold today gets Out of service. You never set a status by hand, it is projected from the facts.
3. 08:00
   Departures: settle, then check out

   On the Bookings pipeline the In-House Guests column holds today's departures. Open the guest's invoice on Payments and use Record payment until the balance is zero, then click Check out in the booking drawer. If anything is still owed the server refuses: “INV-… still owes UGX …. Collect it before check-out, or a Payments manager can check out and bill later”. A user with Payments = Full is offered “Check out anyway and bill later? The folio stays open on Payments.” for bill-to-company cases. See Checking a guest out.
4. 08:05
   The room goes to housekeeping by itself

   Check-out closes the folio to new charges, creates a High-priority checkout clean task due in two hours on the Housekeeping board, turns the room Cleaning and posts the alert “Guest checked out: room to cleaning”. The room becomes sellable again only when housekeeping moves the task to Ready for Guest.
5. 10:00
   A walk-in at the desk

   Click New booking. Step 1: dates, room type, guests, Source = Walk-in, rate plan; the grey box quotes the room charge. Check availability lists free rooms of that type (never one that is out of service). Step 2: pick a room chip or Assign later, choose New guest and type the name and phone, then Create booking. The booking is saved as Confirmed; if the hotel takes deposits, a deposit line is posted to a new invoice at that moment. Full detail in Creating a booking.
6. 12:00
   The arrivals rush

   Work the Arriving Today column. Open each card and click Check in; if no room is assigned, the drawer shows “Assign a room to check in · N free”: only rooms that are of the booked type, not cleaning, with no open housekeeping task and nobody still inside. The server checks the same things: it is on or after the arrival day (an early arrival must have its dates moved first), the room is ready and the type matches unless the room was assigned earlier as an upgrade. On success the room turns Occupied and the folio opens with the room nights and tax lines; a deposit already invoiced is credited against it, never charged twice. See Checking a guest in.
7. 14:00
   In-house: charges land on the folio

   Lunch at the restaurant closed with the Charge to room tender on the POS appears on the guest's open folio as “POS · TKT-… · Restaurant” plus its service charge and VAT lines. A room move is a change of room on the booking (the new room must not be under maintenance or out of service); the drawer does not yet have a Move room button, so ask a manager to do it through the API. Special requests stay in the amber box on the drawer for the whole stay.
8. 16:00
   No-shows and cancellations

   A confirmed guest who has not appeared by your cut-off gets No-show in the drawer (“Mark BK-… as a no-show?”). A call to cancel gets Cancel booking. Both release the room; the hotel's no-show fee (default 100% of one night) or cancellation fee (default 0%) posts to the folio automatically. See Confirming, cancelling and no-shows.
9. 18:00
   Evening payments and deposits

   On Payments record part-payments and deposits as they come in, cash, mobile money, card or bank transfer. An invoice's status (Paid, Partially Paid, Pending, Overdue) is derived from its payments every time it is shown, so the booking drawer, search and the night audit always agree with the till.
10. 22:00
    Close the business date

    On Reports a Reports = Edit user clicks Close 2026-09-04 and confirms “Close business date”. The server re-syncs every room's status for the new day, then freezes a snapshot: rooms (total, occupied, dirty, out of order), bookings (in-house, arriving, departing, no-shows, cancelled today), cash (payments, refunds, closed POS tickets) and the total still owed on open invoices, all measured on the hotel's local day, not UTC midnight. The same date cannot be closed twice (“2026-09-04 is already closed”). Until it is closed, the reports are live queries.

• “… arrives on 2026-09-12. Move the booking dates for an early check-in”: the guest is early. Change the dates so the folio charges the extra night, then check in.
• “Room 204 is not clean yet (HK-88 is open). Pick another room or wait for housekeeping”: housekeeping has not released the room. Pick a chip that is offered, or wait for Ready for Guest.
• “Room 204 is still occupied by BK-1039. Check them out first”: same-day turnover. Check the outgoing guest out first.
• “No Deluxe left for 2026-09-12: 8 sellable, 8 already booked”: the type is sold out that night, counting unassigned bookings too. Offer another type or date.
• “INV-… still owes …”: collect, or hand over to a Payments manager for a bill-later check-out.

The full list with fixes is in Bookings → Errors and Troubleshooting.

Folio

The open invoice attached to a stay. Opened at check-in (or earlier, for a deposit), collects room nights, taxes, fees and POS room charges, closed at check-out.

Walk-in

A guest with no reservation; a booking created at the desk with Source = Walk-in and checked in straight away.

Arriving Today

The board column for confirmed bookings whose check-in date is today or earlier and who have not checked in yet.

Stayover

An in-house guest staying another night; their room reads Occupied and housekeeping may raise a stayover refresh.

No-show

A confirmed guest who never arrived. Marking it releases the room and may post a no-show fee.

Settle later

A Payments = Full check-out with a balance still owed; audited, the folio stays payable on the Payments screen.

Night audit

Closing the hotel-local business date on Reports: a frozen snapshot of occupancy, cash and outstanding invoices.

Projection

A value computed from facts rather than stored, room status, board column, duty status, invoice status.