Reservations and check-in
Hotel & Rooms is an add-on. See What's included, and what's an add-on.
Taking a booking
Hotel › Reservations › New Reservation:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Guest | Pick an existing one or create a new one. |
| Check-in Date and Check-out Date | |
| Check-in Time and Check-out Time | Your standard times, adjustable per booking. |
| Adults and Children | Party size. |
| Rate Plan | Which commercial package. See Rate plans. |
| Rooms | Available rooms for those dates, with the rate per night. |
| Pricing Period | Daily, weekly or monthly. |
| Advance Paid | Deposit taken at booking. |
| Booking taxes and extra services | From your hotel settings. |
Until you've chosen dates, the room list tells you to pick them rather than showing everything.
Pricing period and how payment works
This decides how the money is collected, and it's the part most worth understanding:
- Monthly and Weekly support recurring payment — for extended stays billed on a cycle.
- Daily is a final settlement — the first payment is a down payment, and the balance is collected at check-out.
Most hotel bookings are daily. The others are for serviced accommodation and long lets.
Taking a deposit
Advance Paid records a deposit at the time of booking. It goes onto the folio as a payment, so the balance at check-out is already correct.
Take one for anything worth protecting — groups, long stays, peak dates. It's also what makes your cancellation terms enforceable in practice rather than in principle.
Managing reservations
The list shows reservation number, guest, check-in, check-out, rooms, amount and status. Search by number or guest name; filter by status.
From a reservation you can:
- View and Edit
- Change Status
- Add Payments and View Payments
- Download, Print, Copy or Email the invoice
- Cancel Reservation
Cancelling names the reservation in the confirmation and can't be undone.
Checking a guest in
From Hotel › Check-In, or from today's arrivals on the front desk dashboard.
- Find the reservation — search by reservation number or guest name, or filter by date.
- Open the check-in form.
- Assign rooms. At least one room must be assigned; check-in won't proceed without it.
- Add the guests staying — the people actually in the room, not only the booker.
- Confirm.
Two rules Restodesk enforces:
- Only Confirmed or Tentative reservations can be checked in. A cancelled or already-arrived booking can't be.
- The room must actually be available. If it's occupied, you're told which room number is the problem.
On check-in, the reservation becomes a stay, a folio opens, and the room charge is posted to it. The room goes to Occupied.
Recording every guest
Add all the occupants, not just the person who booked. It's what lets you answer who was in the building on a given night, and in many places it's a legal requirement.
Checking out
From Hotel › Check-Out, or today's departures on the dashboard.
- Open the stay.
- Review the folio — room charges, extras, restaurant charges, taxes, payments.
- Settle the balance.
- Confirm check-out.
The room becomes vacant and dirty, and a housekeeping task is created automatically. See Housekeeping.
Review the folio before settling, not after. A room service order posted an hour ago is on there, and finding it after the guest has left is a phone call nobody enjoys. See The guest folio.
Stay history
Hotel › Stay History holds every completed stay, so a returning guest's history is one search away.
Worth checking before a regular arrives. Knowing someone always asks for a high floor is the kind of detail that makes a guest come back.
A working front-desk routine
Morning
- Read Today's Arrivals and Today's Departures.
- Check the room status board — is there a clean room for every arrival?
- Note anything special: late arrivals, groups, requests.
Through the day
- Check departures out as they leave; don't batch it.
- Check arrivals in as they come.
- Keep room statuses moving.
Evening
- Any arrivals who haven't turned up?
- Any folios with a balance that should have been settled?
Good to know
- Reservations are per branch.
- Check-in, check-out and cancellation are separate permissions — see What each role can do.
- Hotel reservations are unrelated to table reservations in the restaurant. See Taking reservations.
- Occupancy on the dashboard comes from rooms actually occupied, so accurate check-in and check-out is what makes that figure real.