Hotel & stays: rooms, bookings and GST bands

Hotel & stays keeps your rooms, beds and bookings in the same books as your invoices. It is for a hotel, lodge, homestay, guest house or PG. It is not switched on for every workspace yet; where it is off, the Hotel & stays pages do not open. Where it is available, approving your hotel setup (Apply setup) switches Hotel & stays on for you; you can switch it off again in Settings, Modules.

Your first ten minutes

A new hotel workspace sees a checklist at import and setup: list each room type as an item sold per night (SAC 9963), add your rooms, set a nightly rate for each room type, and ask your CA to confirm the GST bands before you record that sign-off in Hotel settings. Corporate accounts, travel agents and staff roles can wait. If you would rather look around first, tap Try with sample data on the dashboard: it opens the room board with sample rooms and stays, every row labelled [SAMPLE] and removable from Profile, Account, Clear sample data. A checked-in sample stay and its bill appear only after the GST sign-off is recorded, and the message says so.

1. Add your rooms and beds

Open Rooms and beds. Type your room numbers as a list or a range, such as 101-110, 201-205, G1, add an optional floor, and add them in one go. For a dormitory or a PG, add beds inside a room (Bed A, Bed B and so on).

A room you no longer let can be deactivated; its history stays. A room with live bookings cannot be deactivated until you move or cancel them.

What is in each room

Under a room, In this room lists its fittings. Tap Add an asset, type What it is (an AC, a TV, a geyser) and, if you have them, the make, model, serial number and the date it was last serviced, then tap Save asset. When it is serviced again, pick the new date and tap Save date; Remove takes an asset off the list. Until a setup step is done on your workspace, the room says Room assets are not set up in this database yet, so they are not shown.

2. Take a booking

Open New reservation, pick the check-in and check-out dates and tap Check availability. Finocket shows, for each room type, how many rooms are free on every one of those nights; pick a room type (and a room, if you like), then pick or add the Guest, and enter the guests, the rate per night and, if you ask for one, the advance. A note is optional. You can save a booking without a guest, but check-in needs one because the bill is made out to them; for a stay booked without one, the front desk shows Attach guest until you add one. If the booking came through an OTA, choose it under Booked through and enter the OTA's commission, so the booking appears in the OTA settlement report.

For a PG or hostel resident who pays every month, choose Long stay (PG / hostel) instead: pick the room or bed, the resident, the move-in date and the monthly rent, and a deposit if you take one. The stay then shows on Residents, where you start its rent schedule.

Meals and electricity for residents

On a resident, Meals and electricity adds two monthly charges:

• Meal plan. Choose the meal item from your catalogue and the monthly amount, and tap Save meal plan. It is billed with the rent each month, so start the rent schedule first. Remove meal plan takes it off the rent.
• Electricity meter. For the room, enter the month, the previous and current readings, the rate per unit and the electricity item, then tap Record reading and draft the charge. Finocket makes a draft invoice for the resident. Tick Split between everyone who stayed in the room that month to share the charge, one draft each; otherwise the whole charge goes to this resident. Recording the same reading again makes nothing new, and a different reading for a month already billed is refused: change it with a credit note.

Both lines carry the GST rate and HSN/SAC of the item you chose. Ask your CA whether they are taxable before you send them.

Holding a room without confirming

When a caller wants a room but has not committed, fill in Hold without confirming (optional) on the booking: set Hold until (date) and Hold until (time). The room is kept for them until then. If the booking is not confirmed by that time, the hold lapses and the room goes back on sale. Finocket releases lapsed holds once a day. To free them sooner, open Reservations: when a hold has lapsed, it shows Release lapsed holds now. It reports how many it released, how many it kept for the desk and how many it could not release. A hold on which an advance was taken is kept for the desk to deal with, never cancelled by itself. On Reservations, a hold shows Held until or Hold lapsed with the time.

Day use: a room for a few hours

On New reservation, choose Day use. Pick the Day, From and Until, check availability and pick a room, then the guest and the number of guests. For the price, tap Use the day-use rate to take it from your day-use rate plan, or type a Day-use price yourself. Tap Book day use. The room is held for that night and is not sold again until the next day.

Set your room rates once

Open Room rates to set the rate for each room type. A rate can be for the whole year or for a season, for chosen weekdays (a weekend rate), for a meal plan such as EP, CP, MAP or AP, and for a minimum number of nights. When two rates could apply to the same night, the more specific one is used. On New reservation, tap Fill from room rates to price every night from these rates; you can still type a rate yourself and it wins. If a night has no rate, Finocket says so and does not book it at zero.

Add a charge to the guest's bill

Once a guest is checked in, the front desk shows Charge to the guest's bill. Type what it is for, the price of one, the quantity, the GST rate and the HSN/SAC code, then tap Add to bill. Finocket adds the line to the guest's open bill. It never fills in a GST rate or code for you, and it refuses until your CA has signed off the GST bands. Once the bill has been sent or paid, a change goes through a credit note raised by a person; nothing is changed automatically. Tapping twice does not add the line twice.

Open the guest's bill

A stay that has a bill shows Open the bill on the front desk. The bill is a draft that Finocket opened at check-in. After check-out, open it, check the lines and finalise it yourself; Finocket never finalises a bill for you.

Close the day

Day close lists, for a date, the check-outs that are overdue or due, the arrivals who have not been checked in and who is staying on. Open a row to go to its front desk. It is a list only: it posts no room charge, and posting nightly charges waits on your CA's sign-off of the GST bands.

A guest walks in

On New reservation, pick the check-out date and a room, then tap Walk-in: check in now. Finocket books the stay from today, confirms it and checks the guest in. If the guest's ID or an advance is still needed, the stay is saved and you finish at the front desk; nothing says checked in until it is.

3. Read your reservations

Reservations lists every booking, newest check-in first, with its dates, stage, guests and the advance you asked for. Load more brings older bookings in; nothing is hidden by a date filter.

When the dates are full: the waitlist

Open Waitlist from Reservations. Under Add a request, enter the party (a caller, family or company), the check-in and check-out dates, the Room type (or Any room type), the guests and a contact note, then tap Add to waitlist. A waiting request keeps no room.

Each request shows A room is free now when a room of its type is free on every night it asked for, worked out from today's availability, or Still full. When any waiting request has a free room, Reservations shows how many. To take one, tap Book a stay and book it as a normal reservation, then come back and tap Mark booked. Drop closes a request you no longer need. Until a setup step is done on your workspace, the page says the waitlist is not set up yet.

4. The room board and the front desk

Room board shows every room and who is in it, night by night: each bar is a stay, and you can step back or ahead a week. On a phone you pick one night and see each room as free or taken; on a larger screen you see two weeks at once. Stays booked by room type with no room assigned yet are listed under the board, so none goes missing.

Tap a stay to open it at the front desk. From there you can confirm it, check the guest in or out, cancel it or mark a no-show. Before the guest arrives you can move the stay to another room (a room already taken for those nights cannot be chosen), and you can extend it with a later check-out. The nights already booked keep their rate; you enter the rate for the nights you add.

5. Property settings and GST

Property settings shows your check-in and check-out times, the GST bands that apply to a room night, and your compliance status, including how long guest ID records are kept after a guest leaves. When your CA has reviewed the bands, the business owner ticks that they have, optionally notes the CA firm and date, and taps Record the CA sign-off. Other team members see that only the owner can record it.

6. Housekeeping

Open Housekeeping for the status of every room today. Tap a room to change it: clean, dirty, inspected or out of order. The Rooms to clean list puts rooms with a guest arriving first, then empty rooms that are dirty, then departures and stay-overs. A room whose guest has not left yet shows that it is to be cleaned after check-out.

7. Register your guests

Open Register a guest, choose the stay, and add each guest with the type of ID and its last four digits. A foreign guest is marked foreign. The list under Registered guests shows who is registered on that stay, or says that nobody is yet. Check-in asks for a registered guest, a room and the advance, and tells you which one is missing.

8. Reports and the ITC basis

Stay reports shows occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, arrivals and room revenue for the dates you choose.

ITC reversal basis splits your room-night turnover into the lower and higher GST bands, for your CA to work out the proportionate input tax credit reversal. Nothing is posted from it.

9. Room service by room QR

A guest can order food to the room by scanning a QR code kept in the room, with no app and no login. The guest scans it, sees the restaurant menu, picks what they want and sends the order to the kitchen. There is not yet a button on the reservation screen for staff to show or print the room QR, so the code cannot be handed out from the app today.

• The QR belongs to one room and one stay. Once the guest has checked out, or the stay is cancelled, the code stops working.
• An order reaches the kitchen like any other restaurant order. It is not charged to the room just by being placed.
• Charging a room-service bill to the guest's room is a separate switch, off by default. While it is off, staff settle the bill the usual way, at the till.
• The page shows no prices of your other guests and no booking details, only the menu and the guest's own order.

10. Banquet halls and bookings (built, switched off)

Add a hall or board room under Banquet halls. Each has one rate, a flat hire or an hourly rate, and you type the GST rate and SAC code yourself; nothing is filled in or suggested.

Under Banquet bookings, choose a hall and place a hold for a date and time. A hold keeps the hall for the minutes you set (60 if you leave it empty, from 5 to 1440) and then lapses. A hold is not a confirmed booking, and a clash with another held or confirmed booking is refused.

Open a booking with Open. A held booking can be confirmed with Confirm booking, where you state the place of supply. A confirmed booking takes a deposit schedule with Save schedule, which only sets due dates and records no payment, and its bill with Post bill. A bill needs a client on the booking, and every extra needs its own GST rate and SAC code. Cancel booking is refused once a bill is posted.

Under Banquet menu packages, create a package: your menu items at one price per guest, with a GST rate and SAC code you type. Choose it on the hold form under Banquet bookings. A confirmed booking that has a package shows Show the kitchen ticket, a read-only draft that is not sent to the kitchen.

What this does not do

• Staff rosters, attendance, payroll and tips are not here; they belong in your HR system.
• It does not file Form III or anything else with the government for you.
• It does not connect to a channel manager or to OTAs, so OTA bookings are not pulled in for you.

Common questions

Does Finocket sync bookings from Booking.com, MakeMyTrip or Airbnb?

Not yet. Finocket does not connect to a channel manager or to OTAs yet; enter OTA bookings here and match them to the OTA statement. Choose the OTA under Booked through when you take the booking, and open OTA settlements to compare what each OTA should have paid with what it did.