Front desk and bookings · today's queue, tentative holds with a deadline and the waitlist

The Front desk tab shows a single queue of what needs action now, ordered by the cost of waiting. The Bookings tab creates and drives bookings: a tentative hold with a mandatory deadline, promotion to definite and confirmed, a challenge that only shortens the deadline, the waitlist when the date is full, and cancellation.

The Front desk queue

The front desk does not need four separate lists (arrivals, departures, deadlines, complaints): it needs one list with whatever demands action right now. The Front desk tab shows the counters for the day (Arrivals, Departures, In house, Open cases, Holds expiring) and, below them, the single queue. The order is decided on the server and follows an operating rule, not a visual preference: first the open case of a guest who is still in the house, because that is the only real window to fix things before it turns into a bad review; then the tentative hold about to expire, because once the deadline passes your negotiating power evaporates; then departures, which have a clock and hold up housekeeping for the next arrival; then arrivals, which have the whole day; and finally guests in house with nothing pending, as context. An open case for a guest who has already left drops down the queue: the window to fix it has closed. Urgent case items are highlighted in red.

Creating a booking

1. Open the Bookings tab and click New booking.
2. Choose the property (the selector only appears when there is more than one) and the unit. Only your own units appear in the list; if there are units mirrored from the PMS, the screen tells you how many were left out, because those are confirmed at the source.
3. Fill in Check-in, Check-out and the quantity in Units.
4. Choose the initial Status: Tentative, Definite or Confirmed.
5. If you choose Tentative, the Deadline field becomes mandatory: a tentative hold with no deadline would block the date forever, and the form will not allow it.
6. Tick Join the waitlist if it is full when that is what you want. Without it, a full date rejects the booking instead of queuing it.
7. Click Book. If the date was full and you ticked the option, the screen tells you: It was full, the booking went to the waitlist.

Driving the booking: promote, challenge, cancel

The booking list shows the reference, the Status, the dates, the quantity and the Deadline, with the time left (In 36h) highlighted while the booking is tentative. The available actions follow the status: a Tentative booking can be made definite, challenged or cancelled; a Definite one can be confirmed or cancelled; a Confirmed one can still be cancelled; Cancelled and Expired have no actions. Challenge exists for the honest conflict: another customer wants the same date, and the challenge shortens the deadline of the hold that is sitting on the inventory. It never extends it: whoever is holding the date does not earn extra time by being challenged. A tentative hold whose deadline has passed expires on its own, returns the inventory and promotes the waitlist in order, with no manual step. The Status filter at the top of the tab shows one state at a time: Tentative, Definite, Confirmed, Waitlisted, Cancelled or Expired.

Stay state: pre-arrival, in house, checked out

Every confirmed booking carries the state of the stay: pre-arrival, in house, checked out, plus cancelled and no-show. That state is not a decorative label: it is the lock on communications. A pre-arrival message does not go out to someone who is already staying, and a review invitation does not go out to someone who has not checked out yet. State transitions come from the integration with your PMS or from the system API, and the Front desk counters (Arrivals, Departures, In house) read that state.

Open this article inside the system →