Billing & taxes¶
Money in Zitlin moves through three things, in order: a folio collects what a guest owes, an invoice turns that into a numbered tax document, and settling records how they paid.
Understanding where one ends and the next begins saves a lot of confusion — in particular, generating an invoice is the point of no return.
Folios¶
A folio is the bill. It belongs to the lead guest, and every booking on it contributes charges — see Front desk for how bookings and folios relate.
| Charges come from | Where they are added |
|---|---|
| Accommodation | The nightly price grid on each booking. |
| Food & beverage | Sent up from the restaurant, or ordered on the booking's Room Service tab. |
| Extras | The booking's Add Ons tab — airport pickup, extra bed, laundry. |
| Items issued to the room | The booking's Inventory tab. |
Money already received goes on the Advance Deposits tab: cash, card, bank transfer, QR, complimentary, or an OTA-collected payment. Record deposits as they arrive and the balance at check-out looks after itself.
Two folio-wide settings under Modify affect every invoice it produces:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Accommodation discount / Food discount | Percentages off, applied separately to rooms and to F&B. |
| Combined invoice | One invoice for everything, or two — accommodation and F&B separately. |
Discounts belong on the folio, not the invoice
Setting them before you generate means the invoice is right first time. You can change a discount on a generated invoice, but only an Admin or Accountant can, and it is an edit to a tax document rather than a normal adjustment.
Invoices¶
Generate Invoice on the booking or the restaurant order. Nothing is invoiced automatically — you decide when.
Depending on the folio's Combined invoice setting you get one document or two, and each carries your property header, a document number, the line items, the discount, the tax breakdown, any advance deposits, and the balance due.
The document number¶
Numbers look like JPR/26-27/RO-1299 — your prefix, the financial year, a
category code and the serial.
The serial restarts every financial year
That is deliberate and is what your tax authority expects. It means the bare number repeats across years — the full string, including the year, is what uniquely identifies an invoice. Quote the whole thing when talking to your accountant.
Correcting a generated invoice¶
Two routes, and which one you need depends on how much is wrong.
| Situation | Do this | Who can |
|---|---|---|
| A price, quantity, discount or the title is wrong | Modify | Admin, Accountant |
| The whole invoice should not exist, or the booking needs re-editing | Void | Admin |
Modify lets you change the title/narration, date of issue, discount rate, and each line's quantity and unit price.
You cannot delete a line — set its quantity to 0
The app tells you this when you try. A zero-quantity line drops out of the totals while leaving the document's structure intact.
Void marks the invoice void and unlocks the booking or order for editing again, so you can fix the underlying charges and generate a fresh invoice. The voided document is not deleted — it stays in your records.
Generating an invoice locks the booking
Once an accommodation invoice exists you cannot edit that booking's charges, and once a restaurant order is invoiced no more kitchen tickets can be added to it. Add every charge before you generate. If you have to reopen it, Void is the only way back, and that needs an Admin.
Sharing it¶
From the invoice you can Share, Print, save as PDF, or show an Online link as a QR code for the guest to open on their phone. Room-service invoices covering several days can also be printed split by date, one thermal receipt per day.
Settling¶
Settle records how the guest paid. You can split one invoice across several payment modes — part cash, part card.
| Mode | |
|---|---|
| Cash | |
| Credit | On account, to be collected later |
| Wire transfer | |
| Credit/Debit card | |
| QR | UPI, Thai QR and the other regional schemes |
| NC / Complimentary | Nothing to collect |
| OTA / Third party | The channel collected it |
The payments must add up to the amount due, exactly
Zitlin rejects a settlement whose parts do not total the balance. Advance deposits are already subtracted from that balance, so settle the due figure, not the invoice total.
An unsettled invoice is not a problem in itself — it is simply money you are still owed. Checking a guest out never requires one.
QR payments¶
Zitlin can show a payment QR carrying the exact amount owed, so the guest scans and confirms without typing anything. It appears as a Pay button on the invoice, labelled with your scheme.
Supported in 24 countries, including UPI (India), PromptPay/Thai QR, VietQR, QRIS, DuitNow, SGQR, QR Ph, FPS, KHQR, LANKAQR, FonePay, Bangla QR, Pix and SEPA QR.
Set up by Zitlin, and the money goes straight to you
Send support the account you want to be paid into and they will configure it. There is no payment processor in between — funds move directly from your guest to your bank or wallet, so no commission is deducted and nothing is held for a settlement period.
The trade-off is that Zitlin cannot see your bank account, so it does not know the money arrived. You confirm the payment, which is what the Settle step is for.
Taxes¶
Taxes for your country ship pre-configured — you pick one on each room category, add-on and dish rather than defining rates yourself. A tax can carry several components, each with its own name and rate, so a combined levy such as GST prints as separate lines on the invoice.
Add your own under Settings → More → Taxes only if there is a genuine gap.
Inclusive or exclusive¶
One property-wide switch, Prices include tax under Settings → Admin → Billing & Tax, decides how every price you have entered is read:
| Setting | Effect on a price of 100 at 10% tax |
|---|---|
| On (inclusive) | Guest pays 100. Tax of 9.09 is extracted from within. |
| Off (exclusive) | Guest pays 110. Tax of 10 is added on top. |
Price fields throughout Zitlin are labelled (including tax) or (excluding tax) to match, so you can always see which way round you are working.
Changing it does not rewrite existing invoices
Flipping the switch changes how prices are read from that point on. Invoices already issued keep the tax they were calculated with.
It can also be overridden per folio, which is how you handle the occasional booking quoted the other way round — see the Accommodation rate includes tax switch under Modify.
Rounding¶
With Auto-round invoice totals on (Settings → Admin → Billing & Tax) the total is rounded to the nearest whole unit and the difference is printed as a Round off line, so the document still adds up.
Finding invoices¶
Invoices in the main menu lists them for a date range. Filter by category — Accommodation, Restaurant, Room Service, Event Space — or search by invoice number or amount. Download CSV exports the range for your accountant.
Reports¶
Reports gives you a dated snapshot of the property rather than a free-form query tool. Pick a date and you get:
| Report | Covers |
|---|---|
| Occupancy | Rooms sold against rooms available, with the night's arrivals and departures. |
| Revenue | What was earned, split by source and by OTA. |
| Folios | Every active folio and its balance on that date. |
| Exceptions | Things needing attention — unassigned units, unsettled balances. |
| Housekeeping | Task status, and rooms out of order or in maintenance. |
| Expenses | Recorded costs by category. |
Each can be produced as a PDF to keep or hand over.
Common questions¶
I generated the invoice too early and the guest ordered more
Void the invoice (Admin only), add the charges, and generate again. There is no way to append to a generated invoice.
The guest wants one bill for the room and a separate one for food
Turn off Combined invoice on the folio before generating. With it on you get a single document covering both.
Can I delete an invoice?
No — Void is as far as it goes, and the voided document stays in your records. Gap-free numbering is what makes the sequence acceptable to a tax authority.
The tax on my invoice looks wrong
Check the tax assigned to that room category or dish, and whether Prices include tax matches how you entered the prices. Those two account for nearly every case. Remember the setting can also be overridden on the individual folio.
Two invoices in different years have the same number
Expected — the serial restarts each financial year. The full document string including the year is the unique one.