Front desk¶
Bookings in the main menu. This is where your day happens: taking bookings, assigning rooms, checking guests in and out, and collecting money.
One important idea before anything else. Zitlin separates two things that other systems merge:
- A folio is the bill and the guest it belongs to.
- A booking is one unit for one set of dates, sitting on that folio.
A family taking three rooms is one folio with three bookings — one bill, one lead guest, three units to clean. That is why the buttons say Add Bookings rather than New Booking, and why you will see actions like Check-In all Bookings.
The calendar¶
Units down the side, dates across the top. Use Change Dates to move the window, and the List / Calendar toggle to switch to a flat list when you want to scan rather than plan.
- Tap an empty cell to start a booking for that unit and date — both are carried into the form.
- Tap a booking to open it.
- OTA blocks from a connected calendar feed appear as OTA Bookings rather than as normal bookings. See Channel manager.
Under More you will also find Blocked Units, Booking Summary and Meal List — the meal list is the one to hand your kitchen in the morning.
Taking a booking¶
The + button, or tap a free cell on the calendar.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Day Use or Hourly Booking | For guests billed by the hour rather than by the night. Leave off for a normal stay. |
| Booking dates | Check-in and check-out times come from Settings → Admin; you only pick dates. |
| Guest | Search existing guests, or add a new one without leaving the form. |
| Meal plan | Room only, EP, CP, MAP or all-inclusive. |
| Rate plan | Optional. Repricing happens as soon as you choose one. |
| Prices include tax | Defaults to your Settings → Admin choice. Can be changed per booking. |
| OTA | Which agency sent the booking, if any. Feeds your source reporting. |
| Notes | Anything reception should know. |
| Booking colour | A colour for the calendar block. Use it however suits you — group tours, VIPs, unpaid. |
Day-use bookings
Switch on Day Use or Hourly Booking and you set a start time and a duration in hours instead of a date range. Between half an hour and 18 hours. The booking is billed by the hour, not by the night.
Choosing units and prices¶
Only genuinely free units are offered. Pick the category and how many units you need, then decide when to name the actual room:
| Option | Use when |
|---|---|
| Assign now | You know which room they are getting. |
| Assign later | You are holding a category and will name the room nearer arrival. |
A booking with no unit cannot be checked in
Assign later is fine for taking the booking, but you must assign a unit before check-in — Zitlin refuses otherwise. Use Assign Units to all unassigned bookings on the folio to clear several at once.
Each night is priced separately and shown in a grid. The rates come from your category rate with seasonal, weekday and rate-plan adjustments applied — see Pricing.
Overriding one night
Unlock a night in the grid and type your own figure. Only that night changes; the rest stay on the calculated rate, and it survives a later price change to the category. This is the right way to honour a promised rate for one guest.
The folio¶
Opening a booking shows the folio it belongs to: the lead guest, every booking on it, and tabs for Rates, Advance Deposits and the invoices.
Modify edits the folio as a whole:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Guest | Change the lead guest — who the bill is addressed to. |
| OTA | The booking source. |
| Accommodation discount / Food discount | Percentages, applied to the whole folio. |
| Accommodation rate includes tax | Whether the rates entered contain tax. |
| Combined invoice | One invoice for room and F&B, or two separate ones. |
| Notes | Free text. |
| Booking colour | The calendar colour. |
Under More on the folio you can Assign Units to all, Cancel all Bookings, Check-In all and Check-Out all — the bulk actions for a group arriving together.
Deposits and payments¶
The Advance Deposits tab records money taken before or during the stay — cash, card, bank transfer, QR, complimentary, or an OTA-collected payment. Add them as they come in and the balance at check-out looks after itself.
Check-in and check-out¶
Open the individual booking and use Check In. Zitlin refuses if:
- No unit is assigned yet, or
- The booking is not confirmed — a booking engine reservation sitting On hold has to have its payment confirmed first. See Booking engine.
Check Out needs the guest checked in first. If you have Auto-create housekeeping tasks on, checking out marks the unit dirty and raises a cleaning task stamped with the time.
Both actions are reversible — Revert check-in and Revert check-out are there for the inevitable wrong button.
Checking out does not create the invoice
Generate it yourself from the folio's invoice tab. Checking out settles the guest's departure, not their paperwork, so an outstanding balance never blocks someone leaving.
The booking also carries tabs for Room Service, Add Ons and Inventory — food sent up from the restaurant, extras like airport pickup, and items issued to the room.
Blocking units¶
Bookings → More → Blocked Units
For maintenance, deep cleaning, an owner's stay — anything that takes a unit off sale without being a booking.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Dates | The range to block. |
| Block reason | Required. Your staff will read this in three weeks and need to know why. |
| Units | Pick as many as you like in one block. |
A blocked unit disappears from availability everywhere at once — the calendar, your booking engine and every connected OTA.
Block, do not fake-book
Resist creating a dummy booking under a guest called "Maintenance". A block keeps your occupancy and revenue reports honest, and it can be deleted in one action when the work finishes.
Cancellations¶
Open the booking and choose Cancel this Booking. The unit is released back to availability immediately, and within about a minute your OTAs see it too.
Cancelling cannot be undone
Zitlin warns you, and it means it. There is no un-cancel — you would have to take the booking again. Any deposit already recorded stays on the folio for you to deal with.
Common questions¶
Two guests are sharing a room but paying separately
Two folios, one booking on each — not one folio with two bookings. The folio is the bill, so separate bills mean separate folios.
The guest wants to extend by a night
Open the folio and add the extra night as a booking on the same folio, so it stays on one bill. If the unit is taken for that night, you will have to move them.
I need to move a guest to a different room
Assign a different unit on the booking. The nightly prices already set do not change, so a move for your convenience does not silently reprice the guest.
A rate looks wrong on one night only
Check whether it falls inside a seasonal override or carries a weekday multiplier — those compound. See Pricing. If the guest was promised a figure, override that night in the rate grid.
Can I take a booking for dates in the past?
Yes — the date picker allows up to two years back, which is what you need for catching up on paperwork or recording a stay someone forgot to enter.