How to Manage Bookings

Manage all your bookings in the Bookings menu: add bookings, change their status and room, check guests in and out, and edit charges, payments, invoices and messages in the booking tabs. By default you see all bookings from today in a calendar or list view; use the selector to show only certain bookings.

Table of Contents

1. Booking status
2. Booking views
3. Add bookings
4. Room assignment
5. Check guests in and out
6. Booking tabs
7. Cancel, delete and bulk-change bookings
8. Search bookings

Booking status

Every booking has a status, which you can change manually or with an Auto Action.

Status	Meaning
New	The booking hasn't been opened yet. Once you open it and save or update it, the status changes to Confirmed. You can set the status for new bookings in Settings > Properties > Booking Rules > Booking Status.
Confirmed	Confirmed booking.
Request	Booking request.
Inquiry	Doesn't block the room.
Cancelled	Cancelled booking.
Black	A booking without guests, for example to close a room. Black bookings aren't included in reports.

The second selector adds a sub-status. It has no direct effect on the booking; it holds information you can use in reports.

Booking views

Choose a view to see all bookings:

• Grid, with drag and drop to change rooms quickly
• Sortable list
• Calendar view
• Guests
• Pending payments

Group bookings are marked with a circle icon in the calendar. For the master booking the circle is filled. See Group Bookings.

Add bookings

Bookings come into Beds24 in three ways:

• online, from guests using your availability calendars, booking buttons and booking page
• manually, entered by you
• imported from other channels by the channel manager

Add a booking manually

To	Do this
Add a booking	Click Add Booking at the top right.
Add a booking for several rooms, or check which rooms are available	Click Price Check.
Add a booking for a specific room, or room and date	Click the room (and date) directly in the Calendar.
Add a booking for a returning guest	Use the Search field in the booking.

Import existing bookings when you start

• Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia: import all upcoming bookings automatically with the import button in Settings > Channel Manager > Airbnb / Booking.com / Expedia. You can use it when the channel manager is set up but not yet activated. This is the recommended method, because Beds24 can then import later changes to bookings imported directly from Booking.com automatically.
• Other bookings: upload them as a CSV file in Settings > Properties.

Room assignment

By default, Beds24 assigns a room to each booking automatically. To assign rooms manually as a rule, change Booking Allocation in Settings > Properties > Rooms > Setup. To rearrange room assignments, move the booking.

Tip: For a room type with a quantity of more than one, a guest can book several days as long as one room of the type is available on each day. If this means the guest would have to move during the stay, shuffle the bookings manually.

Prevent room changes

• Channel bookings: if you change the room of a booking imported from a channel, change Allow Channel Modifications on the Details tab of the booking, so the next update from the channel doesn't override your change.
• Rule for all bookings from a channel: in Settings > Channel Manager > Connection Summary, set Allow Channel Modifications to All except room change for each connected channel.
• Lock a booking's room: with the info codes LOCKROOM or LOCKUNIT, staff can't change the room manually. If the codes aren't in the drop-down list, add them in Settings > Account > Preferences (Booking Info Code Presets).

Check guests in and out

With the dashboard components Arrivals, Departures and Current Guests, you can check guests in and out from the dashboard and see which guests are checked in.

• You can also check a guest in or out in the booking: set the info code CHECKIN or CHECKOUT on the Info tab.
• In Settings > Account > Preferences > Bookings (Check-out rules), set which checks run at check-out. With Booking balance higher than 0, a warning with the booking balance appears when you check out a booking with a balance above 0: from the Departures component, when you add the CHECKOUT info code to a booking, or when you apply it with Group Actions.
• In Settings > Account > Preferences (Check-in Rules), you can limit the check-in function for the dashboard modules.
• With the Nuki or RemoteLock integration, guests are checked in automatically when they first open a lock. See Self-Check-in.

Note: The check-out warning is for information only and doesn't prevent check-out. Beds24 doesn't collect outstanding balances automatically. You can continue with the check-out or go back to the booking to review charges and payments.

Booking tabs

Click a booking to open it in a pop-up. The booking has these tabs.

Overview

The most important information from the other tabs in one read-only view. Open it with the clipboard icon. Click an Edit icon to go to the tab where you can make changes. Beds24 plans to extend the overview so it eventually includes all functions and replaces the tabs.

Info

Add info codes and internal notes. The Info tab shows a customisable summary of the booking (the booking info template) and the info items attached to the booking.

• Booking info template: create the summary in Settings > Account > Preferences (Booking Info Template) with Template Variables.
• Info items: an info code plus a free-text field for notes. Use them in custom reports, to trigger Auto Actions, to filter bookings and to show icons. For the preset codes, your own codes, bedding codes and icons, see Booking info codes.
• Hide the Info tab: click the user icon at the top right, then Account Management (in the old control panel: Sub Account at the top right), click Manage Account and add bookedit-info in Hide menu pages.

Summary

• Slice divides a booking into separate bookings with different start and end dates, for example when a guest changes rooms during the stay.
• When you select a different unit, the symbol ® next to a unit or room means it already has a booking, so choose another unit.
• The fields you see are set in Settings > Properties > Booking Questions.

Detail

• Split splits a booking for several rooms into separate bookings, so each can be assigned to its own room. The split bookings stay linked so you can manage them easily.
• Flag marks bookings that need special attention. The flag text shows with the other booking fields in the control panel. Use the [FLAG] template variable to show it as hover text on the booking in the calendar view. You can also apply flags automatically with Auto Actions in Settings > Guest Management > Auto Actions.
• The fields you see are set in Settings > Properties > Booking Questions.

Charges and Payments

Manage the guest's charges and payments. Information from your booking page or from a channel is entered automatically. For channel bookings, set how charges and payments are imported in Settings > Channel Manager.

• Add charges, payments or pending payments: click the + icon to add a blank row. Upsell items from Settings > Booking Engine > Upsell Items can be selected as charges automatically. Create invoice items for items sold on site in Settings > Guest Management > Invoice (Invoice Items).
• Remove an item: click the ... menu and choose Delete.
• Status field: sets the type of an item, for example a payment method or a category for reporting. Preset your status values in Settings > Guest Management > Invoice (Invoice Items).
• Room description: by default the lodging price shows the room name, check-in date and check-out date. Change it in Settings > Guest Management > Invoice (Invoice Item Room Description).

Pending payments schedule outstanding payments, collected manually or automatically. Automatic charging is only available with Stripe.

• For automatic charging, set the pending payment to auto and enter a due date in the future.
• Channel-collect payments with virtual cards can be collected automatically; set this in the channel's menu.
• If the credit card has been sent to Stripe, you can charge it manually: click the ... menu and charge now.
• Create rules and info codes for pending payments in Settings > Guest Management > Payment Rules.

After a payment is collected, a status shows on the Info tab. Successful collections move from Pending Payments to Payments.

Apply a discount voucher code:

Booking	Steps
Existing booking	Open the booking, go to the Charges & Payments tab, enter the agent's discount code in Voucher Code and click Recalculate. The charges update to the discounted price.
New booking	Click Add Booking in the calendar, enter the discount code in the Voucher Code field of the booking form, complete the booking details and save. The discounted price is applied from the start.

Invoice

Generate and print an invoice. Customise the invoice in Settings > Guest Management > Invoice.

You can also manage and create group bookings here. Changes have to be made in each booking.

If a booking needs separate invoices, for example the room charged to a company and extras to the guest, use the invoicee function in Settings > Guest Management > Invoicee.

Mail

Send the standard emails you've set up in Settings > Guest Management.

Messages

If the booking is from a channel that makes messages available, view and reply to guest messages here. See OTA Messages.

Guests

See and manage the link between the booking and the guest database (Guests in the top menu). You can add guests to the booking or remove them. Guests who aren't linked to another booking can also be deleted.

• Create Guest from Booking: creates a guest from the information on the Summary tab.
• Create New Guest: adds a new guest to the database.
• Add Existing Guest: searches the database for a guest to add to the booking.

Note: Updating a guest doesn't change the Summary tab of the booking.

Logs

Shows the changes made to the booking. Logs are available until one month after check-out.

Cancel, delete and bulk-change bookings

To	Do this
Cancel a direct booking	Change the status to Cancelled.
Cancel a channel booking	The guest or the channel cancels it on the channel. If that isn't possible, change the status in Beds24 and set Allow Channel Modifications to No on the Details tab. This stops channel updates from overriding the status, but doesn't cancel the booking on the channel.
Delete a booking	Deleted bookings are removed permanently and can't be restored. Bookings with a locked invoice can't be deleted.
Change bookings in bulk	Click the user icon at the top right, then Account Management (in the old control panel: Sub Account), then Manage Account, Manage Property and Manage Room. There you can change the status of bookings and move bookings to another room. To delete bookings in bulk, change their status to Cancelled first.
Open archived bookings	Bookings are archived periodically for performance. Go to Bookings > List, edit or create a view that includes the Invoice column (a print-invoice button and a CSV download of the invoice data for archived bookings), then set the date and period.

Guest cancellations: you can let guests cancel bookings themselves. By default the cancellation policy from Settings > Booking Engine applies; you can override it for offers (Settings > Properties > Rooms > Offers) or for individual bookings. Add the template variable [CANCELURL] to your confirmation email so guests can cancel through the system without contacting you. Guests receive a system notification when they cancel. You can set up an additional Auto Action email in Settings > Guest Management > Auto Actions.

Search bookings

Use the Search box at the top of any page. You can search by first name, last name, Beds24 booking number and channel booking number. If the booking isn't in the results, click Search More to search all guest information in bookings.

To register guests and meet legal obligations automatically, see the partner integration CheKin.io.

Related Articles

• Booking info codes
• Group Bookings
• Template Variables
• How to setup Pending Payments
• How to use Guest database