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 room 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 rooms 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.

Two views of the same day¶

Bookings shows your property two ways, and the button just above + Bookings switches between them. It remembers your choice, so pick the one that suits how you work and it will be there tomorrow.

Calendar¶

Rooms down the side, dates across the top. This is the view for planning — it shows you where the gaps are, which is what you want when a guest asks whether you have something next Tuesday.

• Tap an empty cell to start a booking for that room and date — both are carried into the form.
• Tap a booking to open it.
• Change Dates moves the window; the magnifier fits more or fewer days on screen.
• Each date column is headed by its weekday above the date, so which column is Saturday can be read rather than counted across. The most condensed zoom drops it — the columns are too narrow for three letters, which is the trade that zoom is making.
• Rooms are grouped by room type, and each group folds. A folded row shows how many of that room type are sold on each date, shaded darker as it fills up — the quick answer to "have I got a Deluxe free on Saturday". Tap the row to open it and see the individual rooms; tap again to fold it back. A property with a single room type opens expanded.
• OTA blocks from a connected calendar feed appear as OTA Bookings rather than as normal bookings. See Channel manager.

List¶

The same day, grouped by what has to happen to it rather than by room. This is the view for working the desk: the calendar answers "what does next week look like", the list answers "what do I have to do now".

Across the top, the day at a glance — guests in house, rooms free, unassigned bookings, arrivals, departures and continuing stays. Below it the bookings themselves under Continuing, Check-ins, Check-outs and OTA Bookings, each card showing the room, guest, nights and status.

Copy next to a heading copies that group as text, which is the quick way to send a handover message or a morning arrivals list — or the day's room numbers to your housekeeping supervisor.

Under More you will also find Blocked Rooms, Booking Summary and Meal List — the meal list is the one to hand your kitchen in the morning.

Finding anything¶

The search box at the top of the menu is on every screen, and it is the fastest way to get to something you already know exists. One box: type whatever the guest in front of you just said.

You do not have to tell it what you are searching for. It works that out from what you typed, then groups what it found.

A few things worth knowing:

• Restaurant orders are in here too, under their own group. A walk-in diner is never in the guest book — the restaurant screen takes a bare name and phone onto the order itself — so this is the only way back to their order without going through the day's list. They match on order number, on the phone taken with the order, and on the diner's name. See Restaurant.
• Bill numbers repeat between years. RO-221 is issued once each financial year, so a bare number can return more than one bill. Each result shows the full number — PGH/26/RO-221 — which is the one that is unique. Type the whole thing and you get the single bill.
• The chips narrow what you already have. They show how many of each were found, and switching between them does not search again.
• Two characters is the minimum, because a bill can genuinely be numbered 12. Searching by name needs three.
• Ten per group. If there are more, Show more widens that one group.
• Results open the thing itself — a booking opens its folio, a bill opens the invoice, a receipt opens the folio it was taken against.

Quoting an enquiry¶

Check rates, on the Bookings toolbar. Somebody is on the phone asking what you have for next weekend and what it costs; this is the screen that answers them without starting a booking you may have to throw away.

Pick the dates and you get every room type at once:

• how many rooms are free for those dates,
• the price — total for the stay, or per night,
• sold-out types last, and the cheapest available first, so the quote reads down the screen in the order you would say it aloud.

Change the rate plan at the top and every price re-quotes against it. That is how you answer "and what's your corporate rate?" in one tap rather than by opening a booking form and undoing it afterwards.

The screen is read-only until you press Book. Nothing is held, nothing is blocked, and closing it leaves no trace — quote as many times as you like.

Taking a booking¶

The + button, or tap a free cell on the calendar.

Choosing rooms and prices¶

Only genuinely free rooms are offered. Pick the room type and how many rooms you need, then decide when to name the actual room:

Each night is priced separately and shown in a grid. The rates come from your room type's rate with seasonal, weekday and rate-plan adjustments applied — see Pricing.

The folio¶

Manage Folio, from the balance card on any booking.

The whole bill on one screen: the lead guest, every booking sitting on it, what is owed, and tabs for Rates, Prepayments, Security Deposits and the invoices. The balance breaks down into room charges, room service and prepayments taken, so you can see at a glance what a departing guest still owes and what it is for.

Modify edits the folio as a whole:

Under More on the folio you can Assign Rooms to all, Cancel all Bookings, Check-In all and Check-Out all — the bulk actions for a group arriving together.

Sending something to the guest¶

Notify sends the guest a document over WhatsApp, or prints it:

Notify on the folio writes to the lead guest and covers every booking on it at once, so a family on four rooms gets one message rather than four. The same button on a single booking covers just that one.

The dialog shows the WhatsApp number and email it will use, so a missing or mistyped number is visible before you send rather than after.

Prepayments¶

The Prepayments tab records money taken towards the bill, 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.

Each one gets its own numbered receipt, like ZIT/26-27/AD-12, which you can Print for the guest or send on WhatsApp. When the invoice is finally generated it lists every receipt it absorbed, so the payment and the bill can always be matched up afterwards.

A correction is a normal part of the job — a clerk who mistypes an amount can fix it on the spot without finding a manager. The receipt keeps its number and the change is recorded against whoever made it.

See Billing & taxes for how prepayments reach the invoice and what your accountant gets.

Security deposits¶

The Security Deposits tab is for the other kind of money entirely: what you are holding for the guest and giving back when they leave. It never touches their bill.

Record it as Collected if you took cash or charged a card, or as a Card pre-auth if you only placed a hold — a hold moves no money, so it never reaches your drawer and never appears in a shift count. Either way the deposit gets its own receipt number, in a series of its own ending SD-.

At check-out, open the deposit and Return it. If you are keeping part of it for damage, enter that amount and Zitlin returns the rest — then add the damage as a charge on the booking so the invoice bills and taxes it properly.

See Billing & taxes for the accounting side.

Check-in and check-out¶

The room's housekeeping status sits next to the room name here, spelled out — Vacant Clean, Vacant Dirty, Maintenance. It is the question the Check In button asks, so it is answered on the same screen instead of on the housekeeping rack. A dirty room does not block the check-in; it tells you what to send upstairs.

Open the individual booking and use Check In. Zitlin refuses if:

• No room 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 room dirty and raises a cleaning task stamped with the time — see Housekeeping.

If you are still holding a security deposit, Zitlin says so as the guest checks out. It is a reminder, not a block — nobody should be kept waiting at the desk over paperwork — and the deposit stays on the Exceptions report until you return or retain it.

Both actions are reversible — Revert check-in and Revert check-out are there for the inevitable wrong button.

Charging extras to a stay¶

Below the booking's details sit three tabs — Room Service, Add Ons and Inventory. The first two are how everything beyond the nightly rate gets charged: what you put on them goes onto the folio and onto the guest's invoice at check-out. The third is stock control and charges nothing.

They belong to the booking, not the folio. A family on three rooms can have the extra bed charged to the room that actually got it, while the bill stays one bill.

Room service¶

Booking → Room Service

Food and drink sent up to the room. New KOT starts a ticket: pick dishes from your menu and set quantities. It is the same kitchen order ticket the restaurant uses — it prints for the kitchen the same way and moves through the same Created → Cooking → Ready → Served states from the coloured dropdown on each card — it is simply charged to the stay instead of to a table.

• The heart on a line makes it complimentary: it still prints for the kitchen and still shows on the ticket, but it is not charged for.
• Cancelling a line strikes it through rather than deleting it, so a mistake stays visible to whoever checks the bill later.
• The printer icon reprints the ticket for the kitchen.

Totals roll into the folio's Room Service line and onto the F&B invoice.

Add-ons¶

Booking → Add Ons

Everything that is neither a night nor food: airport pickup, an extra bed, laundry, a spa coupon. Add Extras puts one on the booking.

Editing the price on a booking changes it for that booking only; the catalogue price is left alone. Set up the items themselves in Property setup.

Inventory¶

The third tab issues stock items to the room — minibar, toiletries, linen, anything you count. It draws on the same stock as Inventory in the main menu, so issuing an item here decrements what you hold there and leaves a movement recorded against this stay.

Blocking rooms¶

Bookings → More → Blocked Rooms

For maintenance, deep cleaning, an owner's stay — anything that takes a room off sale without being a booking.

A blocked room disappears from availability everywhere at once — the calendar, your booking engine and every connected OTA. On the calendar it shows as a block in its own colour carrying the reason you typed, so anyone looking at the grid can see why the room is out — room 106 in the calendar screenshot above is a bathroom refit.

Cancellations¶

Open the booking and choose Cancel this Booking. The room is released back to availability immediately, and within about a minute your OTAs see it too.

Common questions¶