Property setup¶
Everything a new property needs before it can take a booking: your invoice and tax preferences, the listing guests see, and the rooms themselves.
Work through it in this order. Categories have to exist before you can add rooms to them.
1. Administration¶
Settings → Admin
Six collapsible sections. Three matter for setup — the rest can wait.
Billing & Tax¶
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Invoice number prefix | First part of every invoice number. In ZIT/25-26/44311, ZIT is the prefix. |
| Auto-round invoice totals | Rounds the invoice total to the nearest whole number. |
| Merged invoices by default | Puts accommodation and food & beverage on one invoice rather than two. |
| Prices include tax | Whether the prices you type in already contain tax. |
| Print property header | Adds your name and address to the top of every PDF. Turn it off if you print onto pre-printed letterheads. |
Set Prices include tax before you enter any prices
This one switch decides how every price in Zitlin is read. With it on, a nightly rate of 1000 includes the tax; with it off, tax is added on top and the guest pays more than 1000.
It also changes the labels on the price fields you are about to fill in — they read either (including tax) or (excluding tax) to match. Get it right first, then enter one room category, take a test booking, and check the tax line before typing in the rest.
Property Information¶
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Auto-create housekeeping tasks | Raises a cleaning task automatically when a guest checks out. |
| Check-In time / Check-Out time | Your standard times, in 24-hour format. |
| Invoice header / Invoice footer | Text printed at the top and bottom of room invoices. |
Property Listing¶
What guests see on your booking engine and on connected OTAs. Worth spending time on — this is your shopfront.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Property description | A welcoming overview of the property. |
| Star rating | 1–5. Tap the selected chip again to clear it; leave empty if unrated. |
| Facilities & amenities | Pick everything that applies. OTAs use these to filter search results. |
| Photos | Your gallery. |
| Hotel policy | House rules, check-in and check-out policy. |
| Cancellation policy | Refund windows and cancellation terms. |
| Booking engine footer | Shown at the bottom of every page of your booking engine. Useful for a phone number or a direct-booking promise. |
Removing a photo deletes it
Photos dropped from the gallery are removed from storage when you save. Keep your own copies.
The remaining sections — Direct Bookings, Restaurant and Notifications — are covered in Booking engine and Restaurant.
2. Categories¶
Settings → Property → Categories
A category is a kind of room — Standard, Deluxe, Suite. Not an individual room. Guests book a category; you assign the actual room later.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Category Name | The kind of room, e.g. Executive, Suite, Standard. |
| Nightly rate | Your usual rate for this category. Digits only — 200, not AUD 200. Labelled (including tax) or (excluding tax) to match your Settings → Admin choice. |
| Tax | Which tax applies to this category. |
| Photo | Shown on your booking engine and OTA listings. |
One category per kind of room — not per price
The most common setup mistake is creating Deluxe and Deluxe Weekend as two categories. Do not. A category carries one usual rate, and dates change that rate — see Pricing for weekend and seasonal prices.
Duplicating categories splits your availability in two, so both show as bookable when only one room exists.
Advanced settings¶
Occupancy and extra-guest pricing, used by your booking engine to decide who fits and what they pay.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Base occupancy | Adults included in the nightly rate. Defaults to 2. |
| Max occupancy | Total adults allowed, including those covered by base occupancy. |
| Extra guest surcharge | Nightly charge per adult above base occupancy, up to max. Booking engine only — see the warning below. |
| Children occupancy | How many children the category can take. |
| Infants occupancy | How many infants the category can take. |
| Sync with Channel Manager | Pushes this category's availability and rates to connected OTAs. Locked once the channel manager is live — see Channel manager. |
How the occupancy fields work together
A category with base occupancy 2, max occupancy 4 and a surcharge of
500 sells at the nightly rate for two adults, and adds 500 per night for
each of the third and fourth. A fifth adult cannot book it at all.
The surcharge is added by the booking engine only
A guest booking three adults online is charged the extra 500 a night. The same booking typed in at the front desk is not — your staff see the plain nightly rate and have to add the surcharge themselves, as an add-on or a price change on the booking.
So the field is not a house rule Zitlin enforces everywhere. If most of your business is walk-in or phone, tell your reception what to charge, or build the extra guest into the category rate instead.
The surcharge is also added after any rate plan, so a discount plan does not reduce it.
3. Units or rooms¶
Settings → Property → Units or Rooms
The physical rooms. Each one belongs to a category.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Accommodation Unit Name | What your staff calls it — 101, C44, Apt 1, House 3. Commas are not allowed. |
| Category | Which category it belongs to. |
| Room condition or status | Its current housekeeping state. |
Adding a lot of rooms
Use the bulk option offered at the top of the form. Enter the names comma
separated — 101, 102, 103 — pick a category, and Zitlin creates them all
at once.
Linked units¶
For properties where one space can be sold two ways — a bedroom that is also part of a whole apartment.
Linking is mutual: booking the unit blocks everything linked to it, and booking any of those blocks this one. That is what stops you selling the apartment and one of its bedrooms for the same night.
4. Add-ons¶
Settings → Property → Add Ons
Extras you charge for on top of the room — airport pickup, extra bed, laundry.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | What appears on the folio and invoice. |
| Default price | Follows the same (including tax) / (excluding tax) rule as room rates. |
| Tax | Which tax applies. |
Next¶
Your property can now take bookings at its usual rates. To charge differently by season, weekday, or guest type, carry on to Pricing.
The fourth tab, Restrictions, sets date-range rules on when a category can be booked — minimum and maximum length of stay, closed to arrival, closed to departure, and stop sell. A restriction can name one category or apply to the whole property.
Restrictions do not stop your own staff
They are enforced on your booking engine and pushed to connected OTAs. Front desk bookings ignore them by design, so reception can always take a one-night stay inside a two-night minimum. Stop sell goes further and only ever reaches the OTAs — your own booking engine keeps selling.
Where two restrictions cover the same night, the most restrictive rule wins.
Restrictions are documented in full with the Channel manager.
Common questions¶
Should I create a category for each floor or view?
Only if they sell at a different price or have different amenities. A category is a group of rooms you are happy to treat as interchangeable when a guest books. If a guest would not care which one they get, one category is enough.
I changed a category's nightly rate — what happens to existing bookings?
Nothing. Bookings already taken keep the rate they were made at. The new rate applies to bookings made from now on.
Can I delete a category that has rooms in it?
Move the rooms to another category first. Deleted categories still appear struck through when editing a room, so older bookings stay readable.
A tax I need is not in the list
Add it under Settings → More → Taxes. A tax can carry several components, each with its own name and rate, so a combined levy still prints as separate lines on the invoice.