Hotels, lodges and guest houses

A hotel lets rooms by the night. A guest books, arrives, stays and pays for the room and everything else before they leave. In Kila each stay has a folio, the guest’s bill, which collects it all: the room nights, the meals and drinks from the restaurant and bar, the extras and the payments.

How Kila works for a hotel

• The main screen is the front desk. Hotel › Front desk shows today’s arrivals and departures, the guests in the house, the rooms ready, and the requests and wake-up calls. Hotel › Room grid shows every room night by night. See How the front desk and the room grid work.
• Your day revolves around the stay. Each reservation has a number, such as RES-000170, a room type, a rate plan and its dates. At check-in it gets a room and its line in the guest register, and its folio collects every charge and payment until check-out.
• The night audit closes the hotel day. It posts the night’s rooms to the folios, turns the guests who did not come into no-shows and starts the next hotel day.
• The words Kila uses: guest for customer, stay for sale, folio for receipt and property for branch.

Kila runs these kinds of business as hotels:

• Hotel or lodgingFood safety rules

A day in the hotel

1. Reservations come by phone, email and walk-in, from your own booking page and from the booking sites: Take a reservation, Take bookings on your booking page and Connect booking sites and channel managers. A deposit holds the room: Take a deposit.
2. Housekeeping cleans and inspects the rooms for the day’s arrivals: Run housekeeping from the board.
3. Arrivals. The desk gives each guest a room, fills in the guest register and, where the door locks are connected, sends the door code: Check a guest in and Set up door locks and ID checks.
4. During the stay. Extras and payments go on the folio: Post charges and take payments on the folio. The restaurant and bar charge meals and drinks to the room: Charge a restaurant or bar bill to a room. Guests change rooms or stay longer: Move or extend a stay.
5. Departures. The guest pays what is theirs, a company’s share goes on its account, and any door keys stop working: Check a guest out.
6. The night audit closes the day: Run the night audit.
7. Watch the business. The owner’s home page shows last night’s occupancy and the month to date (1), today at the front desk (2), and what tonight’s night audit still has to check (3).

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The home page’s cards

Kila arranges a hotel owner’s home page with these cards. Each shows when its feature is on and your role may see it:

• Last night and the month to date
• Today at the front desk
• My rooms today
• My work orders
• Tonight’s night audit
• Occupancy tonight; arrivals and departures
• Rooms by status
• Revenue today: rooms, food and drink, other
• Open folios and company accounts owed
• Next 30 nights on the books
• Housekeeping and maintenance today
• Payments waiting for confirmation
• Approvals and reviews waiting
• Licences, permits and returns due

Who does what

Role	What Kila says it is for
Owner	Full access to the business, including billing.
General manager	Runs operations across every branch.
Front office manager	Runs the front desk: agrees rates, takes rooms out of order, runs the night audit, reviews shifts and the hotel reports. No settings.
Front office	Books, assigns rooms, checks guests in and out, posts extras and takes payments on their own shift. No rate set-up, no rates of their own.
Reservations	Takes and changes reservations, groups and rooming lists, and company bookings; quotes. The front desk assigns rooms; no payments.
Night auditor	Runs the night audit, the desk at night and the shift review; prints the audit pack. No settings or rate set-up.
Executive housekeeper	Assigns and inspects rooms, takes rooms out of order, raises and follows up faults, counts linen.
Room attendant	Sees their rooms to clean on their phone and marks them done, posts the minibar, logs lost property and reports faults. No folios or money.
Maintenance technician	Takes and completes work orders for faults in rooms and the building, and puts rooms back in order. No folios or money.
Events coordinator	Books conferences and events, keeps the function diary and banquet event orders, quotes and invoices organisers; books delegates’ rooms.
Credit controller	Company accounts (city ledger): statements, ageing, collections, agent commission and the levy returns. No hire purchase.
Food and drink cashier	Sells and settles bills at the restaurant or bar on their own shift.
Accountant	Keeps the books, reconciles and pays.
Storekeeper	Receives, moves and counts stock.

A hotel has Kila’s standard roles plus the hotel’s own, from Front office to Food and drink cashier above. The owner gives each person their roles under Users and roles.

Tasks for hotels

Besides the tasks above, a hotel’s menu has a Hotel section with these:

• Availability and rates: “Rooms free and the price a night on a plan. Pick the nights on a row to book them.”
• Log book: “The handover between shifts, and guests’ requests until they are done.”
• Groups and allotments: “Rooms held for groups, conferences and tour operators until their cut-off, and their rooming lists.”
• Conferences and events: “The function diary, banquet event orders and organisers’ invoices.”
• Guest profiles: “Stays, spend, preferences, VIPs and guests not to book.”
• Company accounts: “Companies, organisers and agents on account: what they owe by age, folios not yet invoiced, commission.”
• Guest register: “Every check-in with the details the law asks for, to print for an inspection.”
• Hotel settings (for the owner): “How the front desk works: sources, rate plans, deposits, the night audit, housekeeping, messages and more.”

Not available yet

Some outside connections are not live yet. On a live Kila, door locks work only with a lock system connected and live, and the desk checks IDs by sight until the national register check is connected; a door code sent by SMS or WhatsApp does not reach the guest yet, as SMS and WhatsApp are in test mode; a booking site’s test mode takes your rates but makes no bookings until the connection is live; eTIMS runs in test mode. On Kila’s demo site, Kila’s own simulators play the locks, the register check and the booking sites. Each page says what works today.

Set up a hotel

Kila’s set-up list for a new hotel, in order. Kila ticks each step off from what you record:

1. Business details, KRA PIN and TRA licence
2. Property, room types, rooms and rates
3. Rate plans, meal plans, deposits, levies and the night audit
4. Outlets (restaurant, bar) on Food & drink service
5. Staff and roles: front office, reservations, housekeeping, night audit
6. M-Pesa till or paybill
7. Booking page and channel calendars (OTAs)
8. First reservation and check-in

Your rooms, their types, rates and seasons are under Hotel › Rooms and rates: Set up rooms, rates and seasons.

Tip

The owner finds the list under Administration › Setup until every step is done. Once it is, the item leaves the menu, and the page stays open to come back to.

Reports that matter here

Hotel › Hotel reports is the hotel’s own: Occupancy and rates (1), Revenue by department, Forecast, the Night audit pack and the Levy return, such as the Tourism levy 2%. Occupancy and rates also gives the Bed-nights by nationality: “For the tourism statistics return: each guest (adults and children) each night.”

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The standard reports are under Money › Reports. For a hotel, start with these:

Report	What Kila says it shows
Payment method summary	Cash, M-Pesa, card and credit received, and refunds paid out.
Cashier shift reconciliation	Every shift: expected cash, counted cash and the variance.
Customer debt ageing	What customers owe on account, by how long it has been due.
Sales by product or service	What sells: quantity, revenue and cost for every product and service.

Common questions

Why will Kila not check a guest into a room? The room has not been cleaned yet. Choose a clean room, or ask housekeeping: Check a guest in.

Why is the room not on the folio yet? The night audit posts each night’s room to the folio, so a guest who arrived today has nothing on it until then. See Run the night audit.

Can the restaurant put a meal on a guest’s bill? Yes, from the restaurant or bar till: Charge a restaurant or bar bill to a room.

Where does a company’s share of the bill go? On the company’s account at check-out, to collect later: Check a guest out.

Try it in the demo

Naivasha Lakeside Lodge runs as a hotel, with made-up data: a lodge on the lake with garden rooms, lake-view rooms, family cottages and suites, a restaurant and a bar. The link fills in the person’s email: add the demo password the Kila team gave you.

• Naivasha Lakeside LodgeHotel and lodgeSign in as Samuel Kimani (owner) (opens in a new tab)