How the front desk and the room grid work

A hotel’s day turns on its stays: who arrives, who is in the house, who leaves and what each still owes. Front desk shows today’s stays as lists to work through; Room grid shows the same stays as bars across the nights, so you see which rooms are free. Tap a guest anywhere to open their folio, the stay’s bill.

1. Reserved. A reservation holds a room type for the dates. The room itself can be given now or at check-in. A provisional booking holds the rooms until a date for the guest, agent or company to confirm.
2. In house. At check-in the desk fills in the guest register and gives the room. Where the hotel’s door locks are connected, Kila makes the guest’s door code.
3. The folio fills. The night audit posts each night’s room charge. Extras from the desk and bills charged from the restaurant or bar go on it too; payments and deposits come off it.
4. Checked out. The guest pays what is left, a company’s part goes on its account, and the room goes for cleaning. A reservation that never arrives is cancelled or marked a no-show instead.

The front desk

Hotel › Front desk is the receptionist’s first screen. Under the title Kila names the hotel day, such as Hotel day Friday 30 October. Last night audit: 29 Oct. The hotel day changes at the night audit’s time (03:00 at the lodge), not at midnight, so a guest who arrives at 01:00 still belongs to the day before.

Zoom

1. Walk-in books a room for tonight and opens the check-in at once; New reservation books any dates. Both are at the top of every hotel page.
2. Five counts: Arrivals (and how many rooms are not ready), Departures, In the house (with tonight’s occupancy), Rooms ready and Requests due. On a phone, the lists below them sit under tabs.
3. Arrivals lists each guest due today with their room or room type, the nights, the plan and any Deposit … to take. Each shows whether the room is ready, such as Inspected, or No room yet when none is given. Check in is on the row. Departures lists who leaves today and what each still owes.
4. Requests and wake-up calls due today, and the Log book: the handover between shifts, “what happened, what is promised, what is pending”.

Below them, In the house lists every room taken tonight with the guest, their company, the day they leave, their door key where the hotel’s door locks are connected, and what they have To pay.

Above the counts:

• Find a guest, room, phone or reservation (/) opens a stay from anywhere in the list.
• Print gives the Registration cards for today’s arrivals or Registration cards for tomorrow, the Arrivals list, the Departures list and In the house (fire list).
• Message tomorrow’s arrivals sends tomorrow’s guests the hotel’s pre-arrival message.
• The strip with your shift number is your desk shift: money you take at the desk counts on it. Count and close at the end of your shift.

The room grid

Hotel › Room grid shows the rooms down the side and the nights across, starting from last night. Tonight is shaded.

Zoom

1. Tonight brings the grid back to tonight. The arrows move it a week at a time, and 7 nights to 30 nights set how far it reaches.
2. Each bar’s colour says what it is: Reserved, Provisional (hatched), In house or Checked out. A bar with a dashed edge belongs to a group, and a guest due out is outlined. On each room type’s line, a number for each night says how many rooms of that type are still to sell; it turns red at none.
3. Tap a bar to open the folio, or tap an empty night to book that room from that night. Drag a bar to another room, or a reservation to other dates; drag its end to change the departure. Kila asks before it changes anything: see Move or extend a stay.

Reservations without a room yet are listed under the grid, with their dates.

Keyboard shortcuts

On the hotel pages, one key does the common jobs. Shortcuts work when you are not typing in a field.

Key	Opens
N	New reservation
W	Walk-in
/	Find a guest, room or reservation
T	Front desk today
G	Room grid
A	Availability and rates
R	Reservations
H	Housekeeping
?	These shortcuts

Good to know

Kila uses a hotel’s own words on these screens: a customer is a guest, the bill is the folio, and the branch is the property. Payments taken at the desk count on the receptionist’s own shift, so the front desk drawer balances like any till.

Related

• Take a reservation: book a room for later dates.
• Check a guest in: the register, the room and the key.
• The folio: charges and payments: what the guest owes and how they pay.
• Front office: the receptionist’s day.