Home / Features / Front Desk & Reservations
Zotaki Platform · Front DeskFront Desk & Reservations
One booking chart holding every reservation — direct, OTA, phone, agent and walk-in. Drag a booking to move a room, check a guest in with one click, and work from a folio that always adds up right through to the GST invoice.
Why this matters
The front desk is where every mistake becomes visible
A double booking, an advance nobody recorded, a discount somebody gave last week, a company that was supposed to be billed directly — none of these start at reception. They all surface there, usually with a guest standing on the other side of the counter.
The fix is not a faster receptionist. It is one screen where the booking, the room, the money and the guest are the same record, so there is nothing to reconcile between them.
- Two guests sent to the same room on a full night
- An advance paid online, invisible at checkout
- Company bookings billed to the guest by mistake
- A tariff argument nobody can settle from records
The booking chart
Everything on one grid, and everything draggable
Rooms down the side, dates across the top, every reservation as a bar you can pick up and move. Your receptionist learns it in an afternoon because it looks like the register they already keep.
Colour by source
Direct, OTA, corporate and blocked rooms are visually distinct, so you see your channel mix without opening a report.
Drag to move or extend
Change a room or stretch a stay by dragging. The folio, housekeeping status and pending charges follow the guest.
OTA bookings land here
Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, Agoda and Goibibo arrive through the channel manager — nobody retypes a reservation.
Walk-ins in seconds
See what is free tonight, quote a rate, take the guest in. No booking reference needed first.
Blocks and holds
Take a room out for repair or hold it for a group, and it disappears from what you and your OTAs can sell.
Overbooking guard
Inventory is one shared pool. You cannot sell the same room twice unless you deliberately allow overbooking.
A stay, start to finish
Five moments your desk actually handles
Booking taken
From any source. Advance recorded, confirmation sent on WhatsApp or email.
During the stay
Restaurant, laundry, minibar and spa post to the folio as they happen.
Checkout
Split the bill if needed, settle by any mode, print a compliant GST invoice.
Night audit
Rent and taxes posted, date rolled, day-end position produced.
The folio
Every charge in the building lands in one place
Room rent, the restaurant bill, laundry, the airport pickup, a spa treatment, the advance paid three weeks ago — all on one running account. Nothing is remembered on a slip of paper and added at the end.
- Charges post from the POS and other outlets automatically
- Split between a company and the guest, or between guests
- Advances and deposits carried through to the balance
- Edits and discounts logged with user and reason
Payment partners
Take payment the way your guests want to pay
Payment links, UPI and card machines from the payment partners Zotaki works with, with every payment posted against the right folio.
Payments
Payments
Payments
Reservations
The awkward bookings, handled properly
Any system can take one guest for two nights. These are the ones that decide whether your team fights the software.
Groups & blocks
Hold a set of rooms under one group, load a rooming list, and release unsold rooms on a cut-off date.
Corporate & agent accounts
Negotiated rates, bill-to-company, credit limits and a city ledger showing who owes you what.
Rate plans & seasons
EP, CP, MAP and AP, weekday and weekend, season and off-season — priced once and applied automatically.
Extra pax & children
Extra bed, child with and without a bed, and meal-plan pricing per head rather than a flat guess.
No-shows & cancellations
Policy-driven retention or refund, applied consistently instead of decided at the counter.
Advances & payment links
Send a link through Razorpay or PhonePe; the payment posts itself against the booking.
Repeat guests recognised
History, preferences and last rate appear as you open the booking. See guest CRM.
Only sell what is ready
The desk sees live housekeeping status, so nobody hands a key to a dirty room.
Run your own numbers
What is one point of occupancy worth to you?
Most of what a front desk system gives back is small and constant — a walk-in you could quote instantly, a room you did not double-sell, a rate you did not discount out of habit. This is the scale those decisions operate at.
What those extra points are worth, a year
₹26,06,100
at your current rate, before any increase in tariff.
- RevPAR today
- ₹2,176
- Room revenue a month
- ₹27,41,760
- Extra room nights a month
- 63
- Room revenue a year
- ₹3,33,58,080
No software adds occupancy on its own — that comes from your direct bookings, your OTA presence and your rates. What a front desk system does is stop you losing the occupancy you already earned.
Control
The owner's questions have answers
Who gave that discount. Why was that bill cancelled. What was the tariff on the fourteenth. Which advances are still unadjusted. These are the questions that make a hotelier distrust their own records — and every one of them is just a log entry.
- Supervisor approval on rate override, discount and cancellation
- Every folio edit logged with user, time and reason
- Shift-wise cash handover with opening and closing position
- Night audit closes the day and cannot be quietly reopened
Reporting
The six reports a hotelier opens every morning
Day-end positionOccupancy, ADR, RevPAR, revenue and cash by mode.Arrivals & departuresWho is coming, who is leaving, what is unsettled.In-house guestsEvery occupied room with balance and expected departure.Source mixDirect against each OTA, and what commission cost you.
City ledgerWhich company owes what, and for how long.
Pace & forecastRooms already sold for the next thirty days against last year.See it in action
Watch the front desk at work
Check-in, a new reservation from booking to room, and the reservation dashboard — in Hindi or English.
Worth saying plainly
Three things to be realistic about
Set your rate plans properly once
If your team books everything on a typed "special" rate, no report will tell you anything true. One careful session at setup decides the value of every number afterwards.
The night audit must actually run
Skip it for a week and your dates, revenue and taxes drift. It takes a couple of minutes; the discipline is the point.
Controls only work if you use them
Giving every user the manager password defeats approvals entirely. Decide who can override a rate before you go live, not after the first argument.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a check-in take?
Under a minute for a reservation that already has guest details. Pick the booking off the chart, assign a room, confirm the rate and the folio opens. If the guest completed self check-in, it is a review and a key handover.
Can I drag a booking to a different room?
Yes — mid-stay or before arrival. The folio, housekeeping status and pending charges follow the guest to the new room.
Does it handle group and corporate bookings?
Yes. Block rooms under one group, load a rooming list, split between a company master account and individual folios, and release unsold rooms on a cut-off date.
Where do OTA bookings appear?
On the same chart. They arrive through the channel manager and land as reservations without anybody retyping them.
Can one folio be split across payers?
Yes. Room and tax to a company, extras and F&B to the guest, or any split you choose — each printing as its own GST invoice.
Does it produce a proper GST invoice?
Yes, with the correct slab by tariff, your GSTIN, SAC codes and the CGST/SGST or IGST split by state of supply. See GST billing.
What is the night audit for?
It closes the day — posts room rent and taxes for every occupied room, rolls the date forward, flags no-shows and unsettled folios, and produces the day-end position.
How are advances and deposits handled?
Recorded against the booking before arrival and carried into the folio, so the balance at checkout is the real balance. Payment links post automatically.
Can I stop staff giving unauthorised discounts?
Yes. Rate overrides, discounts, cancellations and folio edits can each require a supervisor login, and every one is logged with user, time, amount and reason.
Does it work with no dedicated receptionist?
Yes. Small properties often run it from a phone or tablet and pair it with self check-in, so registration happens before anyone arrives.
See your own property on the chart
Thirty minutes. We load your room types and tariffs, then run a booking from enquiry to GST invoice — including a room move, a split folio and a night audit — so you can judge it against how your desk actually works.