Check-in and check-out

Why	Mark that a guest has arrived and received a room, then close the stay at departure and take the balance due.
Who	Administrators and front desk staff who welcome and see off guests.
What you’ll get	A guest checked into a specific room with a couple of confirmations; at departure the operation is closed, the amount due is visible and recorded on the booking.
Limitations	Check-in and check-out are performed separately for each room of a booking. Rooms and amounts in the examples are demo data. Taking payments is covered in Record a guest payment.

A day at the front desk is two queues: who is checking in today and who is leaving. HotelsCalendar keeps both in sight — with the day tiles and the presets of the “Bookings” list — and boils the two operations down to two buttons: “Check in” and “Check out”.

Check-in and check-out are operations on a room, not booking statuses. Each can be undone just as easily as performed: every one has its own undo button.

If a guest is standing at the desk without a booking, that is a separate scenario — a walk-in; this article covers scheduled check-ins and check-outs.

The day’s arrivals and departures: where to see them

• The dashboard. The “Arrivals today” and “Departures today” cards show how many rooms are expected and how many are already done; they are counted from the hotel’s live data. The “Open bookings” button leads straight to the filtered list.
• The Planner. Above the grid sit the “Arrivals”, “Departures”, “In-house” and “Balance due” tiles: the day’s queues and money stay in view while you work with the grid. “Arrivals” and “Departures” are who is coming and leaving today, “In-house” is who is staying right now, and “Balance due” is what guests still owe for this day. In day view, an “Arrivals / Departures” queue panel for today with quick actions sits right there.
• The “Bookings” list. The presets “All / Arrivals today / Departures today / Month / Archive” build the queue you need in one click; the “Cards / Compact” view changes the density of the list.

Result: the day’s two queues — arrivals and departures — are visible from any screen, and each is one step away from the operation itself.

Check a guest in

1. Open “Bookings” and switch on the “Arrivals today” preset — the list will keep only bookings arriving on this date.
2. Press “Check in” in the row of the booking.

If you work from the booking card — the “Rooms and guests” tab: every guest in the room block has their own “Check in” and “Check out” buttons, so guests can be checked in one by one. The same quick actions sit in the day’s queue panel on the Planner.

3. Confirm the operation: “Check into room 402?” → “Save”.

Result: the guest is marked as checked into their room — the “Actual check-in” mark appears in the room block, and the booking bar on the Planner carries the “Checked in” icon. If a booking covers several rooms, the operation is performed for each of them separately. Changed your mind — undo the check-in with the “Undo check-in” button.

Check a guest out and take the payment

1. In the “Bookings” list, switch on the “Departures today” preset — or simply open the booking card.
2. Check the amount due: the “Finances” block in the card header shows the “Total”, what has been “Paid” and the “Balance due” — including accommodation and extra services; the “Balance due” tile on the Planner collects these amounts for the day.
3. Take the payment at the desk and record it on the booking — the “Payments” tab (the step-by-step routine is in Record a guest payment). If not the whole party is leaving, check guests out one by one, with the buttons in the room block.
4. Press “Check out” in the row or in the card and confirm: “Check out of room 402?” → “Save”. A “Check-out completed” notification appears.

The row actions will change to “Undo check-in | Undo check-out” — both operations can still be rolled back.

Result: the stay is closed — the “Actual check-out” mark appears in the room block, and the booking bar carries the “Checked out” icon. The operation can be undone with the “Undo check-out” button — for example, if the guest decides to stay after all.

Late departure: the “Late Check-out” service

If a guest asks to stay in the room until 3:00 PM on the departure day, add the Late Check-out catalog service to the booking — it is a one-off service sold per booking:

1. There is no early check-in service in the catalog. Open the booking card, the “Extras” tab, the “Add service” button.
2. Pick “Late Check-out”, set the date and the quantity — the price is filled in from the catalog.
3. Press “Save”: the service appears in the tab’s table with its price and cost, and the amount lands straight in the card’s “Balance due” and in the “Balance due” tile.

Result: the service is attached to the booking, and at departure all that is left is to take the payment — the steps above. If the guest changes their mind, the service can be removed on the same tab, from the service’s row.

The guest form from a passport scan

You don’t have to type the registration form by hand — the guest profile is filled in from a passport scan:

1. Open the guest profile: from a booking — the “Rooms and guests” tab, the “Edit guest” button.
2. Scan the guest’s passport — the system recognizes the document and fills the details into the form.
3. Review the recognized fields and save.

If the guest has stayed with you before, find them in the “Guests” section by searching their last name, first name, or phone. The guest profile keeps contact details, booking history, and files — so next time the guest arrives, the form is already at hand.

Result: the form is filled in without manual typing, and the guest’s name and documents match the passport.

When it doesn’t work

• The room is already taken. Two bookings have been sold on it. The conflict is resolved by moving one of the bookings to a free room — the procedure is in the article If a double booking appears.
• The guest never arrived. Open the booking card and change the status through the menu of the “Confirmed ▾” button — pick “No-show”. This status means the guest never checked in. The same menu holds “Tentative”, “Option”, “Offer” and “Canceled”; the full breakdown of statuses is in Booking statuses: the six states.

See also

• Prepare guests for arrival: companions and documents — the guest fills in the registration card and uploads documents before check-in.

• Walk-in guest: from front desk to the key — when a guest checks in without a prior booking.

• If a double booking appears — what to do when a room has been sold twice.

• Inside the booking card — where payments, guests, the rate plan, and services live on a booking.