Manual bookings: creating them, changing their dates and early departures
By GuestChat Team ·
Not every booking comes through a booking site. The repeat guest who calls you, the friend staying for a week, the company that emails you. If those stays live in a notebook, sooner or later a booking site sells the same night. Manual bookings exist so everything is on the same calendar.
Creating one
In the Calendar, Create manual booking. You pick check-in and check-out with two clicks, and fill in:
- Guest name, which is the only required field.
- Email and phone, optional but useful.
- Number of guests and total price, also optional.
When you create it, those nights are blocked on all your channels. In the grid it shows up as created manually on the platform.
The dashboard won't let you get the big things wrong: if the dates overlap another booking, it tells you and doesn't create it. It also won't allow a check-in in the past or a check-out on the same day as check-in, because bookings are made by the night.
If the guest has to pay
Tick The guest has to pay and they get a payment link. You need your Stripe account connected; if it isn't, the form itself warns you before creating the booking. We cover it fully in the article about direct bookings.
Changing the dates
Click the booking and then Edit booking. Changing the dates frees the old nights and blocks the new ones on all channels, in a single step. If the new ones overlap another booking, it won't let you.
Early departure
A guest who leaves early is not a cancellation: they slept the nights they slept. If you canceled the whole booking, the record would say the stay never happened, and in your reports that booking would be worth zero.
That is why there is Early departure (checks out today): the booking stays confirmed with fewer nights, and the future ones are freed up to be sold again. It only appears if the guest has already slept at least one night; if they arrive today and don't stay, that really is a cancellation.
Canceling
The button says exactly what is going to happen: Cancel booking & free as many nights as are left. On a booking that is already in the past, nothing is reopened, and the button says that too.
A booking that has already ended can't be edited, because its nights are already over.
What about Airbnb or Booking bookings?
Those can't be edited or canceled from here. The booking site is in charge of their status: if we marked one as canceled here, the booking site would still treat it as active and we would free its nights to be sold again. The dashboard tells you where to really cancel it.
Good habits
- Create the booking the moment you agree on it, not at the end of the day.
- Write down at least an email: it lets you send them the payment link or get in touch with them.
- For personal use with no specific guest, closing the stretch is cleaner. If you want to see who is staying, a manual booking with no charge.
- Review All bookings at the end of the month: manual bookings appear alongside the rest, with their payment status.
Common mistakes
- Canceling instead of using early departure, and watching the month's income drop for no reason.
- Creating the booking without checking the number of guests, and charging the extra wrong.
- Entering it on the booking site as a block instead of here: the other booking sites keep selling.