Booking Lifecycle

Every reservation in Argonautas follows a clear lifecycle from the moment it is created to the guest's departure. This guide explains each stage, how bookings are created, and how to manage them day to day.

Overview

Bookings are the core object in Argonautas. They can arrive automatically from OTA channels (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO) or be created manually by your team for direct reservations. Regardless of origin, every booking passes through the same set of statuses and is managed from the same interface.

Booking Statuses

Each booking carries a status that reflects where it is in the lifecycle. The status appears as a colored indicator throughout the application.

Status	Color	Meaning
Confirmed	Teal	The reservation is locked in and the property is blocked for those dates.
Pending	Yellow	The booking has been received but has not yet been confirmed, typically awaiting payment or manual review.
On Hold	Yellow	The dates are temporarily held (for example, during a quote or payment process).
Awaiting Partner	Yellow	A booking on a partner property that the partner has not confirmed yet.
Checked In	Teal	The guest has arrived and is currently staying at the property.
Checked Out	Gray	The guest has departed. The booking is now part of your historical records.
Cancelled	Magenta	The reservation was cancelled before the guest arrived.
No Show	Magenta	The guest never arrived.
Partner Declined	Magenta	The partner turned down a booking on their property.

See Booking Statuses Explained for how a booking moves from one status to another.

The Bookings list view organizes these statuses into tabs:

• Active Bookings -- Shows confirmed, pending, on-hold, and checked-in bookings (excludes completed and cancelled). This is the default tab.
• Confirmed -- Only confirmed bookings.
• Pending -- Only pending bookings.
• In House -- Guests currently staying: confirmed or checked-in bookings whose stay spans today (arrival on or before today, departure on or after today). Use this tab to see exactly who is on property right now.
• Cancelled -- Only cancelled bookings.
• Completed -- Bookings where the guest has checked out.

The Active and Confirmed tabs are date-aware: they only show stays whose departure is today or later. A booking whose departure has already passed drops out of Active and into Completed even if its status was never changed to checked-out. This keeps the Active tab a true "what's still ahead" list, and is what stops imported historical stays (often confirmed, with a checkout years in the past) from flooding it.

To see bookings by their raw status regardless of date, pick a status in the All Statuses filter instead of using a tab. That gives an unbounded, all-dates view of that status, and no tab is highlighted while it applies.

Each tab displays a count badge so you can see at a glance how many bookings fall into each category. The counts use the same date-aware buckets as the tabs, so a badge always matches what clicking the tab shows.

Creating a Manual Booking

To create a booking directly (for phone, email, or walk-in reservations):

1. Open Bookings and click New Booking. The Create New Booking page opens.

2. Choose a booking type under Booking Type:

   • Guest Booking -- A standard reservation with guest details, pricing, and confirmation emails.
   • Owner Stay -- Blocks dates for the owner or their family. No pricing is calculated.
   • Maintenance Block -- Blocks dates for cleaning, repairs, or other work. No pricing is calculated.

3. Select a property. The list is grouped under Direct, Owner, and Partners.

4. Under Stay Details, set the Check-in / Check-out dates. For guest bookings you can also set an Arrival Time (optional).

5. Enter the number of guests: adults, children (ages 2-17), and infants (under 2).

6. Fill in Guest Information (guest bookings only): country, first name, last name, email, and phone. Click Add Address to add a mailing address. For owner stays and maintenance blocks you get a notes field instead.

7. Review the price in the Booking Summary panel on the right. As soon as you pick a property and dates, it shows the property, the dates and nights, the guests, and a live Price Breakdown:

   • Accommodation (nightly rate times the number of nights)
   • Each fee (cleaning, service, and so on), including any property-specific fees that apply to the guest count, and taxes
   • Total
   • Guest pays by -- the total the guest pays with each payment method the property accepts, processing fee included. Pick the method you agreed with the guest, so the confirmation email quotes that exact figure.

   You can settle the price here before you create the booking: Add Charge, Add Credit, or Set total (enter the all-in total and the difference is recorded as a labelled adjustment). Every figure is recalculated by the server after each change. Creating the booking emails the guest a confirmation with whatever total is shown at that moment.

   This form does not offer add-ons. Guests add them on your booking website or from their guest portal.

8. Add Booking Details (optional): Booking Source (from your Booking Sources list: Direct Booking, Phone, Email, a custom source, and so on), an External Reference (an OTA or other confirmation code), an Agency (shown when you have agencies set up; it splits the management commission), and Internal Notes visible only to staff. If you are marked Earns commission, you are credited as the booking's Reservations Agent automatically. You can change the agent afterwards from the booking detail view.

9. Click Create Booking (or Block for Owner / Block for Maintenance for the other types) at the bottom of the summary panel. Owner and maintenance blocks block the dates on all connected channels.

If the dates break a stay rule or sit on a manual block, an Availability rules dialog explains why and, where allowed, offers Book anyway or Clear block & book. See Overriding Availability Rules.

Bookings Made on Your Booking Website

When your booking website is set up for online checkout (Argonautas support turns this on for your website), a guest who books and pays online creates a Pending booking that holds the dates while they pay. If your website is your own (WordPress or custom-built) and connected to Argonautas, Argonautas support can also turn on instant reservations: your site reserves the stay and sends the guest to a secure Argonautas checkout page to pay. Bookings you or your team create in the admin app are not affected by any of the following.

• The property needs a way to take payment. If no enabled payment connector covers the property, your website can't take an online booking for it: nothing is booked, and the website is told "Online booking is not available for this property. Please send a request.", so it can offer the guest a booking request instead. To take online bookings, add a connector under Settings > Payment Providers that covers the property (All properties (default), or the property ticked under Specific properties) and make sure Enable this connector for guest payments is on. See Payment Connectors. Instant reservations are stricter, because the guest pays on the Argonautas checkout page: the property needs a PowerTranz or PayPal connector, and something must be payable at booking (a 0% deposit with the whole balance due later books by request). Partner properties on the Partner Collects payment flow always book by request.
• The balance is charged automatically only with the guest's consent. Accepting your terms is not enough. A website guest's saved card is charged for the balance on its due date only if they separately agreed to that at checkout (the booking's Terms acceptance card shows it as Balance auto-charge authorized). Otherwise they are emailed a payment link for the balance instead. Bookings your team enters keep the usual automatic charging.
• The guest can back out before paying. If they go back from the payment step before any money moves, the booking is cancelled at once and the dates are freed (including on your OTA channels), so they can rebook straight away. A guest who had already been shown bank-transfer instructions gets a short note that no transfer is needed.
• Unpaid bookings clear themselves. A website booking with no payment is cancelled automatically 30 minutes after it was created (card or PayPal), or 36 hours after the guest chose bank transfer.
• Nobody is told until money arrives. The guest's confirmation email and the owner's new-booking notice are sent when the first payment is received, not when the booking is created. If the guest backs out, nobody is emailed. If the booking is cancelled automatically for non-payment, the guest gets one non-payment email and the owner hears nothing.
• A payment that arrives after cancellation is kept, not lost. If a payment lands on a booking that was already released or cancelled, it is recorded, the booking stays Cancelled, and the guest is not told their payment was received. The property's manager and your company's main email address get an ACTION NEEDED: payment on cancelled booking email. Check whether the dates are still free, then either reinstate the booking or refund the guest.

Payments stuck in processing

Occasionally a card payment starts but the processor never confirms whether it went through. After 24 hours, instead of marking it failed, Argonautas emails the property's manager and your company's main email address ACTION NEEDED: payment outcome unknown for booking ... with the payment reference. The system does not fail the payment or charge the card again on its own. Look the reference up in your payment provider's dashboard to see whether the card was charged, and resolve the payment before asking the guest to pay again.

How OTA Bookings Arrive

When a guest books through a connected OTA (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO), the reservation is automatically synced into Argonautas via the distribution network. These bookings:

• Appear in the Bookings list with a channel icon indicating the source.
• Have their status set based on what the OTA reports (typically Confirmed).
• Include the OTA confirmation code in the External Reference field.
• Pull guest contact details from the OTA where available.
• Have pricing populated from the OTA's booking data.

OTA bookings open in the same detail view as manual bookings. Their dates and guest counts are locked, because the channel owns them: change those on the OTA and the update flows in. Some fields, like guest contact info, may be limited by what the OTA shares.

OTA financial breakdown

For OTA bookings, the Price Breakdown card splits the totals so you can reconcile what the channel actually charged and paid out:

• Guest paid via {channel} -- accommodation (before IVA), the cleaning fee, IVA, any guest service fee or damage deposit the channel reported, and Total paid by guest.
• Your payout -- accommodation (before IVA), Less: Management commission at the property's rate, the channel's platform fee (the host-side fee the OTA keeps, which is separate from your commission), and the cleaning fee, which goes 100% to the owner with no commission.
• Owner net payout -- what the owner ultimately receives. Below it, IVA held for Hacienda and a line saying who collected the money (for example, "VRBO (collected by OTA, remitted to us)"). For most bookings the payout is calculated automatically. When an OTA settlement is unusual (a cancellation, partial refund, edited stay, or a fee the OTA hasn't finalized yet) the owner-net row reads Review required until you confirm the correct figure. See Settlement Review.

If the OTA later modifies a booking, the breakdown is preserved when the new revision doesn't include it. It isn't silently zeroed. Cancellation Fee entries received from the channel sync are intentionally excluded from the fees breakdown to avoid double-counting against payouts.

The Booking Detail View

Click any booking in the list to open its detail view. The header has Back to Bookings on the left and, on the right, Send Confirmation, Report No-Show (only for confirmed Booking.com and Expedia bookings), and Cancel Booking. Below the header the page has two columns. What people open a booking for, the price and the payment status, sits at the top of the right-hand column, with Quick Actions below it.

Main Column (Left)

• Booking Details -- The confirmation code, the property, and the status badge sit in the card's title. The card shows check-in and check-out, nights, guests, source, and Booked On. The check-in and check-out rows show the property's own configured times (for example, "After 3:00 PM" / "Before 11:00 AM"), so the window always matches that property rather than a fixed default. Click the pencil icon to edit the dates, guest counts, source, Referral (a free-text note about who referred the booking), Reservations Agent, Agency (when you have agencies), and Status. On OTA bookings, the dates, guest counts, and referral are locked and a banner tells you to edit them on the OTA portal. The source and status stay editable. People with view-only access to bookings (the Accounting role) see the card read-only.
• Guest Information -- The guest's name (with a Returning Guest badge for repeat guests), email, phone, and country. Click the pencil icon to edit them.
• Special Requests & Notes -- The guest's own requests under Guest Notes, and your team's Internal Notes as a signed list. Type a note and click Add. Internal notes are never shown to the guest.
• Terms acceptance -- On bookings made on your website: which terms version the guest accepted and when, and whether they authorized the balance to be charged automatically. Staff only. Keep it for chargeback disputes.
• Guest Communications -- A log of the emails and messages sent to and received from this guest about this booking.
• Commission credit -- Who earns the salesperson commission on this booking: the Reservations Agent at 100%, the company's default agent, or a split across several people (click Split credit; shares must total exactly 100%). After checkout it lists each person's payout and whether it is Unpaid or paid. Once any payout is paid, credit is locked. Shown when at least one person in your company is marked Earns commission. See Agent Commissions.

On a phone the cards stack in one column, and everything except Send Confirmation moves behind an Actions button in the header.

Sidebar (Right)

• Price Breakdown -- For direct bookings, the itemized price: accommodation, each fee from the rate quote (cleaning, service, pet, processing, and so on) on its own labelled line, taxes, and the total. Click the pencil icon to Add Charge, remove or adjust charges, Add Credit, or Set total. A credit can be an Amount or a Percentage of the accommodation (tax is adjusted proportionally either way) and cannot exceed the booking total. Changes are saved along with any other edits.
  • Add-ons and property-specific fees -- Each add-on the guest chose, on your booking website or later from their guest portal, appears as its own line labelled with the add-on's name. Each property-specific fee appears as its own line under the fee's name. Both count toward your management commission, and taxable ones are included in the IVA.
  • Guest pays -- Below the total, the amount the guest pays with each payment method that adds a processing fee, fee included. The fee depends on the method, so it is not part of the booking total. See Payment Processing Fees.
• OTA bookings show a read-only Price Breakdown instead: what the guest paid through the channel, then Your payout with the management commission, the channel's platform fee, and the Owner net payout (see OTA financial breakdown). Vrbo bookings paid in installments also show their payment schedule.
• Payment -- The payment status badge, amount paid, balance due, the card and provider used, and recent transactions. Click View Full Details to open the payment panel, where refunds and voids are done per transaction. See Refunding a Payment.
• Security Deposit -- The deposit hold and its status. See Security Deposits and Damage Claims.
• Quick Actions -- One-click actions:
  • Email Guest -- Opens a modal to compose and send an email to the guest.
  • Print Voucher -- Opens the guest's Booking Receipt PDF in a new tab, in your company's default language. It is safe to send to the guest: it shows only what the guest was charged and paid, never your commission, the owner's share, or bank settlement detail. For a direct booking it has two parts. Charges lists accommodation, each fee and add-on on its own line, IVA, the card processing fee, and the Total. Payments lists each installment with its Due Date, Amount, Card fee, Total, and Paid / Pending status, then Paid to date, Balance remaining, and the Payment Method. The card fee is charged per installment. When the balance will be charged to the guest's saved card, the receipt already includes the card fee that payment will carry, so its total is what the guest will actually pay, and it matches the invoice to the cent. For OTA bookings the receipt shows the channel's accommodation, cleaning fee, IVA, and guest service fee, marked "collected by the booking platform".
  • Download Invoice -- Downloads the booking statement PDF (document number INV-<confirmation code>). Choose the language (English, Español, Français, Português) in the Invoice Language dropdown next to the button. For direct bookings this is a reconciling three-part statement: Guest charges (accommodation, 13% IVA, and the "Processing fee"), Allocation (owner disbursement vs. the amount your company retains after management commission; when a travel agency originated the booking, the management commission is broken into the part retained by your company and the part paid to the agency), and Payments (each installment paid and the balance remaining). Both sides of the allocation foot to the same total, so the owner and manager figures always reconcile. When a direct booking was paid by card through BAC/PowerTranz, the statement also shows a Card settlement (BAC) block breaking down the bank's withholdings and commissions. This is informational bank-reconciliation detail that never changes the owner/manager split. OTA bookings download the simpler single-waterfall invoice.
  • Add Note -- Jumps to the internal notes box.
  • Record Payment -- Records a payment received outside the app (for example, a bank transfer). Enter the amount, method, and a reference. Shown to people who can send payment requests.
  • Send portal link -- Opens the Send Portal Link modal, which generates the guest's secure portal link on the spot and lets you choose how to deliver it: Copy link only (the default, which generates the link without sending it so you can paste it into any channel yourself), Email (sends it to the guest's address), or WhatsApp / SMS (delivers it to the guest's phone, falling back to SMS when WhatsApp is unavailable). Copy and WhatsApp / SMS work even for OTA guests who have no real email on file. The Email option is only available when the guest has a deliverable address.
  • Send Payment Link -- Sends the guest a link to pay the amount due now, when the booking has a payment link available.
  • Resend to partner, Void hold, Capture hold -- Shown only on bookings with a partner card hold.
• Vrbo lead (off-platform booking) -- On direct bookings, mark a guest who came from a Vrbo inquiry within 30 days so you can report it in your Vrbo Dashboard. The Vrbo fee you enter is deducted from the owner's payout and is not part of your commission.

Bookings imported from a PMS such as Hostfully show a notice at the top: "Managed in {pms}. Change its dates, price, guest notes or cancellation there. You can add internal notes here."

Modifying a Booking

To change a booking:

1. Open the booking.
2. Click the pencil icon on the card you want to change: Booking Details (dates, guest counts, source, status, agent), Guest Information, or Price Breakdown.
3. Make your changes. A bar reading "You have unsaved changes" appears at the bottom of the screen with Cancel and Save Changes.
4. Click Save Changes.

If you try to navigate away with unsaved changes, a confirmation dialog will ask whether you want to leave without saving.

Re-sending the confirmation email: After making changes, click Send Confirmation in the header to send the updated confirmation to the guest.

Internal notes are added from the Special Requests & Notes card and save straight away, without the bar.

Cancelling a Booking

To cancel a booking:

1. Open the booking detail view.
2. Click Cancel Booking (red button in the header).
3. A confirmation modal appears. Confirm to proceed.
4. The booking status changes to Cancelled and the dates are freed on the availability calendar.

The cancellation is sent to the booking's channel and the freed dates to all connected channels automatically. On OTA bookings, Cancelled is not offered in the status dropdown; use Cancel Booking so the channel is told.

If the guest is cancelling and you are returning money, you can refund and cancel in one step instead. See Refunding a Payment.

When a booking is cancelled, its financials are neutralized so it no longer counts toward live revenue or balances:

• The price-breakdown card is re-labelled Original booking economics and greyed out. It stays visible for the record, but is no longer treated as money owed.
• The outstanding balance collapses to zero and the payment badge reads Voided instead of showing a phantom amount due.
• For OTA bookings, the owner net payout reflects the real outcome of the cancellation rather than the original projected payout. When Airbnb confirms a full refund (nothing retained), the payout resolves automatically to $0.00. When the retained amount still needs a human decision, the booking is flagged for settlement review (see OTA Booking Modifications).

Refunding a Payment

Refunds are made per payment, from the booking's Payment card:

1. Click View Full Details.
2. In the Transaction ledger, click Refund on the payment you want to return. A payment that has already been fully refunded, or was voided, doesn't offer it.
3. The Process refund dialog fills in the amount still refundable on that payment. Change it for a partial refund, and enter a Reason (required).
4. For a stay payment, tick Also cancel this booking (frees the dates and stops any remaining payments) if the guest is cancelling. While it is unticked and the booking still has payments to collect, the dialog warns what it will still collect, for example "The booking stays confirmed: $1,353.74 due Jan 29 will still be collected."
5. Click Process refund.

The booking is cancelled only after the refund itself succeeds. If the refund fails, nothing is cancelled. If the refund goes through but the booking can't be cancelled, you see "Refund processed, but the booking was not cancelled" with the reason, and can cancel it separately with Cancel Booking.

A refund lowers what the guest owes. The refunded part of the stay is recorded as a credit on the Price Breakdown, labelled "Refund:" followed by your reason, so the booking total, IVA, and the owner's net all come down with it, and the guest is never asked to pay the refunded amount again. A partial refund comes off the stay first; the card processing fee is returned only when the whole payment is refunded. A refund only ever reverses the payment it was made on, never another payment on the same booking.

Void instead of refund. On the same day as a card payment, before the processor settles it, the ledger also offers Void payment, which cancels the payment instead of refunding it. Enter a reason and confirm. If the processor has already settled it, the void is rejected and you refund instead. A voided payment can't then be refunded, and a payment with a refund can't be voided.

Payment status follows the total. After money has been collected, the payment status is recalculated whenever the booking total changes: an added charge, a damage charge, an extension, a discount, or a refund. A paid booking whose total goes up shows Partially Paid again. One whose total drops below what was paid shows Overpaid, and the payment panel shows the difference as Credit Balance (owed to guest), with a Process refund button to return it.

The Bookings List View

Open Bookings from the sidebar. The header has Calendar (the availability calendar) and New Booking.

• Today at a glance -- Four chips under the title. Click a chip to filter the list to the bookings behind its number; click it again to clear it.
  • Arriving Today -- Confirmed or checked-in bookings whose arrival date is today.
  • Departing Today -- Confirmed or checked-in bookings whose departure date is today.
  • Payment Pending -- Current and upcoming stays that are unpaid or only partly paid.
  • Occupancy tonight -- The share of your properties with guests staying tonight. Clicking it opens the In House tab.
• Search -- Searches guest names, property names, and confirmation codes.
• Filters -- All Properties (grouped into direct and partner properties), All Statuses, and All Sources (only the sources you actually have bookings from). Dates opens from and to date pickers. More opens Needs review (bookings whose OTA settlement still needs a decision, see OTA Booking Modifications), Vrbo leads (shown if you take Vrbo bookings), and Clear Filters.
• Status tabs -- Active Bookings, Confirmed, Pending, In House, Cancelled, and Completed, each with a count. Every filter in force shows as a chip next to the tabs. Click the chip's x to remove it.
• View toggle -- Switch between cards and a table. The table has columns for confirmation code (#), status, property, guest, check-in, check-out, nights, source, total price, and payment status. The confirmation code links to the booking. Sorting a column sorts the entire filtered result set on the server, not just the rows on the current page.
• Pagination -- The table shows 25 bookings per page, the card view 12.

On a phone the list always uses cards, and everything except the search box folds behind one Filters button. Each card shows the guest, status, property, confirmation code, dates, nights, guests, total, and payment status.

Payment Statuses

Each booking also tracks payment independently:

Payment Status	Color	Meaning
Paid	Teal	Full payment received.
Overpaid	Teal	More than the total was received.
Partially Paid	Yellow	Some payment received; a balance remains.
Pending Payment	Yellow	Payment is expected but has not been received.
Unpaid	Magenta	No payment recorded yet.
Partially Refunded	Yellow	Part of the payment was returned to the guest.
Refunded	Gray	The payment was returned to the guest.
Voided	Gray	The booking was cancelled, so nothing is owed.
Failed	Magenta	A payment attempt failed.

Key Concepts

• Booking Source -- Where the reservation originated. Sources come from your company's Booking Sources registry. By default the manual booking form offers the curated set -- Direct Booking, Phone, Email, Travel Agency, Complimentary (CPL), Other -- plus any custom sources you add; OTA and other channel/method sources are seeded but hidden from manual entry (see Booking Sources). Beyond reporting (it shows as a channel icon in the list view), the source drives the management commission on the booking and the base for any agent commission. You can re-classify a booking's source at any time from the detail view -- including on OTA bookings -- because the source is an internal classification and is never pushed back to the channel. Re-classifying changes the commission figures for that booking wherever they are next generated.
• Reservations Agent -- The person responsible for the booking, chosen from people marked Earns commission on their user account. They earn 100% of the salesperson commission at checkout unless credit is split between several people. Whether a booking earns commission depends on its source: by default direct-channel sources do and OTA sources (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO) don't, but rates can be changed for the company or for each person. See Agent Commissions. This is separate from the free-text Referral field, which is just a note about who referred the booking and carries no money.
• External Reference -- The confirmation code from an OTA or external system. Useful for cross-referencing with channel partner dashboards.
• Internal Notes -- Free-text notes visible only to staff. Use these for special instructions, guest preferences, or coordination details.
• Confirmation Code -- The booking's identifier within Argonautas, displayed in guest-facing communications.

Importing Historic Bookings

If you are migrating from another property-management system, an admin can bulk-import historical bookings from a CSV file via a server-side management command. This is intended as a one-time migration tool, not for day-to-day data entry.

Provide your support contact with:

• A CSV export of past bookings, with one row per booking and columns for property, guest name, email, dates, status, and totals.
• A list of property-name → Argonautas-property-ID mappings (or consistent property names so the importer can match them automatically).

The importer is tolerant of formatting variation in dates, totals, and statuses. It disconnects post-save signals while running so importing thousands of past bookings does not trigger thousands of confirmation emails to guests who already stayed years ago.

Because the list tabs are date-aware, imported stays whose departure is already in the past land under Completed, not Active, so a migration does not clutter your working view of upcoming reservations.

Common Questions

Can I change a booking's property after creation? The property is set at creation time and cannot be changed. If a guest needs to move to a different property, cancel the original booking and create a new one.

Can I change an OTA booking's dates in Argonautas? No. The dates and guest counts of Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo bookings are locked, because the channel owns them. Change them on the OTA and the update flows into Argonautas. You can still change the source, the status, and the price-related records on your side. See OTA Booking Modifications.

How do I mark a guest as checked in or checked out? Open the booking, click the pencil icon on Booking Details, change Status to Checked In or Checked Out, and click Save Changes.

Can I create a booking for dates that overlap with another booking? No. The system validates against existing bookings for the same property. Owner stays and maintenance blocks also prevent overlapping guest bookings.

Related

• Pricing Guide -- How rates, discounts, and fees determine booking prices.
• Fees and Taxes -- Company fees, property-specific fees, taxes, and payment processing fees.
• Add-ons -- Optional extras guests can add to a direct booking.
• Availability Calendar -- Visual calendar showing property availability.
• Security Deposits and Damage Claims -- Placing a hold, releasing it, and claiming for damage.
• Messaging Guide -- Communicating with guests before, during, and after their stay.