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).
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	Red	The reservation was cancelled before the guest arrived.

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.

Each tab displays a count badge so you can see at a glance how many bookings fall into each category.

Creating a Manual Booking

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

1. Navigate to Bookings and click New Booking.
2. Choose a booking type. Argonautas supports three types:
   • Guest Booking -- A standard reservation with guest details, pricing, and confirmation emails.
   • Owner Stay -- Blocks dates for property-owner use. No pricing is calculated.
   • Maintenance -- Blocks dates for cleaning, repairs, or other maintenance. No pricing is calculated.
3. Select a property from the dropdown.
4. Set check-in and check-out dates. For guest bookings you can also set an arrival time.
5. Enter the number of guests -- adults, children (ages 2-17), and infants (under 2).
6. Fill in guest information (guest bookings only): name, email, phone, and optionally a mailing address.
7. Review the price quote. As soon as you select a property and dates, the sidebar displays a live quote with:
   • Base rate (nightly rate multiplied by the number of nights)
   • Additional charges (cleaning fee, service fee, taxes, etc.)
   • Total price
8. Add booking details (optional): booking source (direct, Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, phone, email, referral, etc.), reservations agent (the staff member who handled the booking, used for commission tracking), an external reference/confirmation code, and internal notes visible only to staff.
9. Click Create Booking to finalize.

[Screenshot: The booking creation form showing the booking type selector, property picker, date fields, guest information section, and the price-quote sidebar.]

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 are managed the same way as manual bookings, though some fields (like guest contact info) may be limited by what the OTA shares.

OTA financial breakdown

For OTA bookings, the booking detail decomposes the totals so you can reconcile what the OTA actually charged:

• Base accommodation -- the nightly room rate the OTA reported.
• Fees -- non-tax extras (cleaning fee, resort fee, service fee, and similar).
• Taxes -- VAT, occupancy tax, lodging tax, and other tax-typed lines, broken out separately from fees.
• OTA commission -- the host-side commission the OTA charges (e.g. ~15.5% on Airbnb, ~15% on Booking.com, ~8% on VRBO). Direct bookings show this as blank rather than zero so reports can distinguish "no OTA" from "OTA with zero commission".
• Owner net payout -- what the owner ultimately receives after commission and taxes. For most bookings this 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 payout is held for settlement review until you confirm the correct figure. See OTA Booking Modifications for the review workflow.

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 from the list to open its detail view. The page is split into two columns:

Main Column (Left)

• Booking Details Card -- Status, check-in/check-out dates, arrival time, guest count, booking source, and confirmation code. The check-in and check-out rows show the property's own configured times (for example, "After 3:00 PM" / "Before 11:00 AM"), formatted for the active language, so the displayed window always matches that property rather than a fixed default. All fields are editable inline; a floating save bar appears at the bottom when you make changes.
• Property Information Card -- The property name (read-only, linked from the booking).
• Guest Information Card -- Guest name, email, phone, and address. Editable for manual bookings.
• Notes Card -- Internal notes visible only to your team. Click "Add Note" from the quick actions to jump here.

Sidebar (Right)

• Price Breakdown Card -- The itemized price: base rate, additional charges, and total. For direct bookings, each fee from the rate quote (cleaning, service, pet, processing, etc.) appears as its own labelled line rather than a single lumped "Fees" total, so the breakdown matches what the guest is charged. You can add or remove charges and adjust amounts; these system-generated fee lines are managed automatically. You can also apply a credit to reduce a direct booking's total -- choose Amount to enter a fixed credit, or Percentage to discount the accommodation by a percentage (tax is adjusted proportionally either way). A credit cannot exceed the booking total. Changes are saved along with any other edits.
• Payment Status Card -- Shows the current payment status (Pending, Partial, Paid, Refunded, Failed), total amount, amount paid, and balance due. If payment is pending, a "Record Payment" button is available.
• Quick Actions Card -- One-click actions:
  • Email Guest -- Opens a modal to compose and send an email to the guest.
  • Print Voucher -- Generates and opens a PDF guest voucher in a new tab.
  • Download Invoice -- Downloads a PDF invoice for the booking.
  • Add Note -- Scrolls to the notes section and activates editing.

[Screenshot: The booking detail view showing the two-column layout with booking details, guest information, price breakdown, and payment status.]

Modifying a Booking

You can edit most booking fields directly from the detail view:

1. Open the booking.
2. Change any editable field (dates, guest count, status, guest info, notes, pricing).
3. A floating "Unsaved changes" drawer appears at the bottom of the screen with Cancel and Save Changes buttons.
4. Click Save Changes to persist your edits.

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 re-send the updated confirmation to the guest.

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.

Cancellation is reflected across all connected channels automatically.

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).

The Bookings List View

The list view provides several tools for finding and managing bookings:

• Operational dials -- Four circular gauges at the top give you an at-a-glance view of the day's operations rather than financial totals:
  • 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 -- Active bookings that are unpaid or only partially paid. The dial highlights in amber when any bookings need attention.
  • Occupancy -- The share of your active properties that currently have guests in house, shown as a percentage.
• Search -- Full-text search across guest names, property names, and confirmation codes.
• Filters -- Filter by property, status, source (OTA), date range, and Needs review (bookings whose OTA settlement still needs a manual decision -- see OTA Booking Modifications). Click "Clear filters" to reset.
• View toggle -- Switch between Card view (visual booking cards) and Table view (sortable data table with columns for confirmation code, status, property, guest, dates, nights, source, total price, and payment status). The first column shows each booking's confirmation code as a link to its detail view.
• Pagination -- Results are paginated with 12 bookings per page.

[Screenshot: The bookings list in table view with filters applied, showing the status tabs, search bar, and sortable columns.]

Payment Statuses

Each booking also tracks payment independently:

Payment Status	Color	Meaning
Paid	Teal	Full payment received.
Partial	Yellow	Some payment received; balance remains.
Pending	Yellow	No payment recorded yet.
Refunded	Gray	Payment was returned to the guest.
Failed	Red	A payment attempt failed.

Key Concepts

• Booking Source -- Where the reservation originated: direct, Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, phone, email, referral, repeat guest, manual entry, or other. This is used for reporting and is shown as a channel icon in the list view.
• Reservations Agent -- The staff member who handled or brought in the booking. Used for agent commission tracking. OTA bookings (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO) do not earn agent commissions; only direct-channel bookings attributed to an agent generate a commission record at checkout.
• 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.

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.

What happens to OTA bookings if I modify them in Argonautas? Changes made in Argonautas (such as date adjustments) are synced back to the OTA through your channel provider, depending on the channel's capabilities.

How do I mark a guest as checked in or checked out? Change the booking status to "Checked In" or "Checked Out" from the detail view's status dropdown, then save.

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.
• Availability Calendar -- Visual calendar showing property availability.
• Messaging Guide -- Communicating with guests before, during, and after their stay.