Hotel Manager — simple hotel booking & front-desk software

A complete, easy-to-use system for small and independent hotels, guest houses and homestays: bookings, a room calendar, check-in/check-out, guest records with ID photos, billing with GST invoices, payments, housekeeping, owner reports, staff accounts and a commission-free online booking website for guests.

One installation serves many hotels. As the software provider you run your own owner panel at /platform: create a hotel and its owner's sign-in, and see every month which hotels have paid you. Each hotel only ever sees its own data.

It is designed for people with no technical knowledge: plain words instead of hotel jargon, big buttons, one obvious next step on every screen, friendly confirmations, and it works on a phone.

Visitors who are not signed in see a landing page at / with every feature and a 3-minute video tour recorded from the real app, so hotel owners can see how it works before they talk to you. Set SALES_WHATSAPP so they can contact you from it.

Full reference guide: docs/ covers the owner panel, the hotel software, hosting, troubleshooting and technical details.

Why these features? See docs/RESEARCH.md — a summary of what competitors (Cloudbeds, Little Hotelier, eZee, Hotelogix, RoomRaccoon…) offer and what small-hotel owners actually complain about and ask for.

Features

Area	What you can do
Today screen	Arrivals with one-tap Check in, departures with Check out and bill, colour-coded board of every room, money received today (by cash/UPI/card), money still to collect, rooms to clean, setup checklist, staff activity
New booking wizard	4 steps: dates (quick “2 nights” buttons) → free rooms with total price → returning-guest search or new guest → price, discount, source, advance payment. Walk-in mode checks the guest in immediately. Confirmation via WhatsApp or print
No double bookings	Availability is date-based; the database locks a room while a booking is saved, so two people can never book the same room for the same night
Room calendar	Tape chart of all rooms for 7/14 days; tap an empty box to book that room from that date
Booking page	Live bill (room nights, weekend/festival prices, discount, extras, taxes), payments and refunds, extend stay, change dates, move room, early/late checkout, no-show, cancel, undo check-in
Extras	Add food, laundry, minibar, taxi, extra bed or damage charges to the guest’s bill
Billing & GST	Indian GST slabs (0% / 5% / 18% by nightly tariff, editable) or one flat tax rate; separate tax on extras; final invoice snapshot at checkout
Printables	GST tax invoice (GSTINs, SAC codes, CGST/SGST, amount in words), proforma bill, booking confirmation, guest registration card with Form C fields for foreign guests
Guests	Profiles with stays, nights, total paid and money owed; ID photo upload from the phone camera; passport/visa for foreigners; company & GSTIN; VIP and “do not allow” flags
Housekeeping	Needs cleaning / being cleaned / clean board; rooms become dirty automatically at checkout; rooms with guests arriving today shown first
Payments	Cash, UPI, card, bank transfer, or prepaid on a booking site; refunds; daily cash-drawer totals (cash received minus cash expenses)
Booking-site payouts	For MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Booking.com and others: the bill stays on the gross amount while the owner records the site's booking ID, commission, GST on it, TCS, TDS, the net payout and when it reached the bank

Quick start (local)

Requirements: Node.js 20+ and PostgreSQL 14+.

# 1. Start PostgreSQL (or use your own)
docker compose up -d

# 2. Configure
cp .env.example .env

# 3. Install, create the database tables and load demo data
npm install
npm run db:setup:dev     # migrations + demo hotel with rooms, guests and bookings
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 and sign in:

Role	Email	Password
Owner / manager	[email protected]	admin123
Front desk	[email protected]	staff123

The guest booking website is at http://localhost:3000/book/sunrise-residency.

The provider's owner panel is at http://localhost:3000/platform. Set PLATFORM_ADMIN_EMAIL and PLATFORM_ADMIN_PASSWORD in .env first (see below).

Change these passwords after the first sign-in (My account, or Settings → Staff).

Selling the software to hotels (/platform)

1. In your hosting settings add PLATFORM_ADMIN_EMAIL (your email) and PLATFORM_ADMIN_PASSWORD (at least 10 characters), then redeploy. This is the only owner-panel account. It lives in the hosting settings, not in the database, so nobody can create another one from inside the app. Without both variables /platform stays locked. To change the password, change the variable and redeploy; every open owner-panel session is signed out.
2. Open https://<your-site>/platform and sign in.
3. Add a hotel: hotel name, owner's name, email and phone, monthly fee, and the first month to charge (pick a later month to give free months). You get the owner's sign-in details once, ready to copy or send on WhatsApp.
4. Each month, open the hotel and Record a payment when they pay you. The list shows who has paid this month, who is late and how much is still owed. Owners of hotels with late months see a polite reminder when they sign in.
5. If a hotel stops paying, Pause it: its staff can't sign in and its booking page stops taking bookings, but nothing is deleted. Switch back on restores access at once.

Sign-in emails are unique across all hotels, so hotel staff simply sign in at /login and land in their own hotel.

Setting up a real hotel

1. Deploy (see below) and run npm run db:seed once — this creates only the two sign-in accounts for the first hotel, no demo data. Further hotels are created from /platform.
2. Sign in as the owner. The Getting started checklist on the Today screen walks you through:
   • Settings → Hotel details: name, address, phone, GSTIN, check-in/out times
   • Rooms → Add room: each room with type, normal price and facilities
   • Settings → Prices & tax: GST slabs or flat tax, weekend and festival prices
   • Settings → Staff: one sign-in per staff member
   • Settings → Online booking: copy your booking link and share it

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
DATABASE_URL	Yes	PostgreSQL connection string
JWT_SECRET	Production	Secret for sign-in sessions. Generate with openssl rand -base64 32
STORAGE_DRIVER	No	local (default) or blob. Auto-selects blob when BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN is set
UPLOAD_DIR	No	Folder for ID uploads when STORAGE_DRIVER=local (default ./uploads)
BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN	Vercel	Vercel Blob token for ID uploads
NEXT_PUBLIC_DEMO_MODE	No	true shows the demo sign-in accounts on the login page in production
PLATFORM_ADMIN_EMAIL	For /platform	The software provider's sign-in email for the owner panel
PLATFORM_ADMIN_PASSWORD	For /platform	Its password, at least 10 characters. Changing it signs out open owner-panel sessions
PLATFORM_TIMEZONE	No	Time zone that decides "this month" for subscriptions (default Asia/Kolkata)
SALES_WHATSAPP	Recommended	Your WhatsApp number (with country code) for the landing page's contact buttons
SALES_EMAIL	No	Your email, shown on the landing page

Deploying (Vercel + Neon)

1. Push to GitHub and import the repository at vercel.com/new.
2. Storage → Create → Neon (Postgres) and connect it to the project; this sets DATABASE_URL.
3. Storage → Create → Blob and connect it; this sets BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN (for ID photos).
4. Add JWT_SECRET under Settings → Environment Variables.
5. Deploy. Production builds run prisma generate → prisma migrate deploy → next build. Preview builds (pull requests and branches) skip the migration step so they never change your live database; for fully working previews, add a separate preview database as DATABASE_URL for the Preview environment.
6. Once, from your computer: DATABASE_URL="<production url>" npm run db:seed.

Troubleshooting: build fails with P1012 Environment variable not found: DATABASE_URL

That Vercel project has no database configured. Open the project → Storage → connect a Postgres database (or add DATABASE_URL under Settings → Environment Variables for Production), add JWT_SECRET, and redeploy. If two Vercel projects are connected to this repository, keep the one that has the database and delete or disconnect the other.

Any Node host with PostgreSQL works (Railway, Render, a VPS): set the variables, run npm run build and npm start. For local file storage, keep ./uploads on a persistent disk.

Upgrading an existing installation

The migration 20261008000000_hotel_suite upgrades databases from the earlier “Hotel Billing Manager” version in place: existing rooms, guests, bookings, payments and bills are kept, bookings get numbers starting at 1001, and old reserved/housekeeping room statuses are converted. Run npm run db:migrate (Vercel does this automatically on deploy).

The migration 20261009000000_multi_hotel turns a single-hotel installation into a multi-hotel one: all existing data is moved into one hotel named after the current hotel profile, with no monthly fee until you set one in /platform. Its booking page moves to /book/<hotel-name>; the old /book link keeps redirecting there while it is the only hotel.

Scripts

Command	Description
npm run dev	Development server
npm run build / npm start	Production build (applies migrations) / start
npm test	Unit tests for dates, pricing, GST, folio maths, amount-in-words and subscriptions
npm run lint / npm run typecheck	ESLint / TypeScript checks
npm run db:migrate	Apply database migrations
npm run db:seed	Create the owner and front-desk sign-in accounts only
npm run db:seed:demo	Also load a demo hotel with rooms, guests and bookings
npm run db:setup:dev	Migrate + demo data (development)

How it works (for developers)

• Next.js 15 (App Router) + React 19 + Tailwind CSS 4, API routes, Prisma + PostgreSQL.
• Stays are counted in calendar nights. Dates are handled as YYYY-MM-DD keys (src/lib/dates.ts) and “today” uses the hotel’s time zone setting, so night counts are identical on any server.
• All pricing and billing maths is pure and unit-tested (src/lib/pricing.ts): nightly prices with weekend/seasonal adjustments, GST slab selection, discount capping, extras tax, payments and refunds.
• src/lib/bookings.ts holds availability (overstaying guests keep their room; guests leaving today don’t block tonight), per-room advisory locks against double booking, and the folio/serialisation used by every screen.
• At checkout a Bill snapshot freezes the invoice so later price changes never alter past bills.
• Every change is written to ActivityLog.
• Multi-hotel isolation (src/lib/db.ts): every table except Hotel and SubscriptionPayment has a hotelId. The prisma client used by the hotel screens adds the signed-in hotel to every query and every new row, inside transactions too. withAuth sets that hotel for each request. A query made without a hotel throws instead of returning everyone's data. Only sign-in, booking-token lookups and /platform use rawPrisma.
• The owner panel has its own cookie and token type (src/lib/platform.ts), so a hotel session can never open /platform and an owner-panel session can't open a hotel's screens. Subscription maths (paid, part paid, late, paid until) is pure and unit-tested in src/lib/subscription.ts.

src/
├── app/
│   ├── (app)/            # Signed-in screens: Today, calendar, bookings, guests, rooms, …
│   ├── api/              # JSON API (public/* is the guest booking website API)
│   ├── book/[hotel]/     # Public online booking website, one per hotel
│   ├── platform/         # Software provider's owner panel (hotels, subscriptions)
│   ├── print/            # Invoice, confirmation and registration card
│   └── login/
├── components/           # UI kit, app shell, booking actions, forms
└── lib/                  # dates, pricing, bookings, reports, settings, auth
prisma/
├── schema.prisma
├── migrations/
└── seed.ts               # accounts (+ demo hotel with --demo)
docs/RESEARCH.md          # competitor & customer research

Not included (yet)

• OTA channel manager (Booking.com / MakeMyTrip / Airbnb sync) — needs paid partner agreements. Record OTA bookings with the matching source for now.
• Online card payment on the booking website (guests pay at the hotel).
• Online subscription payments from hotels (record them in /platform for now).
• One owner running several hotels from one sign-in, restaurant POS, GST e-invoicing (IRN).