Front desk
All your lodging reservations, as a calendar or a list
Each booking carries a colour for where the stay is and a button for what it needs next. Open one, and the reservation and its bill are the same screen.
Calendar and list
Every booking shows where it stands and what it needs next
Readable from across the room
Every booking card carries one colour for where the stay is, on its pill, its bar and its buttons, and a strip with one block per night that fills as the stay goes: Night 2 of 4. When something has to happen first, such as another guest still holding the room, the colour says that instead until it is done, then goes back.
The button is the next thing the booking needs
A stay that is ready shows Check in. A stay with no card on file asks for a guarantee first. When another guest is still in the room, the button takes you to their reservation, because that is what stands in the way. The usual alternatives sit underneath, and the rarer options one level down.
Or read it as a list, sorted by what needs you
The same bookings as a list in three groups: Today's Guests, Outstanding balance, All bookings. Filters narrow it to arrivals, departures, in-house, upcoming, cancelled or owing.
Drag to create, drag to extend
Drag a date range across a room to open a prefilled reservation. Drag a booking's edge to extend or shorten a stay, with a confirmation that shows the exact folio change before it applies.
Missed arrivals are a state, not an overdue date
A no-show gets its own colour and its own actions: check in late, or update the arrival date, or cancel with cancellation-fee guidance.
One click on a bar opens the stay. The main button is the next step for this stay, and the other options sit underneath it.
The reservation
Every screen agrees on where a stay is
Seven states, and every screen reads the same one
Pending, guaranteed, confirmed, in-house, departing, checked out, settled. A stay is in exactly one of them at a time and it moves from one to the next by rule, not because someone edited a field. So the calendar, the day's task list and the folio can never disagree about a guest, and neither can two people looking at different screens.
A skipped step is marked as skipped
The folio draws the whole stay as one line, from taking the booking through to checking out, with the step you are on marked and the ones still ahead carrying the action they need. The unusual part is the step that got passed over. Check a guest in without ever taking a card and Take guarantee does not turn the same colour as the steps that really happened: it is marked as skipped, in its own colour, and it says the guarantee was never collected. Most systems only know done and not done, so a guarantee nobody took looks exactly like one that was, and you find out at check-out. The line takes its colour from the state the stay is in, so a guest who owes money does not read like a guest who simply has not left yet.
Loose ends close overnight
A guest who never arrived is auto-cancelled after a 24 hour grace window and their charges reversed in the ledger. A guest who never checked out is auto-checked-out. Both are written to the activity log instead of waiting for the desk as a warning in the morning.
Late check-out, sold from the reservation
Sold from the reservation by the hour, and only for as many hours as the room is free before the next arrival. The bar on the board stretches to match.
Extras go on while the booking is being taken
Add-ons, packages and activities are chosen inside the reservation, on the days of the stay, with a quantity per day and the places left shown on each one. A one-time inclusion can be pinned to the day it is actually delivered, and that is the day the service sheet reads. You offer them while you are already talking to the guest, instead of calling back later.
Guards
Costly mistakes are stopped before they happen
A warning in tomorrow's report comes too late.
Room conflict
The system refuses a check-in into a room another guest still occupies, and names who to check out first with a direct link to their reservation.
Dirty room
Checking a guest into a room that has not been cleaned since the last guest raises a soft warning you can override. A quick tidy for an early arrival is legitimate.
Out of order, everywhere at once
An out-of-order room is unbookable in the booking wizard, the public booking page, auto-assign, room moves and week optimization. They all read the same flag. And it comes back dirty rather than clean, because a room somebody has had the carpet up in is not ready for a guest just because the work finished.
A guarantee you can act on
If no card is saved, Cardinal says so instead of showing a card that is not there. A guarantee that cannot be charged is never shown as secured.
You know it is full before you pick a room
The dates step says how many rooms are free for those exact dates before you pick one, and names the categories that are out and why, booked or too small for the party. Duplicate a stay onto a week that is already full and it does not just refuse: it says no room is free for the whole stay and offers the nearest date windows that are, as buttons that set the dates for you.
One search, so nobody creates the same guest twice
Name, email or phone, and the phone matches on digits alone, so 514-555-0123 and 5145550123 are the same question. The reservation wizard, the activity wizard, the global search and the guest database all use the same search, which means a guest who exists is found on every screen. A search that answers differently on two screens is how a duplicate guest record gets made: the person at the desk concludes they are not in there and types them in again.
Every number on the bill is a line you can point at. A charge, a payment, a correction, an amount moved to a company account: four lines in the order they happened, and the balance is their sum. Nothing on the screen arrived by an adjustment nobody can see, so any figure a guest questions can be read back to them off the same screen they are looking at.
The recap, its charges, and a check-in run from inside the folio. There is no second module to open and reconcile against.
The folio
The reservation and the bill are the same screen
One continuous statement, whatever happens to the stay.
- Mid-stay room moves
- The stay is split at today: the first room's part closes and the new room's part begins. The folio still shows one continuous statement across both rooms with one running balance, carrying the price difference on the nights that are left, so the guest gets one bill for one stay rather than two that have to be added up.
- Charges sorted into sections
- Charges group into A lodging, B activities and products, C other, shown as dividers in one statement rather than as tabs you have to hunt through.
- Split settlement, walked one step at a time
- Where the room sits on one method and the extras on another, payment goes step by step: Step 1 of 2, the room on the card on file, then Step 2, the activities in cash. The order depends on the screen you came from. When everything is paid the same way, it stays one step.
- The refund button appears when the guest is owed money
- When voids or discounts leave the folio in credit, refunding the guest becomes the main button on the screen, and the money goes back the way it came in: on a stay the booking site collected, the desk can only refund what the desk itself collected.
- Transfer a charge
- Move a charge to another in-house guest's folio, in whole or in part, with an undo.
- Multi-room and multi-type bookings
- One booking can span several rooms across different room types at their own rates, with one guarantee distributed correctly across the folios.
- A printable registration sheet
- Property legal name, GST and QST registration numbers, stay details, guarantee, policy text and a signature block, produced at check-in.
Payment methods follow clear rules instead of a free-text field. Cash cannot guarantee a reservation. Cheques are accepted when a company pays its account, not from guests. A company account guarantees a stay, but it is not a way to pay.
Questions
Asked and answered
What happens when a guest does not show up?
The reservation is flagged as a missed arrival with its own colour and its own actions. If they are a day late, the action is check in late. Beyond that it is update arrival date and check in, or cancel, with cancellation-fee guidance. If nothing resolves it, the system auto-cancels after a 24 hour grace period and reverses the charges in the ledger.
What if a guest does not check out?
They are auto-checked-out after the same grace period, with the balance left exactly as it stands.
Can I stop someone checking a guest into an occupied room?
It is already blocked. The system names the guest who has to be checked out first and links straight to their reservation.
Does it know if a room is clean?
Yes. Checking a guest into a room that has not been cleaned since the last guest raises a warning you can override. A quick tidy for an early arrival is legitimate, an accident is not. Rooms marked dirty stay dirty until someone cleans them, including overnight.
Can the room go on the company account while the guest pays for their own extras?
Yes. Charges group automatically into lodging, activities and products, and other. Each group can settle on its own method. One reservation, two settlements, one screen.
Can I move a charge to another guest's folio?
Yes. The whole charge or part of it, to any in-house guest, with an undo.
Next
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Accounting and tax
Your tax reports in the order your bookkeeper works, built on a ledger where every correction is its own line.
Housekeeping and assignment
Rooms cleaned in the right order, the number of housekeepers you need, and room assignment that spreads wear evenly.
Corporate accounts
Company accounts with their own balance, aging by company, and travel agencies that are never billed by mistake.
See it running
Follow a full day in Cardinal, screen by screen.
Six real screens from a working property, in the order the day happens. Open it now and go at your own pace.