Skip to main content

Overview of the Front Desk Calendar

Calendar basics

What is the Calendar?

The calendar provides a comprehensive overview of your property at a glance. You can view confirmed reservations, upcoming check ins and check outs, current guests, room closures, room availability and payment status for bookings. You can also manage preferences to customise which details appear on each reservation at first glance.

How does the calendar work?

The Calendar displays all the confirmed, checked-in, and checked-out reservations. Cancelled bookings are not shown on the calendar but can be found on Reservations.

Your calendar shows each of the room types and their physical rooms. The number of available rooms determines the availability shown on the Inventory grid.

Example: If your double room type contains rooms 1, 2, and 3 and they have no reservations or room closures for a specific day, the availability shown on the Inventory grid would be 3.

Customise your Calendar view

You can customise what appears on each reservation and choose how you open a reservation summary. To change these, go to your calendar settings using the settings button (gear icon) at the top of the calendar. Note: Calendar settings are saved for the whole property for all users, not for each individual user. Only admin users can see the settings button and change these settings.

For example, to make returning guests and booking sources easy to spot, select Show heart for repeat guest and Show booking channel.

Or, to check a booking's details without opening the full reservation, set View reservation details to Hover on magnifying glass for reservation summary. You can then hover over the magnifying glass icon on a reservation to see its summary.

Managing physical rooms

To rename physical rooms or change their number:

  1. Click on the physical room

  2. Edit the physical room name in settings

  3. Save

Expanding and collapsing rooms

  • Click the room type name to hide or show the physical rooms and unallocated rows

  • Use the expand/collapse button in the upper-left corner of the calendar grid to show or hide all rooms at once

Navigating through the calendar

How many days can I see on my calendar?

Choose 14 or 28 days at a time from the drop-down menu at the top left of the Calendar page.

How can I move through the calendar dates?

Little Hotelier remembers your last viewed date. Click View today to return to today's date.

View today: Displays today's date as the first date in the calendar grid

Date picker: Select any past or future date directly

Arrow buttons: Move by days or weeks

  • 14-day view: < 1 day, << 7 days, <<< 14 days (forward and backward)

  • 28-day view: <<< 28 days forward/backward

Room closures

What is a room closure?

A room closure is a temporary block that you can put on a room for a certain range of dates so it won't be available for booking during that period. Use for renovations, maintenance, or holding rooms for future reservations.

💡 Room closures appear in red on the Calendar page.

➕ For permanent closures, delete the room instead.

How does room closure work?

Room closures decrease availability on the Inventory page. Reopening increases availability.

How is availability calculated?

Number of rooms minus reservations and room closures.

Example: 5 double rooms - 2 booked - 1 closed = 2 available

What is the difference between room closure and Close channels?

  • Room closure: Removes a physical room from availability on all channels and your booking engine. It does not apply a stop sell.

  • Close channels: Stops selling rate plans on all channels and your booking engine

💡 You can apply both at the same time.

➕ Room closures apply to physical rooms (Calendar page). Close channels apply to rate plans (Inventory page).

How can I add a room closure from the calendar?

There are two ways to apply a room closure:

  1. Click, drag and drop on the calendar, then select Room closure

  2. Click the Room closure button at the top right

Create room closure

  • Room: Select room(s) - supports multi-select and search for multiple rooms or room types

  • Start date: Defaults to today (inclusive)

  • End date: Defaults to tomorrow (inclusive)

  • Description: Internal note (not visible to guests)

Remember to click Save.

How can I edit a room closure?

  1. Go to My Apps > Front Desk

  2. Go to the Calendar page

  3. Click the room closure

  4. Modify settings and Save

💡 Drag the end tip left (shorter) or right (longer) to quickly adjust the closure length.

How can I reopen a room closure?

⚠️ Reopening a room closure increases the availability of that room type. It does not remove a stop sell.

  1. Go to My Apps > Front Desk

  2. Go to the Calendar page

  3. Locate the room closure that you would like to reopen and click on it

  4. A pop-up window will appear. Make sure to click on Reopen room

If a room is still not bookable on a channel after you reopen it, a stop sell may have been applied separately in Channel Manager. Check My Apps > Channel Manager > Inventory for any stop sells on the affected dates and rates.

Create and view reservations in the calendar

How can I create a reservation from the calendar?

There are two ways to create a reservation from the calendar page:

  • Click, drag and drop on the calendar, then select Reservation

  • Click the Reservation button

Reservation tile colours

The background colour of each reservation shows its status:

  • Orange or yellow: confirmed, awaiting check-in

  • Green: checked in

  • Grey: checked out

  • Light blue: unallocated (no physical room assigned)

  • Dark red: room closure

  • Pale, faded: the reservation has an incomplete payment

Payment status is shown by a coloured bar down the left side of the reservation and a coloured magnifying glass icon:

  • Red bar and red magnifying glass icon: unpaid

  • Green bar and green magnifying glass icon: paid

  • Card icon with a line through it: the card number is invalid

Reservation tile icons

Depending on your Calendar settings, a reservation can also show these icons and symbols that give you more information at a glance:

  • A heart icon: the guest is a repeat guest

  • A black notepad icon: the reservation has a guest comment or staff note

  • A head-and-shoulders person icon with a number: the number of adults

  • A child figure icon with a number: the number of children

  • A pram icon with a number: the number of infants

  • A crescent moon icon with a number: the number of nights

  • A booking channel icon: shows which channel the booking came from (listed below)

Note: Only Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, Airbnb, Direct Booking and Demand Plus show a channel icon. Other channels do not show a dedicated icon.

View reservation summary

The reservation summary shows a booking's key details without opening the full reservation. It shows:

  • Reservation ID

  • Primary contact details

  • Guest details, including the number of guests and whether they're a repeat guest.

  • Booking details

  • Payment summary

  • A dropdown to change the reservation status (confirmed, checked-in or checked-out)

  • Actions for payments, cancelling, printing, e-mailing and managing the reservation

Note: The reservation summary does not replace the full reservation page. To modify a reservation, open the full reservation record.

Moving a reservation

Drag and drop to change:

  • Physical room allocation

  • Room type

  • Check-in/check-out dates

Changing reservation status

You can’t check in before the check-in date or check out before check-out date:

  1. Open the reservation summary

  2. Use the status button or dropdown to select (Confirmed, Checked-in or Checked-out)

Changing the length of stay

To extend the length of stay, drag the end of the reservation to the right to extend the check-out date, or drag the entire reservation to change the check-in date.

For reservations received from a channel, you cannot extend the check-out date directly in the calendar. To add an extra night:

  1. Agree the extension with the guest directly.

  2. Create a new manual reservation in the calendar for the additional night.

  3. Collect payment from the guest directly.

Cancel a reservation

  1. Open the reservation summary

  2. Click Cancel reservation

  3. Confirm cancellation

Processing payments

  1. Open the reservation summary

  2. Click Add payment

  3. Record or process payment

Print or email reservation details

  1. Open the reservation summary

  2. Click Print or Email to generate:

    1. Registration form

    2. Invoice

    3. Summary

    4. Confirmation

💡 The registration form can be used as a check-in form. Click Print > select Registration Form.

Unallocated reservations

What is the Unallocated row?

The unallocated row is used for confirmed reservations without a physical room assigned. The Unallocated label above the calendar shows a label and the number of bookings that do not have an allocated room.

Reasons for unallocated reservations:

  • No consecutive nights available in same room type

  • Manual bookings without rooms assigned

  • Channel overbookings

  • Unable to find suitable room

Managing unallocated reservations

Use the unallocated row to manage bookings when reorganising rooms.

  • Drag and drop to an available room

  • Open the reservation and edit details

Related Articles
Did this answer your question?