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v26.3

Hotel Module

The hotel module turns DiKAS into a room management system for small properties: guesthouse, inn, holiday apartment, small hotel. Create rooms, set prices by season, take bookings, check guests in and out, organize housekeeping — and collect everything a guest consumes in the house on a room account that is finally paid with a proper POS receipt.

Activation: Admin → Settings → Operations → Hotel. The module must be licensed — without a license the menu item does not even appear.

🏨 The Flow of a Stay

Booking → Confirmation → Check-in → Stay → Settle → Check-out
   ↓                       ↓           ↓            ↓
Request              Room account   Restaurant,   POS receipt
(online)             is created     bar, minibar  with payment method
Status What it means What can happen next
Requested Booking received, the property has not yet confirmed it Confirm, Cancel, No-show
Confirmed The property has accepted Check in, Cancel, No-show
Checked in The guest is in the house, the room account is running Settle, then check out
Checked out Stay finished, account settled —
Cancelled Called off —
No-show The guest failed to appear without cancelling —

Cancelled and No-show are not the same

A timely cancellation is free of charge depending on your terms — a guest who simply does not show up usually is not. So report them as no-show and not as cancelled: only then do you have the basis to charge the night. The room becomes free again, the room account stays open.

🛏️ Rooms and Room Types

A room type groups similar rooms — "Double room", "Suite". Base price and maximum occupancy are attached to it. A room is a specific space: number, floor, condition.

The difference becomes important when booking: your guest books a type online, not a specific room. Which room they get is decided by you at check-in.

Room status: Available · Occupied · Out of service · Maintenance Cleaning status: Clean · Dirty · In progress · Inspected

Blocking Rooms

A room that is being renovated or should be held back for a group is blocked in the occupancy chart via "Block room". Blocked rooms appear in the chart as "Blocked", cannot be booked online and cannot be checked in.

💶 Prices

A rate plan says what a night costs. Several can exist side by side per room type — for example a normal one and a weekly flat-rate plan.

Component Effect
Seasonal prices Price per night in a period
Weekend surcharge Percentage, applies Saturday and Sunday
Holiday surcharge Percentage, applies only on the days you enter
Extra person Amount per person above standard occupancy
Breakfast Price per adult and night
Minimum stay Below this number of nights the plan cannot be booked

The holiday surcharge needs entered days

A percentage alone has no effect on any price. Public holidays differ by region — Corpus Christi is a day off in Bavaria, not in Berlin —, and many properties include a town festival or trade fair. That is why you enter the days yourself. The screen points this out when a surcharge is set without days.

Holiday on a weekend

If a holiday falls on a Saturday, the higher of the two surcharges applies — not both together.

🧾 The Room Account

At check-in the room account is created. The following is booked on it:

  • automatically at check-in: each night individually, breakfast and the tourist tax
  • during the stay: everything the guest consumes in the house — restaurant, bar, minibar

Why the nights are charged right at check-in

Large hotels book the room price in a nightly run. For a small property that is unnecessary and error-prone; DiKAS books the whole stay at check-in. If the guest extends, the additional nights are booked afterwards.

Charging to the Room

In the restaurant, at the bar or in direct sale, the operator selects the payment method "Charge to room" when checking out. The room selection opens:

  • Type the room number ("204")
  • Type the guest name ("Example")
  • or hold the room key card to the reader

Only rooms in which a guest is currently checked in are shown — with the current balance, so you can see whether you have the right one. The receipt is then completed and signed at the POS as usual; only the claim against the guest remains open.

You cannot continue without a selected room

This is intentional: a room booking without a room lands on no account. The receipt would carry the payment method, the money would be nowhere — and it would only be noticed at settlement, when the guest has already left.

Room key card: At check-in you can register the guest's card. After that, holding the card to the reader at the bar is enough, and the right account is selected. At check-out the assignment is released again — cards are reissued, and the same card belongs to someone else next week.

The card selects, it does not pay

The card identifier is not a secret; every reader sees it. It only answers the question "which room" — the transaction is only completed when the operator confirms.

Settling

When settling, you select the payment method with which the guest pays. A proper POS receipt with receipt number and signature is created; the revenue appears in the POS, end-of-day report and accounting.

What happens in the background

Restaurant and bar receipts that were charged to the room have already been sold at the POS. They are therefore not sold again, but only rewritten to the payment method actually used. Otherwise the same revenue would appear twice in your figures.

Invoice to the Company

If the employer pays, select the payment method Invoice when settling and search for the invoice recipient. A customer invoice is then created to their address — with payment term and dunning like any other invoice. If you leave the field empty, the invoice goes to the guest.

Each night, breakfast and the tourist tax appear as separate line items with a date. The employer thus sees what they are paying for — and the tax rates stay separate.

Not possible if restaurant receipts are on the account

A receipt that was charged to the room is already sold at the POS. Additionally invoicing it would mean letting the guest pay twice — DiKAS rejects this. Such accounts are settled via Settle with a payment method.

There is no TSE signature on the invoice — that is correct

If you settle in cash or by card at the front desk, a POS receipt with TSE signature is created. An invoice, on the other hand, is not a POS transaction (§ 146a AO): you write it via the finance area, the guest transfers later, and the revenue enters accounting via the invoice. An auditor does not expect a signature there.

In Spain it is the other way around: there every invoice is registered with the AEAT (VeriFactu) — this happens automatically on creation.

Check-out is only possible once the room account has been settled.

🧮 Tax Rates

Each item type gets its own tax rate — set under Hotel settings → Tax rates.

Item Germany Spain
Accommodation 7 % (reduced) 10 %
Breakfast 19 % (standard) 10 %
Tourist tax 0 % 0 %

Why breakfast and accommodation differ in Germany

The separation requirement (Aufteilungsgebot) separates lodging (reduced) from catering (standard). Which rate is correct for your property is decided by your tax advisor — that is why the rates are adjustable and not hard-coded.

Tourist tax is charged per person and night, from an adjustable minimum age: in Germany typically from 18; in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands minors are exempt. If the limit is set to 0, every guest pays.

🌐 Online Booking

If the module is active and you have maintained room types with rate plans, the item "Rooms" appears on your guest page. Your guest searches a period there, sees available room types with price and books on their own.

An online booking is a request

It arrives with status Requested and waits for your confirmation. On the confirmation page the guest reads explicitly that their booking is not yet confirmed.

What the guest gets to see: room type, description, price and how many of them are available. They do not see room numbers, occupancy or other guests.

Overbooking — Your Property, Your Decision

The guest page never sells more rooms than you have. If all rooms of a type are taken for the period, the type disappears from the search; anyone who submits anyway gets "Unfortunately this room has been taken in the meantime".

Bookings that have no room assigned yet are also counted — every online booking is exactly that at first. Which room the guest gets is decided by you at check-in.

At the front desk you may overbook

The lock exists only on the guest page. If you create a reservation, it works even for an already full period — for the regular guest who calls at short notice, or if you expect a cancellation. You then see the period in the occupancy chart above the room count.

Cancellation by the Guest

The confirmation email contains a personal cancellation link, valid until 24 hours before arrival. After that — and for very short-notice bookings — the guest cancels by phone. This is intentional: that way you keep control of last-minute cancellations, where cancellation fees need to be discussed anyway.

Right of withdrawal

For accommodation services on a specific date there is no right of withdrawal (§ 312g para. 2 no. 9 BGB). The notice is on the booking page; your cancellation terms apply.

🧹 Housekeeping

On check-out the room is automatically reported as dirty and a cleaning job is created. On the housekeeping board, staff see the day's status and advance jobs: Pending → In progress → Done → Inspected.

📋 Registration Form

If the registration form requirement is switched on, a registration form with the guest data is created at check-in. The guest signs on screen; the result can be output as PDF.

Which fields are mandatory is set under Hotel settings → Registration form.

Spain: report to the authority

In Spain, Real Decreto 933/2021 requires accommodation businesses to transmit guest data electronically within 24 hours to SES.HOSPEDAJES of the Ministry of the Interior. This transmission is not yet included in DiKAS — the registration form already captures the necessary fields, the connection to the authority will follow.

What the Module Cannot (Yet) Do

Topic Status
Channel connection (Booking.com, HRS) Not included. You enter bookings from portals by hand.
Deposit, cancellation fees Not included. The amount is not calculated automatically.
Group booking across several rooms Not included. Each room is booked individually.
Occupancy figures (ADR, RevPAR) Not included.
Room images Not included.
Spanish authority report Data fields present, transmission missing.