Rooms, restaurant, minibar and store as one operation
Services and bookings sit beside physical stock instead of in a different system, purchasing runs per department with a limit on it, and consumption reports per outlet rather than per building.
10:00
2 hrs
Wine tasting · Private room
2 decanters held
13:00
4 hrs
PA system hire
Deposit taken
18:30
90 min
Cocktail class
6 of 8 seats
What the week actually looks like
None of this is a software problem yet. It is the shape of the trade, and it is what the setup below is built around.
01
Four systems, four versions of the truth
The restaurant, the bar, housekeeping and the shop each keep their own, and the only place they meet is a monthly spreadsheet somebody dreads.
02
Minibar consumption is a rumour
It is noticed at checkout, posted from memory, and reconciled against a stockroom that was last counted at some point in the past.
03
Every department wants to order
Which is correct. But with nobody signing anything off, it is also how a hotel ends up with nine months of one thing and none of another.
How it runs instead
Four steps, in the order this trade meets them. Everything else is a keystroke away, not a module you buy.
- 01
Hold the room and the kit together
A booking reserves what it needs, so the stock figure knows the item is spoken for before anyone walks into the room.
- 02
Give each outlet a location
Restaurant, bar, floor, storage and shop are location kinds. One item's figure is the sum of all of them, and each site keeps its own cost.
- 03
Raise in the department, approve above it
Whoever runs the outlet raises the order against the supplier's real terms and lead time. Approving it is a permission somebody else holds, so the need and the sign-off are never the same person.
- 04
Report per outlet
Consumption, margin and variance by site, so a bar that is drifting is visible without reading the whole building's numbers.
The screens you open on
Rooms, restaurant, minibar and housekeeping stock managed as one operation instead of four.
- Services
- Stock
- Purchase Orders
Set at signup and changed whenever you like. It decides what you land on, not what you can reach.
- Services and bookings alongside physical stock
- Departmental purchasing, with sign-off held by someone else
- Consumption reported per outlet
What hotels & hospitality usually switch on
Settings, not plans or add-ons. Turn any of them on later, or never.
- Lot numbers and expiry dates
- Received against a batch, watched by the day, and written off with a reason when they turn.
- A register per site, closed per shift
- Its own float, its own drawer count, and the variance flagged against whoever closed it.
- Bookings that hold their kit
- An appointment reserves the equipment it needs, so the stock figure knows it is spoken for.
Where you trade
Rooms in dollars, drinks in naira
Hotels here often quote rooms in one currency and sell everything else in another. Currency lives on the business, money is held in whole minor units so nothing rounds away, and twelve currencies are supported end to end. VAT follows the country you are trading in, at 7.5% in Nigeria, 15% in Ghana, 16% in Kenya and 15% in South Africa, and appears on the invoice the way that country expects to see it.
86 rooms
minibars on one sheet
“Housekeeping posts minibar usage from the corridor, and purchasing sees it before lunch.”
Chidi Eze · Ops manager, The Ardent
Questions from hotels & hospitality
Is this a property management system?
No, and it does not pretend to be. It runs the stock, the outlets, the purchasing and the services around the rooms. If you have a PMS you keep it. This is the operation underneath it.
Can housekeeping post from a phone?
Yes. Every screen works on a phone, and a housekeeping role sees the stock it needs and nothing about margin or cost.
How does purchase approval work?
It is a permission, not a value threshold. Someone can raise orders without being able to approve them, and the approver is whoever you grant it to. A limit in naira that routes automatically above a figure does not exist yet. Worth saying, because most people assume it does.
Most of you are two of these at once
A hotel is a bar, a kitchen and a shop. You never pick one and lose the rest.