Homestay management software is the one place where a homestay records every booking, every in-house guest, every payment and every extra service, so the owner can see at a glance which rooms are still available on every channel being sold. A homestay usually sells on several online booking channels at once and also takes guests through Zalo, phone calls and messages from regulars, so when owners choose software they tend to ask one question: “Which one stops double bookings?” The short answer:
📌 To cut double bookings, the software needs to do three things well, not to have a long feature list:
- A single booking book: every booking, including guests who call or message on Zalo, goes into the same place.
- A two-way connection through a channel manager when selling on several OTAs: when a room sells on one channel, availability on the other channels is updated.
- One account per person: permissions by user group, an activity log recording who did what, when and on which screen, and a cashier shift report showing what each shift collected.
Software and a two-way connection reduce the risk of double bookings. The rest comes down to habit: as long as some bookings live outside the book, some risk remains.
Costs should be stated plainly from the start: DiCloud is paid software, and if you use a channel manager, its fee is a separate contract. The article is for owners of homestays, mini hotels and guesthouses selling on several channels: why double bookings happen, how to keep one booking book, when you need a channel manager and when you do not yet, extra services and payments, staff accounts, managing from a distance, ID scanning and guest stay reporting, and finally a list of questions to ask before choosing.
Part 1: Why homestays get double bookings
A double booking is rarely caused by one big mistake. Usually it is one small booking that never made it into the book, landing on a busy day. Looking back at past double bookings, many homestay owners will recognise one of these situations:
- Several channels, each with its own calendar. When one channel sells the last room, the others do not know unless there is a connection between them.
- Closing rooms by hand. The owner opens each extranet to close a room. On a busy day, forgetting one of them is enough.
- Guests booking via Zalo or phone. The hold sits in a chat, a notebook or the memory of whoever answered, and has not yet reached the shared calendar.
- Several people taking bookings. The owner, a relative, the evening helper each hold part of the picture, and nobody sees all of it.
- Extensions, date changes, cancellations. A guest asks to stay one more night while that night has already been sold on another channel.
🔁 One thing to remember: software cannot know about a booking that nobody entered. Choosing software is choosing a tool; keeping the book is a habit for the whole household.
Four paths to a double booking in the busy season are analysed in how small hotels avoid double-booking a room in peak season. This article takes a different angle: when choosing homestay management software, what to look at so that the situations above happen less often.
Part 2: One booking book for every channel, including Zalo and phone
The first principle is not in the software but in the way of working: no booking counts as confirmed until it is in the book. A guest messages on Zalo about a room for the weekend; whoever replies enters it in the software straight away, with the deposit if there is one, and then answers “your room is held”. With a single book, everyone and every channel looks at the same place.
What the software needs to do for this
- Enter a booking quickly on a phone, because many homestay holds arrive when the owner is not sitting at the desk.
- Show available rooms by date for each room, with several days visible at once.
- Record the booking source: which OTA, Zalo, phone, a returning guest. After a few months, the owner knows which channel brings guests.
- Record the deposit against each booking, so that nobody has to dig through transfer messages when the guest arrives.
- Keep track of who entered and who changed what, so that a mistake leads to the place it happened, not to someone to blame.
DiCloud runs in a web browser and on a phone, so someone who is out can still open the booking book and enter a booking on their phone the moment they accept it, without waiting to get back to the desk. DiCloud’s activity log records who did what, when and on which screen, so a mistake can be traced back to where it happened. The habit of “enter first, reply after” is easier to keep when the tool is already in your pocket.
Part 3: A two-way connection through a channel manager
Once a homestay sells on two or more OTAs, opening and closing rooms by hand on each extranet is where things slip most easily. A channel manager sits between the management software and the sales channels. A two-way connection means bookings from the channels flow into the software, while availability in the software is pushed out to the channels through the channel manager.
DiCloud does not have its own channel manager. DiCloud connects two-way with the hotel channel managers properties already use, such as Exely, Staah, Hotel Link, SiteMinder and D-Edge. The fee for a channel manager is a separate contract between the homestay and that company. If the homestay sells on a particular channel, ask the channel manager whether that channel is on its list of connections before signing.
| How rooms are sold | Common double-booking risk | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| One OTA plus returning guests | A regular books by message but the room is not closed on the OTA | Enter every hold in one book and close the room on the channel as soon as it is entered |
| Two or three OTAs, few rooms | One channel sells the last room before the others are closed | Consider a channel manager with a two-way connection to the software |
| Many channels, busy bookings, several people | Date changes or extensions made in one place, other channels unaware | Two-way connection, one account per person, every change made in the software |
A two-way connection reduces the risk of double bookings but cannot remove all of it. Bookings kept outside the book, or changes made directly on a channel’s extranet without going through the software, can still cause a mismatch. So once the connection is in place, agree within the household that closing rooms, changing dates and extending stays are always done in the management software.
Part 4: When a homestay does not need a channel manager yet
Not every homestay needs a channel manager from day one. There is a separate article on this question: does a small hotel need a channel manager? In short, for a homestay:
- Probably not yet if the homestay sells on one OTA, the rest are returning guests, and whoever keeps the book always closes the room on that channel in time.
- Worth considering if it sells on two or more channels, bookings pile up in the busy season, or a double booking has already happened because a room was closed too late.
- Either way, a shared booking book is still needed. A channel manager handles the OTAs; it cannot handle holds made through Zalo or by phone.
A simple test: for one month, note how many times you had to open the channels’ extranets to open or close rooms, and how many near misses you had. If this takes up a lot of the owner’s time, the cost of a channel manager may be worth working out.
Part 5: Revenue, extra services and cash collected per shift
Homestays rarely sell rooms alone. Guests rent motorbikes, have breakfast, send laundry, book a pickup, store luggage, buy sightseeing tickets. Each item is small, but over a month they add up to a meaningful share of revenue, and they are also where money slips away, because they are often collected in a hurry in cash.
- Post services to the room bill when the guest uses them, then collect once at check-out. How to post and control services outside the room is covered in ancillary services for small hotels.
- Split the room bill and the services bill when needed. DiCloud can split room charges and service charges so that separate invoices can be issued, for example the company pays for the room and the guest pays for services.
- E-invoices: DiCloud does not issue e-invoices itself; it connects with the e-invoice provider and pulls in the details of the guest staying in the room, so they do not have to be retyped.
- Cashier shift report: DiCloud has a cashier shift report, so the person taking over and the owner know what the previous shift collected before signing for the drawer.
💵 End-of-shift check: compare the cash in the drawer with the cash collected during the shift, not with revenue. Revenue includes amounts not yet paid and amounts paid by transfer, so comparing it with the drawer will always show a gap.
Part 6: Staff permissions, one account per person
In many homestays the family and the helpers share one login, with the password stuck on the desk. That is convenient for the first few weeks, but when something goes wrong nobody knows who changed it, and when someone leaves, the password has to change for everyone.
DiCloud gives each person their own account, with permissions set by user group for each screen: view, add, edit, delete. For example, the front desk cannot delete a slip unless a manager grants that permission. The activity log records who did what, when and on which screen. Before assigning permissions, the owner should answer a few questions:
- Who can take and change bookings, and who can view them without changing them?
- Who can cancel a booking, or delete a slip or a payment already entered?
- Does the housekeeper need to use the software, and if so, which screens should they see?
- When someone leaves, who locks their account?
Permissions are not about distrusting staff. They let each person feel secure about their own work, and when numbers do not match, the mismatch is found quickly and nobody is blamed unfairly.
Part 7: Managing a homestay from a distance, in the browser and on a phone
Homestay owners are often away: some work elsewhere in the city, some have a few units in different neighbourhoods. Seeing what is going on from a distance is often the first reason to give up the paper book.
- DiCloud runs in a web browser and on a phone, so the owner can see bookings, in-house guests and payments from anywhere with internet access.
- Browser-based software needs an internet connection. It is worth having a backup line, for example a phone with 4G sharing its connection with the desk computer.
- DiOwner is an app for owners and GMs that shows figures without changing them: it shows revenue, occupancy and receivables, and the figures in DiOwner match the figures in the operating software. See DiOwner for owners.
Not being able to edit is deliberate: the owner looks at the numbers without accidentally changing a booking the front desk is working on. Operations stay in DiCloud; monitoring happens in DiOwner.
Part 8: Scanning ID cards at check-in and exporting the guest stay report
Homestays have to report guest stays just like other accommodation. The time-consuming part is usually not the report but the retyping: name, date of birth, document number, typed once into the book and again into the portal.
- Scan the citizen ID card or passport at check-in: the software reads the details on the document and stores the extracted information, not an image of the document.
- Export the guest stay report in the required format for the front desk to submit. The police reporting portal does not allow software to connect to it directly, so the software does not submit on the property’s behalf; its job is to save the front desk from retyping.
Deadlines and how to submit the file are covered in guest stay reporting for small hotels, no retyping. For how to keep guests’ personal data in line with the law, see guest data protection.
Part 9: Questions to ask when choosing homestay management software
Before signing, ask the software provider the questions below and get written answers. The questions are the same for every provider, so the owner can compare them fairly.
| Question | Why ask | Answer to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Where do Zalo and phone bookings go? | A common source of double bookings in homestays | Entered straight away on a phone, in the same book as OTA bookings |
| Which channel managers does the software connect with, one-way or two-way? | A two-way connection is what updates availability on the channels | Named companies, two-way connection |
| How is the channel manager fee charged? | Avoid surprises after signing | A clear statement of which fee is paid to whom, under which contract |
| Where are extensions, date changes and cancellations made? | If done in the wrong place, the channels do not know | In the software, with availability updated through the two-way connection |
| Can extra services be posted to the room bill? | Collect once, miss less | Posted to the room bill, with the bill split when needed |
| How are e-invoices issued? | No retyping of guest details | Connection with the e-invoice provider, guest details pulled in |
| Does each person get an account, and how far do permissions go? | Know who did what, lock access when someone leaves | One account per person, permissions per screen, an activity log |
| Where do I see cash collected per shift? | Check the drawer every shift | A cashier shift report |
| What does ID scanning store? | Guests’ personal data | Extracted information, no image of the document |
| How is guest stay reporting done? | No retyping | A file exported in the required format for the front desk to submit |
| What happens at the desk if the internet goes down? | Browser-based software needs internet | A clear statement that internet is required, with a suggested backup line |
| What does the total first-year cost include? | A fair comparison between providers | Every item listed, nothing left “to be calculated later” |
For DiCloud, the answers to the rows above are: bookings can be entered on a phone, in one shared book; a two-way connection with the channel manager, whose fee is a separate contract; room and service charges can be split; a connection with the e-invoice provider, with the in-house guest’s details pulled in; one account per person, permissions per screen, an activity log and a cashier shift report; ID scanning stores the extracted information, not an image of the document; the guest stay report is exported in the required format; and internet is required.
One question is worth answering yourself before asking anyone else: in the past month, how many near double bookings did the homestay have, and what caused each one? The answer shows which rows of the table above matter to you. If you are moving from a notebook or spreadsheet to software, read migrating data from Excel to software and mini hotels, guesthouses and homestays first.
Want to see DiCloud on your own homestay’s booking book?
Send the DiCloud team your number of rooms, the channels you sell on and the channel manager you use, if any. We will answer each question in Part 9 and set out every fee before the homestay decides.
Ask the DiCloud teamFrequently asked questions
Can homestay management software guarantee there will be no double bookings?
No software should guarantee that. Software reduces the risk when every booking, including those via Zalo and phone, goes into one shared book, and when there is a two-way connection through a channel manager. Bookings kept outside the book, or changes made directly on a channel’s extranet, can still cause a mismatch.
Does a small homestay need a channel manager?
Not necessarily. If the homestay sells on one OTA and whoever keeps the book always closes rooms in time, it may not need one yet. When it sells on two or more channels, bookings pile up, or a double booking has happened because a room was closed late, it is worth considering. The channel manager fee is a separate contract between the homestay and that company.
Does DiCloud have its own channel manager?
No. DiCloud connects two-way with the hotel channel managers properties already use, such as Exely, Staah, Hotel Link, SiteMinder and D-Edge. The channel manager fee is a separate contract between the property and that company.
Can DiCloud be used on a phone?
Yes. DiCloud runs in a web browser and on a phone, with one account per person. Because it runs in the browser, it needs an internet connection; a backup line for the desk computer is a good idea.
Does the software report guest stays automatically?
No. The police reporting portal does not allow software to connect to it directly. DiCloud scans the citizen ID card or passport, stores the extracted information but not an image of the document, and exports a file in the required format for the front desk to submit, without retyping.
Is homestay management software free?
DiCloud is paid software. When comparing, ask about every item: the software fee, the channel manager fee if you use one, and any cost on the e-invoice provider’s side, so you know the total first-year cost.
Conclusion
Choosing homestay management software to avoid double bookings is not about finding the software with the most features. You need a shared booking book for every channel, including Zalo and phone; a two-way connection through a channel manager when selling on several OTAs; one account per person; and one household habit: every change is made in the software. Software reduces the risk; habit keeps it low.
DiCloud is part of the DiHotel Solutions Corps ecosystem, a company with more than 20 years of developing hotel software, serving more than 300 accommodation properties in Vietnam and Japan. As cloud AI hotel management software for homestays, mini hotels, guesthouses and 1–3 star hotels, and as online AI hotel management software, DiCloud opens on the front desk computer as well as on a phone.
For 4–5 star hotels, resorts and multi-property chains, DiHotel, the AI hotel management software, is the original platform. The companion article on the DiHotel Blog explains a term every front desk meets: what is a folio in a hotel? Guest folio, master folio.