Owner setup, part 7: what to do next

This is part 7 of 7 of the Xenia owner setup guide: 1. Your account · 2. Hotel details · 3. Rooms and rates · 4. Roles and staff · 5. Payments and security · 6. First booking and going live · 7. What to do next.

The first six parts got your hotel to the point where the front desk can take a booking and bill a guest. This part is about everything you add around that. You do not need all of it on day one. Do the first two sections if you run a bar, restaurant or store, the third if an accountant will work in Xenia, and the last two for every hotel.

1. Outlets and menus

An outlet is a place that sells things: a bar, a restaurant, a poolside kitchen. Open Outlets and menu. Each outlet has its own menu, sales reports and shifts, and a guest can pay at the till or have the bill charged to their room.

1. Choose Add an outlet. Give it a name (for example Sunrise Grill) and choose its kind, a bar or a restaurant. Choose the store it sells from, and set a service charge for this outlet, or leave that empty to use the hotel's rate.

2. Choose Add a category (Mains, Sides, Drinks) to group the menu.

3. Inside a category choose Add an item. Give it a name, a price before VAT and service charge, and say whether VAT and service charge apply. Choose where its ticket prints, the kitchen or the bar.

Each item has a few buttons beside it:

• Change price asks for a reason, and every change is kept, so a price cannot move without leaving a record.

• 86 marks an item as sold out. The order screen stops offering it until you put it back. ("86" is the restaurant word for it.)

• Recipe says what stock one portion uses. This is what lets a sale take the right amount out of the store, so set it for items where you want stock to be exact.

• Take off removes an item from the menu without losing its sales history.

2. Stock and the store

Xenia counts stock as a ledger. What is on hand is always the sum of every movement, and each movement has a document and a name against it. That makes missing stock easy to see.

Say what you stock

Open Stock items. Use Units and categories first to set how things are counted (bottle, crate, kilogram) and how they are grouped (Drinks, Food). Then choose Add an item, give it a name, its category and unit, and a reorder level. When the stock falls to that level, Xenia warns you. If you already keep a list in a spreadsheet, Import brings it in.

Move stock in and out

Open Store. Under Stores and suppliers add each place stock is kept (the main store, the bar store) and the suppliers you buy from. The buttons across the top are the everyday jobs:

• Receive stock when a delivery arrives.

• Transfer from the main store to the bar or kitchen.

• Request stock, so an outlet can ask the store for more.

• Count stock to check the shelves against the system.

• Log wastage for breakages and spoilage, with the reason.

• New order to make a purchase order for a supplier.

3. Accounting

Do this if your accountant will work in Xenia. Invite them first from Staff with the Accountant role (part 4). Then open Accounting. It has eight tabs that follow the order of the work.

1. Default accounts. Xenia has to know which account takes VAT, service charge, cash, bank and the guest ledger. A new hotel usually shows a notice that some money has nowhere to go yet. Choose Fill in the standard accounts and Xenia fills them in. Your accountant can change any of them.

2. Chart of accounts. Start from the standard hotel chart, then add or rename accounts to match your accountant's books.

3. Bank and cash accounts. Add the bank accounts the hotel uses.

4. Post folios. A worklist shows guest bills not yet posted. Post one or many, and each posts exactly once, as one balanced entry.

5. Journal, Ledger, Reconcile and Statements. Enter journal vouchers, follow any ledger line back to the bill it came from, match a bank statement to the ledger, and print the trial balance, income statement, balance sheet and VAT report for any period.

4. After your first full day

Once the hotel has traded for a day, look at two pages.

The night audit

Every night, after the time you set in hotel settings (part 2), Xenia charges each guest still in their room past their check-out date, so nothing depends on someone remembering. Open Night audit to see when it last ran, when the next pass is, and what it would charge now. History lists every pass. If you ever need it straight away, Run now does it.

The daily report

Open Daily report. Each morning, about 07:00 hotel time and after the night audit, Xenia makes a report of how the hotel did: what it earned, what was paid, and what is worth a look. Owners get it by email unless they switch it off at the top of the page. Each day is kept exactly as it was worked out, so you can go back to any day. A new hotel shows no reports until the first night audit has run.

5. Every week: the Alerts page

Xenia reads your hotel's records for things worth a look, such as large discounts, voids, a guest who left owing, or a price change that lowers rates. Open Alerts once a week, or when an alert reaches you by notification or email. Each one points to the permanent record that caused it.

• Open, Looked at and Everything separate what you still have to read from what you have dealt with. Choose Mark as looked at once you have read one.

• Alerts are marked High priority, Look soon or For information, so you can start with the ones that matter.

• Under What is watched you can switch a rule off or change how sensitive it is, for example the percentage that counts as a large discount or the amount that counts as a large void. Every change is itself recorded in the audit trail.

The other page to check often is Approvals. When someone at the desk needs your permission for a void or an override, it appears there and on your phone. Approving lets them do that one thing once.

A simple routine

• Every morning: read the daily report. Clear anything under Approvals.

• Every week: open Alerts. Skim stock levels and any wastage. Ask the accountant to post folios if they have not.

• Every month: check the statements with your accountant, review who has access under Staff and Roles, and remove anyone who has left.

That is the whole of the owner setup. If you get stuck at any point, the Xenia support team is one message away.