Set up your hotel

First steps

Sign up and you’re in. The panel shows what’s left.

No meeting to book, no salesperson waiting. Sign up and your panel opens with “First steps” at the top: six lines, each with a button to the exact field — and a line turns green when it’s actually done, not when you click.

Set up your hotelTry it in the panel

Free while you set it up. Card when you go live, first payment after 7 days.

Three steps

The order matters, and this is it

Cabins, bookings, channels — in that order. A channel connected before your bookings are in sees every night as free, and sells nights you already sold.

  1. Your cabins

    One line per cabin: its name and how many it sleeps; the rate per night goes under Prices. Later, a cabin can be closed to new bookings and keep its history — and one that was never booked can be removed outright.

  2. Your bookings

    You paste in the file you exported from your old system, and the first thing you see is the dry run, below. No file? The Warden enters them with you.

  3. The channels

    One click creates your property in the certified channel manager. Booking.com will ask you to confirm it in your extranet — Account → Connectivity provider → Channex — and each channel turns green a few minutes after it approves. Only then do you press “Push everything to channels”, and from that moment Staywarden drives availability.

The first hour

What happens after “Set up your hotel”

Three screens and you’re in: your hotel or lodge, your rooms and your bookings. Almost everything can be changed later — except whether your property is cabins or rooms, because that is what the channels register.

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  • Or just tell the WardenSkip the form: describe your hotel or lodge, your rooms and who works with you in your own words, and it does the setup. If you use another system today, attach the file and it reviews everything before anything is saved. In Spanish or English.
  • Your guest address starts hereThe web address of your guest app is suggested from your hotel or lodge name, and you can change it before you move on.
  • The company ID can waitThe Hacienda screen asks for it, but you can leave it blank. Without it, everything else works the same.
  • And at the top of the panel, the list“First steps” doesn’t go by what you clicked: it checks your saved cabins, your bookings in the database and the channels’ own answer. A step turns green when it is done, not when you decided it was.
  • If you get stuck, there are twenty guidesThe help center walks through the main tasks with sixty-two screenshots of the real panel, in Spanish and in English. And the Warden button is at the bottom right of every screen.

The dry run

“What if I lose my bookings?”

You cannot lose what was never saved. Staywarden reads your whole file and reports line by line — and writes nothing into your calendar until you press Import. Don’t like the report? Close it, and nothing has changed.

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  • Every row with its verdictReady to import · already in Staywarden · clashes with another booking · we do not recognize that cabin · unreadable date · missing a field. Each with its line number, so you can find it in your own file.
  • The columns, spelled outIt shows you which column of your file it read as guest, as cabin, as dates and as amount — and which ones it did not find. When more than one column could match, it does not guess: it leaves it as not found and says so.
  • A cabin it doesn’t know becomes a new one — or you pair it“garden cabin” in your spreadsheet finds “Garden Cabin” here on its own: accents and capitals don’t matter. A name it still cannot find becomes a new cabin with that name and a price from your own bookings — unless you choose “It is the same as …”, with your cabins listed beside it.
  • Ambiguous dates are flaggedIf your file has dates like 03/04 and there is no way to tell day from month, it says it read them as day/month, and what to do if they come from a US system.
  • Uploading it again duplicates nothingYou fix the file, paste it again, and the ones already in show as “already in Staywarden” instead of being added twice.
  • And afterwards, if two channels sell the same nightWe do not drop the booking to keep the calendar tidy: it comes in, marked as an overbooking, and you hear about it right away — while there is still time to move the guest.

The Hacienda key

This is the one thing we cannot do for you

An electronic invoice is signed with your company’s cryptographic key, and only the legal representative can get it from Hacienda’s portal — nine screens in TRIBU-CR, with their personal account. Neither we nor your accountant can go in for you; the guide walks you through the screens in order.

The Hacienda key
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  • From OVi to the .p12 fileSign in to the Oficina Virtual Tributaria, act on behalf of the company, open Tico Factura, create a user choosing “No, voy a utilizar otro programa”, keep those credentials, go into comprobantes electrónicos, ask for the production key, generate it with its PIN and download the file.
  • The PIN changed on July 28, 2026Fourteen characters, not four. If a guide tells you four digits, it was written before the change. Write it down somewhere you will still have it in three years: it cannot be recovered, only replaced.
  • Four things we will ask you forThe .p12 file with that PIN; the API username and password from step five — not your OVi password; your company details, filled in automatically from your cédula (the CABYS lodging code comes prefilled; ask your accountant to confirm it); and the number of the last document you issued. We issue nothing until you confirm that last one, even if the answer is “none”: a repeated consecutive number cannot be undone.
  • The key is sealed on arrivalThe signing key is taken out of the .p12 and stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM; the master key lives only on the server, never in the database. The .p12 file and its PIN are not kept. The panel never shows the key to you again: it only tells you whether it is set.

Free while you set up, then a plan

Free while you set up. Then seven days with everything before the first payment.

Every new hotel or lodge gets Complete free while you set up. Bring your system in and connect your channels; once everything is in, you pick your plan and add a card or Revolut Pay. The first payment is 7 days later, and until then you run your hotel or lodge with everything.

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  • Free: bring everything you haveThe export from the system you use today, the price list, a note on who works with you. We read them, we show you what we understood, and nothing is saved until you confirm. No card.
  • Free: see what came outYour cabins with their prices and a summary of your imported bookings, under your own names, on the home screen. You see your own lodge in the panel before you decide anything.
  • When you go live, you pick your planWhen every other line in First steps is green, the panel asks you to pick Essential or Complete and add a card or Revolut Pay on Revolut’s secure payment page. Staywarden never sees or stores your card details.
  • Seven days with everything, no chargeThe calendar, housekeeping, the team, the money, WhatsApp and the invoicing — Complete from the first minute, and 7 more days before the first payment. Cancel in those 7 days and you are never charged. Booking.com and Airbnb open by themselves once your bookings are in, and you connect them here.
  • What you do not buy, you still seeWe never hide a feature: it shows locked, with your own data behind it and the price on top. Nobody buys a feature they don’t know exists.
  • And what it costs, in one lineEssential is $59 a month with one cabin or room type; Complete is $99 — both +$10 for each one after that, and each cabin or room type counts once. Four cabins on Complete is $129. The plan renews by itself every month, in US dollars, and we email you before each charge. Cancel whenever you want in Settings › Plan and data › Subscription, and take all your data in one file the day you leave.
Full pricing and the math

Questions

What hotels and lodges ask before deciding

Do I have to book a demo or talk to someone first?

No. You sign up, choose between the form and the Warden, and you are in. If you want to look before creating an account, the panel demo opens straight from the site, on an example lodge with four cabins.

Can I use Staywarden without the Hacienda key?

Yes. The key opens electronic invoicing and nothing else: only one part of the whole system asks for it. The calendar, the bookings, the housekeeping, the team and the month’s money do not pass through it. And the company ID can be left blank during setup.

Which file works for bringing my bookings in?

The export from your old system, exactly as it comes out. The importer is built for exactly that: it copes with commas inside a name, semicolons as the separator and quotes, and it finds the columns by their name. Before importing, it shows you which column it read as guest, cabin, dates and amount, and which ones it did not find.

Do I connect Booking and Airbnb on day one?

After you upload your bookings, not before. A channel connected to an empty calendar sees nights you already sold as free. Once your bookings are in, one click creates your property in the certified channel manager and Booking.com asks you to confirm it in your extranet. Your listings are not touched: we never create one.

How does my team get in, and what do they see?

Each person gets an invitation to their own email and chooses a password; from then on they sign in to their own day on the lodge’s team page. The cleaner sees tasks and ticks them off; a manager or your accountant can get the panel instead, with only the areas you tick — the accountant sees numbers and never passports. The role is enforced on the server: what is not theirs is never even sent to their screen. And if you remove someone, they are signed out on the spot.

And if after a week I decide against it?

You take everything with you in one file: bookings, payments, invoices with their XML, expenses, passports, reviews, discount codes, WhatsApp messages, deleted bookings and the configuration. The button is in Settings › Plan and data, under “Take your data with you”, and there is a step-by-step guide for using it. No lock-in and no retention call — a system you cannot leave is not a system.

Every room, handled.

We get your hotel in. Then you choose your plan.

Set up your hotel

Free while you set it up. Card when you go live, first payment after 7 days.

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What Staywarden is

Staywarden is all-in-one property management software (SaaS) for hotels and lodges: calendar and channel sync, housekeeping, team, guest messaging, invoicing, reporting and an AI assistant. Hotels pay a monthly subscription; we never handle guests’ money.

Pricing

  • Essential: from $59 a month with one cabin or room type, +$10 for each one after that.
  • Complete: from $99 a month with one cabin or room type, +$10 for each one after that.

Free while you set it up. Card when you go live, first payment after 7 days.

Monthly, in US dollars. Cancel anytime. Full refund within 14 days of the first payment.