Report

Managing Key Deposits

General Hostel Operations

alface started this discussion 12 years 7 months ago

Hello all,

My name is Vasco. I work in a Hostel called Alface, in Lisbon. I found this website while trying to find a solution for my day-to-day problems.

In my hostel we use Bacpack Online.

Ihave this problem, and -I'm sure I'm no the only one: I'd like to know how much money I should have for key deposits from my guests.

Right now, periodically I have to open each reservation of the "in house", look in each bill and add up the total for key deposits. This takes forever! Surely there's a better way??

Any help is appreciated.

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sydney

12 years

I am unfamiliar with that res system. That sounds super annoying though. At the smaller hostel I worked at we have our KD separate from our system. We have a little box where we put envelopes in with the guests name and room number. We then put the KD in there until they check out. We would charge $20 for a key since we had actual keys and if someone took one we would have to change all the locks in the hostel to prevent burglary. It was just enough to ensure people would come back for it.

At a bigger hostel that I worked at we would charge $10 and that was incorporated in the system. So if you look at someones individual booking it would show the amount they paid for their accommodation then the $10 would be added to that. The day they were due to check out their reservation would have a balance of $10 which showed we owed to them. Does Bacpack online not let you have set charges for certain things?

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alface

12 years

Hi,

Thank you for your answer. Backpack online lets me set a deposit even. Each reservation has a very detailed bill with several types of payments, including deposits, and it also reminds the user to return the deposit. Therefore, Backpack online should be able to, in theory, calculate the total of deposits we should have with us.

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lasagna

12 years

Alface, if you don't see a required key deposit while checkin in someone, contact BPO team, as they can set that up for you.

Here we charge R$ 30 (15 USD), its a high value, just so they dont forget to return the keys and also the sheets. Also we can use that money to charge an eventual late check out, or something they broke, or a little bar tab or something.

Let me know how that goes with BPO.

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alface

12 years

Hello All

No, I see it, whenever somebody checks in. And the system automatically reminds me to return this money at the end of the stay.

My question is: how do I know how much TOTAL money from deposits I have, at any given time?

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lasagna

12 years

I dont think u have that kind of control, im actually trying to create a spreadsheet or something for that, to keep track of the lost keys... As for deposit, you can have it separate as the other guy mention above... I put everything on the same pot, as it doesnt matter for me...

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Ria

12 years

I don't follow...if your deposit is $10 a person and you have 50 people checked in then you have $500 in deposits, no? if you are charging different amounts for different types of rooms then i understand why you don't now what your total is - otherwise having your guest count on hand answers that question.

We used to have different deposit amounts for privates than dorms, but changing them to the same was great..made everything easier.

Personally i'd like to get rid of key deposits but the managers were not too thrilled about that. that would allow us to have less 'float' in the till. with up to 75 check outs in a day it's a lot of money sitting in the till.

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lasagna

12 years

Well, yeah, if i know how many guests you have in the hostel, you can do the math of how much deposit u have...

One hostel i stayed at had the deposits on a separate box...

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