The first thing you’ll need to do when you start working with My Inn Reservations software is to enter all the information for your inn, hotel or bed and breakfast.

You’ll enter all of this information in the Settings area of the program. Click on the Settings icon, and a new screen will appear where you can enter all the information about your business.

Company Info

In the Company Info area, you’ll enter the name of your business and the address and contract information. You can also load the logo for your business to print out on invoices, if you have a logo. You can leave it blank if you want.

Underneath the contact information are two fields called “Email Confirmation Text” and “Email Signature”.

In the email confirmation text box, you write in the standard confirmation information that you give guests when they make a reservation. This includes information like your check in time, cancellation policy or just a general thank you or welcome message.

Later, if you choose for the program to create a confirmation email for a reservation, it will use this text, along with the specific reservation information, to create your confirmation email.

The email signature box is just where you type your name, or the name of the business, along with your phone number, or web site address, or perhaps a company slogan.

Services

In the Services area of the settings, you can enter any extra services and prices for those services, so that you can easily add them to a guest’s invoice. Extra services might include things like a rollaway bed, or a bottle of wine or a special flower arrangement. It could be anything that you charge extra for.

You’ll click the Add Service button, then enter the name of the service, and the price that you charge for it. That price can be either a flat fee or a daily rate. When you make a new reservation later, the reservation form later will let you specify if you want to charge for the service each day, or just once during a guest’s stay.

Taxes

Hotels, inns and bed and breakfasts are often required to collect a variety of different taxes for their city or state. The software is flexible, allowing you to set up the taxes in a way that is appropriate for your situation.
To add a tax, hit the “Add” button and enter the tax rate. Then click the boxes to indicate if the tax only applies to a room rate (which would be used for an occupancy tax), or if it applies to a service (for a sales tax) or even both.

You can adjust the taxes on individual reservations later, if you get a guest that is tax exempt for any type of tax.

Rooms

Rooms is the section of the settings where you enter all of the rooms of your inn, along with the rates.

Click on the Add Room button, and you can enter all the information for that room. You can use numbers if your rooms are numbered, or you can name the rooms if they have names. You can also number them AND name them.

Choose the Type of room, such as single and double, king, suite, etc. Single and double are the default choices, but it is easy to add more options if you wish. As you add new kinds of rooms, they are permanently applied to room type options.

After you fill out the options for the room, you’ll want to add the rates.

If you only have a single rate for the room, just add one rate. If you have multiple rates for weekdays, weekends, holidays, etc., you can add those rates too. Don’t worry! If you want to give someone a different price later, it is easy to change the rate while you are making a reservation. You can also come back later and edit any of your rates, if you need to change them.

Main Screen

On the main calendar screen when you begin the program, you’ll see the default monthly view of the current month. You can click on the Weekly or Daily view if you’d like to see a more detailed look at the calendar.

There are large green arrows to click back and forth to future and past months.

The small calendar on the left side of the screen operates independently from the large calendar, so that you can quickly skip forward or backward and see other months without losing track of the month you are viewing with the large view.

If you double click any of the days on the small calendar, it will change the big calendar so that it is also viewing the same month.

Be careful if you are clicking through months on the small calendar, because if you click through the months too quickly, it will think you are double clicking and update the big calendar to the same month. But it's easy to change either the small calendar or the big calendar back to any month that you want, so it's no big deal if you do that.

If you are looking at the Weekly or Daily view, you also have the option of printing this view so that you can have a paper copy to take with you when you are away from the computer. You can print available rooms, occupied rooms, or all rooms.

You can use the search form to search for a specific reservation.

There is an Add button on all of the days of the calendar. If you want to quickly create a reservation for a specific day, you can simply click the Add button on the day when you want to make the reservation.

You can click on any reservation that appears on the calendar to open it up and look at it, change it, or cancel it.

Creating a Reservation

You can create a reservation by clicking on the New Reservation button from the main screen, or by clicking the Add button on any of the calendar days.

At the very top of the New Reservation window, above the name field, there is a button that looks like an address book called Previous Customers. If a customer has stayed with you before, you can quickly look them up and add their information into the reservation without retyping it.

If it is a new customer, you can enter their customer information on the new reservation form.

Once you have entered the customer information, you can choose the room that the customer will stay in. At that point, it will give you the rates for that room.

Choose the number of nights stayed by entering a check in date and check out date, or by choosing the check in date and changing the “nights stayed” button until the number is correct.

You can change the price that you charge by simply clicking on the amount and editing it. You can also click and unclick any taxes that may or may not apply to a reservation.

If you wish to add additional services or grant discounts, you can also do this on the reservation form. You can come back later and change these amounts, if you decide to add more services or give a discount later.

Once you fill out the reservation, click the OK button, and it will be added onto the calendar. The name of the room will appear in red, which indicates that the room is booked. This way you can see at a glance which rooms are occupied when you are dealing with potential guests.

Generating an Invoice

The Generate an Invoice screen creates a receipt and invoice for your guests, showing them their total.

When you click on the Generate an Invoice screen, a small calendar will appear.

Choose the CHECK IN day on the calendar to see all of the guests who checked in that day. Then click on the guest that you wish to create an invoice for.

If you click on the View button, it will show you the invoice. Then you can print it and present it to your guest. If you notice that you want to change something on the invoice, click the Edit button, and it will bring up the original reservation screen so that you can make any changes so that the guest is charged correctly.

Generate Report

The Generate Report area of the program allows you to see all your reservations for a specified time period, and run a revenue report or tax report. You can use this information to see how much revenue each room is generating, as well as your average room price.

The tax report lets you quickly see how much taxes you have collected, so that you can fill out your tax forms and pay taxes.

The revenue and tax reports assume that you collect payment at the end of a guest’s stay. So if a guest checks in on June 30th and checks out on the July 3rd, then the revenue and taxes for those days will be recognized for the month of July.