1. Introduction

1.1 What the Shortlets module does

The Shortlets module (WaoShortlet) turns WaoBiz into a short-term rental management system for serviced apartments, holiday lets and Airbnb-style properties. It covers six areas:

1.2 A standalone module

Shortlets owns its own properties and reservations. It does not require the hotel module: you can license Shortlets on its own, HMS on its own, or both.

• A property is a shortlet unit with its own code, nightly rate and street address.
• A stay is a shortlet booking — created, priced, paid and checked out inside this module.
• Revenue still reaches Sales and Reports: the first payment on a booking posts a sale into your central ledger, exactly as the Car Wash and Laundry modules do. No separate reconciliation.

1.3 Who it is for

• Operators managing a handful to a few hundred apartments across multiple platforms.
• Managing agents who run properties on behalf of landlords and must issue owner statements.
• Hotels adding apartments — run both from one dashboard as separate inventories.

2. Getting Started

2.1 Prerequisites

Only one: Shortlets enabled on your subscription plan. Everything else — properties, rates, bookings — is created inside the module.

2.2 Permissions

Shortlets has ten permissions, assignable per role under User Management → Roles in the Shortlets group.

2.3 Navigation

All screens live under Dashboard → Shortlets:

2.4 First-run setup checklist

1. Open Settings and set your brand name, unit label and currency.
2. Add your property owners with bank details and commission rates.
3. Add your units — each needs a unit code and a nightly rate; assign an owner and fill in the address, WiFi and directions.
4. Add your cleaning team under Cleaning & Ops so turnovers auto-assign.
5. On Automations, click Install default journey for a working five-message guest sequence.
6. On Dynamic Pricing, click Add starter rules, then run a reprice.
7. On Channel Manager, connect each OTA and map every unit to its listing.
8. Optionally, under Settings → Smart locks, connect your lock vendor so door codes reach the keypad without you keying them in.

3. Units & Owners

3.1 Adding a unit

Go to Shortlets → Units → Add unit.

1. Give it a unit code — a short identifier unique to your business, e.g. "LEK-01".
2. Set the nightly rate. This is what dynamic pricing scales; a unit at zero is skipped by the rate calendar.
3. Add a display name guests and staff will recognise, e.g. "Lekki 2-Bed Apartment".
4. Assign the owner (optional, but required before you can produce a payout statement).
5. Enter the address — each shortlet has its own, and it is used in guest directions and on cleaner task cards.
6. Fill in WiFi, directions, house rules and check-in notes. These feed the automated guest messages.
7. Choose the lock provider, then pick the specific lock from the list. See section 8.3.

3.2 Unit fields explained

3.3 Property owners

Owners are the landlords whose properties you manage. Add them under Shortlets → Owners. Beyond contact details, record their bank name, account number and account name — these print on the payout statement.

Owners are automatically linked into the central Contacts ledger, so they appear alongside your other customers and suppliers rather than living in a silo.

3.4 Commission precedence

When a payout is generated, the commission rate is resolved from the most specific setting available:

So a unit with 15% set overrides an owner set to 20%, which in turn overrides the 20% module default. Leave the unit and owner fields blank to simply use the default everywhere.

3.5 Taking a booking

Bookings live under Shortlets → Bookings. Most stays arrive on their own through the channel manager; this is for the ones you take directly — a phone enquiry, a repeat guest, a walk-in.

1. Click New booking and choose the unit and dates.
2. The total prices itself as you type — night by night, so weekend and seasonal rates are already applied. You see what the guest will actually pay before committing.
3. Add the guest's name and contact details. They are linked into your central Contacts ledger.
4. Optionally take a payment there and then; it posts straight into Sales.

Through the stay

Blocking dates without a booking

For maintenance, an owner stay or a deep clean, add a block instead of a dummy booking. Blocks appear on the calendar, feed the availability guard, and go out on your channel feeds so the OTAs stop selling those nights. A block that would overlap a live booking is refused.

4. Channel Manager

4.1 How calendar sync works

Sync uses iCal, the calendar format Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo all publish. It needs no API approval and works with a standard host account. Sync runs in both directions:

4.2 Connecting a channel

1. Go to Channel Manager → Add channel.
2. Select the platform and give the connection a display name, e.g. "Airbnb — main account".
3. Leave sync mode as iCal unless you have API credentials.
4. Set the channel commission % the platform charges you. This feeds the channel mix report.
5. Optionally set a rate markup % so the price pushed to that channel nets out to your direct rate after their commission.
6. Set the sync interval. Thirty minutes suits most operators.

4.3 Mapping a listing

A channel connection alone syncs nothing. You must map each unit to its listing on that channel.

1. Click Map listing.
2. Choose the channel and the unit.
3. Paste the iCal import URL, copied from the OTA's calendar export settings.
4. Save. WaoBiz immediately generates an export feed URL for this listing.

Where to find the import URL on each platform:

4.4 The export feed

Each mapped listing gets a feed URL of the form https://your-domain/api/shortlets/ical/<token>. Copy it from the listing card and paste it into the OTA's calendar import setting.

The feed includes:

• Your direct bookings for that unit
• Holds from every other channel, so each OTA sees the complete picture
• Manual maintenance and owner-stay blocks

4.5 Double-booking prevention

Every attempt to create a booking — whether from the dashboard or your public booking page — checks three sources before it is allowed:

1. Existing local bookings for that unit
2. Imported channel holds from every connected OTA
3. Manual unavailability blocks

If any of the three overlaps the requested dates, the booking is rejected with a message naming the blocker.

4.6 Rate push

Use Push rates on a channel to publish your computed nightly rates, with that channel's markup applied.

4.7 Reading the sync log

The Sync log tab records every attempt. Columns read +added / ~updated / −removed.

A conflict count means an imported reservation overlaps something you already had. The import still records it — the OTA booking exists in the real world whether or not it clashes — but you should resolve the clash immediately.

5. Availability Calendar

Shortlets → Calendar shows a 30-day grid: one row per unit, one column per night. Each booked night is colour-coded by its source, so you can see at a glance which platform is filling your calendar.

Free nights display the current nightly rate in thousands, drawn from the dynamic pricing calendar. If those numbers are missing, run a reprice (section 6.3). Use the arrows to move a month at a time.

6. Dynamic Pricing

6.1 The three pricing layers

Every night in the calendar stores its base rate, the rules that fired, and a plain-English reason, so you can always see why a price is what it is.

6.2 Rule types

Rules apply to all units by default, or you can scope one to a single unit. Priority controls order — higher runs first.

6.3 Running a reprice

Two buttons on the Dynamic Pricing screen:

• Reprice (rules) — free, instant, fully explainable. Use this routinely.
• Reprice with AI — adds the AI refinement. Requires AI pricing enabled in Settings and available credits.

Repricing covers your pricing horizon (90 days by default). Filter to one unit first to reprice just that unit.

6.4 Price floors and ceilings

Settings define a floor and ceiling as multiples of the base rate (0.6× and 2.5× by default). No computed price can fall outside them — the bounds cap both the rules and the AI. This is your protection against a misconfigured rule discounting a unit to nothing.

6.5 Manual overrides

A price you set by hand becomes the final rate and always wins over the suggestion. Overridden nights are tagged manual in the calendar. Clear the override to return that night to automatic pricing.

7. Guest Inbox

7.1 How threads are grouped

Shortlets → Guest Inbox collects every guest conversation into one list, whatever channel it arrived on. Messages are matched to an existing thread in this order:

1. The booking they relate to
2. The platform's own thread ID
3. The guest's phone number or email

This is why a guest who messages you on WhatsApp and later books does not end up with two separate threads. Automated messages are mirrored into the thread too, so you always see the complete history with a guest.

7.2 Replying by channel

7.3 Thread status

Threads are open, pending or closed. Opening a thread clears its unread badge. Close a thread once the guest's question is resolved; it can always be reopened.

8. Automations & Check-In

8.1 Triggers and offsets

An automation is a message template that fires at an offset from a point in the booking. A negative offset means before, positive means after.

Messages are queued the moment a booking is created and sent as each falls due. Cancelling a booking cancels its pending messages automatically.

8.2 Template variables

Wrap variables in double braces. The editor has a clickable list to insert them.

8.3 Smart locks & access codes

Turn on Include the door code for any template that needs to hand over access. Codes are issued per stay and expire at checkout, so a past guest cannot re-enter.

Connecting a lock vendor

Go to Settings → Smart locks and connect an account. Five platforms are supported:

Once an account is connected, open a unit and pick its lock from the dropdown. Each unit points at one specific lock.

What happens on each stay

1. A code is generated for the booking, valid from six hours before arrival to four hours after checkout — so an early arrival or slow departure is not locked out.
2. The code is pushed to the lock.
3. It is sent to the guest at the time your automation specifies.
4. At checkout the code is withdrawn from the lock, not merely marked used.

The On device column on the Access codes tab tells you where each code stands:

8.4 The message queue

The Message queue tab shows every scheduled send and its outcome.

Send due now dispatches everything currently due without waiting for the scheduled job — useful when testing a new template.

9. Cleaning & Operations

9.1 Automatic turnover tasks

When a guest checks out, a turnover cleaning task is created automatically, with a seven-point checklist covering linen, bathroom, kitchen, floors, restocking, damage check and lock-up.

The due time is set from your turnover window (4 hours after checkout by default), with one exception:

9.2 The task board

Four columns track work: Unassigned, Assigned, In progress, Completed.

• Overdue tasks are outlined in red.
• Auto-created tasks carry an auto tag.
• Tasks already charged on a payout show billed and cannot be deleted.
• Cleaners tick checklist items directly on the card as they work.

Besides cleaning, you can raise maintenance, inspection, restock and other tasks manually at any time.

9.3 Team and auto-assignment

Add cleaners and maintenance staff on the Team tab. New turnover tasks are assigned to whichever active cleaner has the fewest open jobs, spreading work evenly without manual dispatch.

If no cleaner is configured, tasks are still created but left unassigned. Removing a team member returns their open tasks to the unassigned pool rather than deleting them.

10. Financial Reporting

10.1 ADR, RevPAR and occupancy

10.2 Why revenue is split by night

Revenue is attributed to the nights actually stayed, not to the date the booking was made. A stay from 28 June to 3 July contributes its June nights to June and its July nights to July.

This is what keeps ADR, RevPAR and occupancy comparable month to month. Attributing the whole booking to one month would inflate that month and leave a hole in the next.

10.3 Channel mix

The Channel mix tab breaks revenue down by source, showing gross revenue, the platform's commission and your net. Bookings traced to an OTA show that platform; everything else counts as Direct.

The By unit tab ranks every apartment by revenue with its own ADR, RevPAR, occupancy and margin, and exports to CSV. The 6-month trend tab charts revenue, margin and occupancy over time.

11. Owner Payouts

11.1 Generating a statement

1. Go to Shortlets → Owner Payouts → Generate statement.
2. Choose the owner and the period. It defaults to last month.
3. Click Generate. The statement is created as a draft.

The calculation is:

Gross booking revenue   (pro-rated to nights within the period)
  − Management commission (unit rate → owner rate → default)
  − Cleaning costs        (completed tasks in the period)
  − Maintenance costs
  − Other costs
  ± Adjustments
  ─────────────────────────
  = Net payable to owner

11.2 Statement lifecycle

11.3 Reading the breakdown

View statement opens the full document: header, the owner's bank details, and every backing line — each booking with its nights and pro-rated revenue, each commission charge, each cleaning and maintenance cost.

It shows nights sold, booking count and the period ADR, and prints cleanly for sending to the landlord. Because every figure traces to a specific booking or task, an owner query can always be answered precisely.

12. Settings Reference

13. Scheduled Jobs

Three background jobs keep the module current. They run automatically on the hosted platform.

Each has a manual equivalent in the interface — Sync now, Send due now, and creating a turnover from a booking — so you never have to wait for the schedule when testing.

14. Troubleshooting

A unit does not appear in the rate calendar

Its nightly rate is zero. Dynamic pricing scales that rate, so with nothing to scale the unit is skipped. Set a rate on the unit and reprice. The units list flags any unit in this state.

A door code did not reach the lock

Check the On device column on Automations → Access codes:

• manual — no vendor is connected for that unit, or no lock was picked on the unit. Expected; set the code on the keypad.
• not sent — the vendor rejected it or was unreachable. It retries automatically up to five times. If it keeps failing, test the connection under Settings → Smart locks; a lock that is offline or out of battery is the usual cause.

Either way the guest still received a code — only the lock is out of step, so setting it by hand resolves it.

An OTA booking did not block my calendar

Check in order:

1. Is the unit mapped to a listing on that channel?
2. Does the mapping have an iCal import URL? The listing card warns when it does not.
3. Does the sync log show a recent successful import? A failed status usually means an expired feed URL — re-copy it from the OTA.
4. Some platforms only refresh their exported feed every few hours. Use Import now to force a pull.

Guests are not receiving messages

1. Confirm Send automated messages is on in Settings — otherwise sends are skipped.
2. Check the message queue for the failure reason. Most failures are a missing guest phone number on the booking.
3. Confirm WhatsApp or SMS credentials are configured on the platform.

The door code shows as a placeholder

Expected behaviour outside the release window. The code resolves only within access code lead time of arrival. Raise that value in Settings if you want codes sent earlier.

"Room is blocked by a <channel> booking"

The double-booking guard is doing its job — an OTA already holds those dates. Check the Imported stays tab. If the OTA booking was cancelled, run Import now to clear the stale hold.

An owner statement shows less revenue than expected

Revenue is pro-rated to nights within the period. A stay spanning the period boundary contributes only its in-period nights — the remainder appears on the adjacent statement. Also confirm every relevant unit is assigned to that owner.

AI repricing did nothing

1. Is Enable AI pricing on in Settings?
2. Does the business have AI credits remaining?
3. Is an AI provider key configured on the platform?

If any is missing, the module falls back to rules-only output and reports this in the result message.

15. Current Limitations

Stated here rather than left to be discovered.

Smart lock coverage

Five platforms are supported: TTLock, Nuki, igloohome, Seam and Tuya. Between them they cover most locks on the market — Seam alone brokers Yale, Schlage, August and others, and Tuya is the white-label behind many unbranded locks. A lock outside all five still works, you just set the code on the keypad yourself.

Two behaviours are worth knowing. igloohome locks are offline by design: they derive their PIN from an algorithm built into the lock, so igloohome's code is used rather than the one WaoBiz generated, and there is nothing to revoke — the PIN simply stops working at the end of its window. Nuki requires six digits not beginning with 1 or 2, so a non-compliant code is adjusted. In both cases the guest receives the code that actually opens the door.

Sync frequency

The background jobs run once daily, because the hosting plan permits daily schedules only. That is fine for turnover tasks and post-stay messages, but it means an OTA booking may go unimported for up to 24 hours, and a door code scheduled for three hours before arrival may be dispatched earlier in the day than intended.

If you sell the same units across several platforms, either raise the schedules on a paid hosting plan, or press Sync now on the Channel Manager before confirming a direct booking.

Booking concurrency

The availability check reads current bookings and then writes the new one. Two people booking the same unit for the same dates in the same instant could in principle both succeed.

Practical effect: very unlikely in normal operation, and the window is narrow. Cross-channel protection against OTA bookings is unaffected — that is the far more common risk and it is fully covered. A database-level constraint is the planned fix.

OTA outbound messaging

Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo do not expose outbound messaging APIs to third-party tools. Replies to those threads are recorded in WaoBiz but must be sent from the platform's own extranet. This is a platform restriction, not a WaoBiz gap.

WaoBiz POS — Shortlets Module User Guide · Version 2.0 · August 2026