Guides

Open a new property end to end

The order to do things in when adding a property to an existing organisation, from creating it to taking the first check-in.

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Who this is for: Owner — most steps need hotel.settings.manage, and creating the property itself needs hotel.create.

By the end of this you have a property that can accept a booking and check a guest into it. Each step names the page that documents it; what is added here is the order, and why it is that order.

This is the sequence for a property added to an organisation that already runs one. Standing up the first one — including finding your way around and bringing a team in from nothing — is your first week on Nerve.

Be honest with yourself about the calendar. Two of these steps wait on other people, and one of them — connecting a channel — is the highest-friction task in the product. The rest is an afternoon.

1. Create the property — Properties and hotel settings#

Everything below hangs off the property record, so nothing else can be done first. Set the time zone and currency now: they are awkward to change once there are postings against them.

2. Install the apps this property will use — Installing and enabling apps for a property#

Do this before inviting anyone. App installation is a feature gate as well as a licence: a screen only appears when its owning app is on and the person's role carries its permission. Invite first and your new manager signs in to a sidebar with holes in it, which reads as a broken account rather than a pending setting — see why your menu differs from a colleague's.

Installation is per property, so the organisation's second hotel does not inherit the first one's apps. The Integration Hub in particular is off on every new property. Install it self-service from Integrations → App Directory — ask about your plan before you need it rather than on the morning you do, in case it sits behind a paywall for your organisation.

3. Set the house terminology — White-label: house terminology#

Before anyone is trained on the default words. Changing vocabulary later is not destructive, but it does mean re-teaching.

4. Create the rooms and room types — Rooms and units#

Availability is computed from room types, so rates in the next step have nothing to attach to until this exists. Compose the units that contain each other — a villa and its bedrooms — now rather than after they have been sold twice.

5. Set rates and availability — Room categories and rate plans, Distribution settings#

A property with rooms but no rates can be assigned but not sold. Set the derived plans up as derived rather than as independent numbers, and set the price guards on the distribution profile before anything automated can reach a channel.

Set the stay-time policies here too, at minimum a house default with a realistic turnaround, so the rack stops proposing same-day back-to-backs housekeeping cannot deliver.

6. Decide the readiness policy — Readiness and the check-in gate#

Whether check-in requires a ready room. Decide it before the first arrival, not during one: the answer changes what your desk staff have to do at the counter, and the override is deliberately visible. See the gate in practice on Check a guest in.

7. Invite the team and assign roles — Team, Roles and what each one can do#

Now that the sidebar they will see is the one you intend. If the defaults do not fit the house, author the narrow role first — roles and custom permission bundles.

Note

On staging no invitation e-mail is sent. The Team screen shows the accept link once, immediately after you create the invite — copy it then.

8. Connect a channel, if you sell through one — Go live on a new channel#

Last, because a channel pushing availability at a property with no rates has nothing to push. Expect it to take longer than everything above it combined: connect, map, certify, then watch a first ARI delivery reach delivered before you trust it.

9. Take the first booking and check it in — Create a reservation, assign it a room, check the guest in#

Charge it and settle it as well — folios, payments, check a guest out. Walk the whole shift once in training, so the readiness and balance gates are met with nobody waiting at the counter: a day at the front desk is that shift in order.

10. Run the first night audit — Running the night audit#

Close the day you just traded and confirm the postings are in the ledger. Do it once deliberately, with the checklist beside you, because the audit closes a day whatever state the house is in — it is a summary, not a gate.

You're done when…#

A reservation created on the new property can be assigned a room, checked in, charged, and checked out to a zero balance — and the resulting postings appear on the ledger.

What's next#