How to add and manage manual bookings

Sometimes you need to add a booking yourself—whether it's a direct reservation from a guest who contacted you outside of Airbnb or Booking.com, or simply to block specific dates on your calendar. With Nowistay, you can easily create manual bookings that sync across all your connected channels.

Before you start

Manual bookings are only available for properties connected with Nowistay PMS. If your property is connected through another channel manager (Beds24, Smoobu, Lodgify) or direct OTA without Nowistay PMS, this feature won't be available.

Not sure if your property uses Nowistay PMS? Check the Properties section and go to the "Synchronization" item of the proeprty menu.

How to create a manual booking

1. Go to the Bookings section from the left-hand menu.
2. Click the "Create Booking" button at the top of the page.
3. A panel will open on the right side. Start by selecting the property for which you want to create the booking.
4. Choose the arrival (check-in) and departure (check-out) dates. Dates that are already booked will appear as unavailable in red in the calendar (only for check-in).
5. Fill in the guest information: first name, last name, email, phone number, number of adults and children. All of these are optional, but we recommend at least adding a name.
6. Review the pricing. The total amount is calculated automatically based on the nightly rates configured in your Nowistay PMS, plus any cleaning fee and local taxes. You can edit any of these values manually if needed.
7. Optionally, set the check-in and check-out times, the guest's language, and address.
8. Choose the booking status: confirmed (default), pending, cancelled, or unavailable.
9. Click "Create" to create your booking.

What happens when you create a manual booking?

When you create a confirmed manual booking, two important things happen automatically:

• Availability is updated on all channels: the dates you selected will be blocked on Airbnb, Booking.com, and any other channel connected through Nowistay PMS. This prevents double bookings.
• A cleaning task is created automatically (if you have cleaning automation enabled for that property). The cleaning task will be scheduled for the departure date and assigned to your team following your usual automation rules.

How pricing works

When you select dates, Nowistay automatically fetches the nightly rates from your Nowistay PMS configuration and calculates a suggested total. The total is computed as:

Total = (nightly rate x number of nights) + cleaning fee + local taxes

You are free to edit any of these values. If you change the total amount manually, the nightly rate will be recalculated accordingly. If you change the cleaning fee or taxes, the total will update automatically (unless you've already edited it manually).

If rates are not configured in your PMS for the selected dates, you can simply enter the amounts manually.

The "Silent" option

You may notice a "Silent" checkbox when creating or editing a booking. Here's what it does:

• Unchecked (default): when the booking is created and a cleaning task is generated, your team members will receive notifications (email and/or WhatsApp) about the new task—just like they would for any booking coming from Airbnb or Booking.com.
• Checked: the cleaning task is still created, but no notification is sent to your team. This is useful when you want to create a booking quietly—for example, when you plan to assign the cleaning task yourself later, or when you're adding past bookings and don't want to spam your team with old notifications.

Editing a manual booking

You can modify a manual booking at any time:

1. Go to the Bookings section.
2. Click on the booking you want to edit.
3. Click the "Edit" button.
4. Update the fields you need—dates, guest info, pricing, status, etc.
5. Click "Save".

When you update the dates of a confirmed booking, the availability on all connected channels is automatically adjusted: the old dates are released and the new dates are blocked.

If you change the status (for example, from confirmed to cancelled), the blocked dates will be released and become available again on all channels.

Important: only manual bookings can be edited

Please note that only bookings you created manually on Nowistay can be modified or deleted. Bookings that were pulled from Airbnb, Booking.com, or any other external channel cannot be edited from Nowistay. To modify those bookings, you need to make the changes directly on the original platform (Airbnb, Booking.com, etc.), and the updates will sync back to Nowistay automatically.

Need help?

If you have any questions about manual bookings, feel free to contact us at hello@nowistay.com. We're happy to help!