Features
Everything a phone-first front desk needs — and nothing it doesn’t
Ostler was built with a working cottage resort, around the way small hotels actually book: over the phone, held with a deposit, heavy on repeat guests.
The front desk
The phone-call screen is the heart of the app: dates in, price out, one click to hold.
Availability finder & instant quote
Dates and party size in, every open unit with its live price out — seasons, extra-guest fees, minimum nights, and check-in-day rules all applied. One click creates a quote or a hold.
Holds with a clock
A phone reservation holds its dates while the deposit is on the way — for exactly as long as you allow. Expired holds release themselves — and can let the guest know, if you turn that email on. Nothing is sent until you confirm.
Whole-family bookings
One reservation can span several rooms or cottages with different dates and guest counts in each — one confirmation, one bill, one deposit schedule. Moving a guest to another unit partway through a stay is a single action that re-prices if rates differ.
Double-booking is impossible
Availability is enforced by the database itself, not just the calendar view — tested under simultaneous writes. When dates clash, Ostler shows the units that are free for those dates instead of a dead end.
Blocks & closures
Block dates for a closure, maintenance, or an owner stay in seconds — several rooms at once, with a plain-language summary before you save. A booking taken elsewhere goes in the same way, with its confirmation number. Overlaps raise an alert, never a silent conflict.
Waitlist
A guest wants sold-out dates? Note them. When a cancellation frees matching dates, the desk is alerted to phone them.
Money
Exact numbers, integer cents, and a paper trail for every change.
Deposit schedules
A preset schedule — say 30% at booking, the balance 60 days later (never later than check-in) — applied automatically and editable per reservation. A reminder before each due date waits on your Today screen to send — or goes out by itself, if you prefer; past-due deposits surface on the dashboard.
Checks and cash, first-class
Plenty of deposits still arrive by mail. Record a check with its number and the reservation confirms, with every payment on a paper trail.
Taxes that match your books
Each charge category decides which taxes apply — occupancy tax on the room rate but not on dock fees, for example. Per-reservation exemptions print with a reason, never silently.
Security deposits done honestly
Kept apart as a liability, on its own labelled line in the Revenue report. Withholding any part requires a reason that becomes a line item. Cancellations never move money by themselves — a person confirms every refund, with paid-to-date shown.
Branded PDFs
The confirmation PDF carries your logo and colors and rides along with the confirmation email; a printable copy in your colors prints straight from the reservation.
Email — the heartbeat
Professional, branded email from your own address, set up by a wizard that is not done until a test email has landed — that is the product’s proudest feature.
A setup wizard that actually finishes
It asks one question — “what do you use for email today?” — and walks Gmail, Outlook/Microsoft 365, your website host’s email, or Resend, step by step, with drawings of the Google, Microsoft and Resend screens you’ll see. Outlook and Microsoft 365 need no password at all: you sign in and allow Ostler to send as you. Gmail offers Sign in with Google too; until Google finishes reviewing Ostler it may not let you in yet, so the wizard also shows you how to make an app password instead. It isn’t done until a test email has landed in your inbox.
A ready starter set
Confirmation, payment reminder, receipt, welcome (a week before arrival), quote-expired, cancellation, and post-stay thank-you — pre-written in a calm voice, editable with live preview and real sample data. Add templates of your own too. Every email starts switched off; turn on the ones you want. One that’s on waits on your Today screen for a click when it comes due — or set the welcome, the thank-you and your own templates to go out by themselves a chosen number of days before or after a stay, and reminders a set number of days before each deposit is due. The confirmation, cancellation and receipt go out when you send them from the reservation.
An outbox that tells the truth
Every message shows queued, sending, sent, or failed — with a plain-language reason and a retry button. A failed payment reminder raises a dashboard alert, because a silent failure is a lost deposit.
Couples get both copies
Every email on the guest profile receives every message. When two people share the booking, both inboxes have the confirmation.
Catch-up on launch
Reminders and welcomes come due at fixed times; a computer that slept through them catches up at next launch — automatic emails send exactly once, manual ones appear on Today — and anything that no longer applies is skipped.
The daily rhythm
The dashboard answers “what needs me today?” before coffee.
Today dashboard
Arrivals with one-tap check-in, departures, same-day turnovers, holds expiring within 48 hours, past-due deposits, and any email that failed — plus a one-click printable day sheet for the desk.
Housekeeping status
Every unit is clean or dirty; check-out flips it automatically and one tap clears it. The housekeeping report lists each day’s turnovers, flagging the same-day ones.
Maintenance log
Log an issue with a priority and a cost; link it to a unit block if the room must come out of service. The third fridge repair in a year gets flagged — replace, don’t repair.
Phone-call forms
Build simple forms — boat registration, early check-in requests — that staff fill during the call. Responses live on the reservation, printable, showing who filled each one in and who last changed it.
Guests & records
Heavy repeat business deserves a real guest book.
Guest profiles
Both names on the booking, mailing address for the check, every email and phone, stay history, and internal notes. Flags for VIPs and — when needed — a caution flag, or a ban that only a manager can override.
Twelve reports, honest numbers
Housekeeping, pending deposits, reservations, payments, revenue, taxes collected, sales, night audit, maintenance, occupancy with prior-year comparison, confirmations not sent, and incidents — filterable, exportable to CSV and Excel. The exports carry every column, so a bookkeeper can map them into QuickBooks on import.
Every change on the record
Modifications re-price through the same engine, recompute the balance, and write a revision — who, when, before, after. After any guest-visible change, one click sends the updated confirmation so the guest’s copy is never stale.
Trust the machine
Software an innkeeper can bet the season on.
Backups as a feature, not a chore
Automatic rolling backups, one-click backup to a USB drive or synced folder, a tested restore flow, and an automatic snapshot before any update that changes the database, restored by itself if the update goes wrong.
Staff accounts & real permissions
Owner, manager, and staff roles enforced by the app itself — refunds and rate changes stay with the people you choose, and it’s enforcement, not just hidden buttons.
Runs on your computer
Booking, checking in, printing, reporting — all local. The internet is needed to send email, and for a license check every six hours that can wait up to two days if the connection is down. Updates come from this site.
What Ostler Desktop doesn’t do
No online booking widget, no OTA sync, no texting, no multi-computer use — yet. Those need servers running all the time, and Ostler Desktop’s promise is that the license check is the only thing it needs ours for. The pricing page lists every gap honestly, next to what’s included.