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Getting Started with Ostler Desktop

Plan for about an hour. Ostler runs on your computer and keeps your data on your computer — you can do everything below without the internet except connecting email.

Before you start, have handy

  • Your logo (PNG) and brand color
  • Your room list with rates: nightly (or weekly) rate, how many guests it covers, extra-guest fee, season dates, and any check-in-day rules (e.g. Saturdays only in summer)
  • Your local tax rates (and any exemptions)
  • The email account you already use for the hotel

Step 1 — Install & activate (5 min)

Download from the website, install, open. Paste the license key from your purchase email into Activate — it happens right on your computer, and everything works from minute one.

Step 2 — Your property (5 min)

Name, address, time zone, check-in/check-out times, logo and color. Your logo and color appear on every email and document your guests receive — it looks like your hotel, not like software.

Step 3 — Taxes (5 min)

Add each tax (e.g. Sales Tax 7%, Occupancy Tax 4%) and mark any you're exempt from. Later, each pricing category chooses which taxes apply to it — occupancy tax on the room rate but not on dock fees, for example.

Step 4 — Rooms & rates (15 min)

Add each room/cottage: name, how many it sleeps, photos if you like. Then its rate seasons: dates, nightly rate, how many guests that covers, the per-person fee above that, minimum nights, and — if you run weekly changeovers — which days guests may check in. Quote weekly? Enter the nightly equivalent; Ostler shows weekly totals. The app prices every reservation from these rules and warns you if any dates have no rate.

Step 5 — Pricing categories & policies (5 min)

Pin your everyday charges (Room Rate, Extra Guests, Docking…) so they're always on the reservation form; save your common extras; set your security deposit. Write your policies once (cancellation, deposit, pets, check-in instructions) — they print on every confirmation automatically.

Step 6 — Deposits & holds (5 min)

How long a phone reservation is held while you wait for the deposit (e.g. 7 days — after that it expires on its own and the guest gets a polite email), your deposit template (e.g. 30% at booking, balance 14 days before arrival), and how many days before a due date the reminder goes out.

Step 7 — Email (10–15 min — the important one)

The wizard asks one question: "What do you use for email today?"

  • Gmail or Google Workspace — it shows you how to create an "app password" (a special password just for Ostler), you paste it, done. Emails come from the address you already use.
  • Outlook / Microsoft 365 — no password to find. Press Sign in with Microsoft, sign in on Microsoft's own page in your browser, and allow Ostler to send mail as you. That's the whole step. (Microsoft is switching off the old password method for outside apps, so signing in is both simpler and the one that keeps working. If your organisation asks an administrator to approve new apps first, there's a button that emails them the exact steps.)
  • Email through your website company (GoDaddy, Namecheap, IONOS, Bluehost, Hostinger, etc.) — pick your provider from the list and enter the password you use for webmail. If your address turns out to be run by Microsoft behind the scenes — common if you bought email alongside a website — Ostler notices and points you at the Microsoft sign-in instead, rather than letting you set up something that would stop working later.
  • "Set me up with something better" — the wizard creates a free professional sending account with you and handles the technical records, with a button to email those instructions to your web person. Whichever path: you finish by sending yourself a test email and confirming it arrived. If it doesn't turn up, the wizard has a short list of the usual causes for the path you picked. Then review the ready-made templates — confirmation (with a printable PDF attached), reminder, receipt, welcome (7 days before arrival), post-stay review request — tweak the wording, add attachments like a directions PDF, and preview each with real sample data. Couples with two emails both get copies automatically.

Step 8 — Your team & your safety net (5 min)

Create logins for your staff right on this machine and choose what each can do (staff can take bookings and payments; refunds and rate changes stay with you). Ostler shows you a one-time recovery code — print it or write it down now; it, or your license key, gets you back in if a password is ever forgotten. Backups run automatically on this computer; also point one at a USB drive or synced folder — one click, and worth it.

Locking the file itself (optional). Settings → Encryption scrambles the reservation file and its backups, so guest names, addresses and stay history can't be read out of them — most usefully from a backup on a USB stick, or from this computer's drive if it's ever removed, sold or thrown away. It does not stop someone using this computer while you're signed in to Windows; your Windows password and Ostler's own auto-lock cover that. Turning it on prints a database key: that piece of paper is the only way to open your backups on a replacement computer, and nobody — including us — can reissue it. Keep it wherever the insurance papers live.

Leaving Ostler running. Scheduled emails, hold expiry and automatic backups only happen while Ostler is open. Settings → Deposits & holds has "Start Ostler when the computer starts", which we'd recommend: it opens quietly in the notification area each morning, and closing the window leaves it running there. Use Quit Ostler from that icon when you really want it off.

Step 9 — Bring in your bookings & take a test drive (15 min)

Import your upcoming reservations and repeat guests from a spreadsheet (we provide the template; anything that conflicts is listed for you, never silently dropped), type in a handful by hand, and block dates for anything living on Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia or Booking.com — or paste your Airbnb/Vrbo calendar link once and those dates block themselves. Then run one fake booking end to end with your own email: book it, hold it, record a fake deposit check, watch the confirmation arrive with the PDF, cancel it. Now it's yours.

Your day with Ostler

Phone rings → the guest's history pops up as you type → dates in, price out → save as a hold → the deposit email sends itself. Guests keep their reservation in their inbox: the confirmation with its PDF is their copy, and whenever you change a booking, Ostler offers to send the updated one with a single click — so what the guest holds is never out of date. Check arrives → record it with the check number → confirmed, receipt sent. Each morning the dashboard shows arrivals, departures, same-day turnovers, and anything needing you. Welcome emails, reminders, review requests, expired holds — all automatic, even if the computer was asleep; Ostler catches up the moment it opens. Something breaks in a cottage? Log it with a photo; the third fridge repair gets flagged so you replace instead of repair. Month end, hand your bookkeeper the reports — the CSV and Excel exports carry every column QuickBooks (or any bookkeeping software) needs on import.

Removing Ostler from a computer

Your reservations don't live inside the Ostler application — they sit in a separate data folder, which is why moving to a newer version, or reinstalling after a problem, picks up exactly where you left off. Removing the app therefore leaves your data behind on purpose. Deleting it is a separate, deliberate step, and the two computers ask for it in different places.

On Windows. Uninstall Ostler the usual way (Settings → Apps → Ostler → Uninstall). The uninstaller asks whether to delete your data as well: leave the box unchecked to keep it, or tick it and confirm to remove the reservations database, the automatic backups and the saved credentials. Automatic updates uninstall silently in the background and never delete anything.

On a Mac. A Mac has no uninstaller — you remove an app by dragging it to the Trash, and nothing gets the chance to ask you anything. So Ostler asks first: Settings → Backups → Removing Ostler from this Mac → "Remove Ostler data from this Mac". Confirm, and Ostler deletes its data and closes; then drag Ostler to the Trash. Do it in that order — once the app is in the Trash, the button is gone with it.

If the app is already gone and you'd like the data cleared up afterwards, open Finder → Go → Go to Folder…, paste ~/Library/Application Support/Ostler, and move that folder to the Trash. Two smaller leftovers you can ignore or tidy as you prefer: an entry called Ostler Safe Storage in Keychain Access (the lock the saved credentials were kept behind — meaningless once the folder is gone), and ~/Library/Preferences/com.greulichlabs.ostler.plist.

What is never deleted, on either computer: backups you copied to a USB drive, an external disk or a synced folder, and any portable backup file you saved yourself. Those are yours, in your own folders, and no uninstall touches them — so if you might want this data one day, save a portable backup before you remove anything.

Help

Every screen's ? opens the matching section of this guide. Support: support@getostler.com — include your hotel name and, for reservations, the confirmation code (e.g. SSR-2431).