How to get going with Makestays.

1. Press Start free trial and create your account with your name, email and a password. No card to start.
2. Add your first property: paste the link of your Airbnb listing and press Import. Photos, description, beds, amenities and address are copied once, and you can change all of them later. A home that is not on Airbnb can be added from scratch under Properties.
3. Set your nightly price. In India the GST rate for that price shows as you type.
4. Pick a look for your booking site: one of nine themes and an accent colour.
5. Add your payment keys now, or choose Add them later (see Connect payments below).
6. Your site is ready at a free makestays.com address. To use your own domain, open Settings, Domain.

After that, Today shows arrivals, departures and anything that needs you. On a phone, add the host app to your home screen from the browser's share menu so it opens like an app and can send you alerts.

Guests pay into your own account. Makestays never holds the money and takes no commission.

In India: Razorpay

1. Sign up at razorpay.com and finish their business checks. Razorpay says this usually takes 1 to 5 days.
2. In the Razorpay dashboard, open Account and settings, then API keys, and generate a key.
3. In Makestays, open Settings, Razorpay and paste the key ID and the key secret. Razorpay shows the secret only once, so copy it straight away.

Guests can then pay by UPI, cards and netbanking, and each paid booking gets a GST invoice.

Outside India: Stripe

1. In Makestays, open Settings, Stripe and paste a secret key from your Stripe account. A restricted key works.
2. Makestays checks the key and sets up the connection on your Stripe account for you.
3. If you have both Razorpay and Stripe, choose which one each property uses on the same page.

Both keys are stored encrypted.

1. Open Properties and press Add a property.
2. Choose Import from Airbnb and paste the listing link, or Start from scratch and type the name, town, bedrooms, guests and price per night.
3. Open the property to fill in the rest: Details, Content, Photos, Pricing and Taxes.

Makestays never copies prices from Airbnb: you set your own direct-booking price.

Change dates

1. Open Calendar. On a laptop every property is a row; on a phone, pick a property and see one month.
2. Tap a start date and an end date (on a laptop, drag across the dates), then press Edit.
3. Open or block the dates (with a reason and a note), close them to arrival or departure, set a price per night, or set a minimum and maximum stay. Save.

Set your prices

Open the property, then Pricing: the nightly price, weekend nights, cleaning fee, GST, discounts for longer stays and seasons, with a preview of what a guest pays.

Stay rules

On the property's Dates and restrictions page, Calendar rules sets turnover days between stays, how much notice you need before an arrival and how far ahead guests can book.

Other calendars

Until the channel manager is live, add the iCal links of your Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo calendars so their bookings block your dates, and give them your Makestays iCal link. They sync every 15 minutes.

Invite your team

1. Open Settings, Team and press Invite someone.
2. Enter their name and email, choose a role (manager, front desk, cleaner or viewer) and the properties they can see.
3. They get an email with a link to join. Each person signs in with their own account.

A cleaner sees Tasks and Guest issues. Front desk handles reservations, the inbox, the calendar and tasks. Revenue is shown only to the owner, managers and viewers.

Cleaning tasks

Every checkout creates a turnover clean, due before the next arrival, with a checklist. Open Tasks, Turnover settings to change the checklist and the default cleaner for each property. Tasks can also be added by hand, or made from a guest issue.

Every stay has its own check-in page. The guest gives an arrival time, the names of everyone staying, a photo of each adult's ID, and agrees to the house rules.

1. Send the page with your check-in message: in Automations, add the Guest portal link to the message.
2. When a guest has sent their details, they appear under Guest check-ins to review on the Tasks page and on the reservation. Approve them before the guest arrives.
3. With smart locks connected (Settings, Smart locks), each stay gets its own door code, live from check-in to check-out, which you can add to the message with the door code variable.

ID photos are deleted 30 days after check-out by default. Hosts on Stripe can switch on automatic ID checks through Stripe Identity in Settings, Stripe.

Every new account starts with a 30-day free trial of Pro. No card to start. After the trial you choose a plan for your properties:

• Direct, ₹499 per property per month ($9 outside India): your own commission-free booking site.
• Pro, ₹1,499 per property per month ($19 outside India): the full property management system.

From the sixth property the price per property goes down in bands. Annual billing: 10 months for 12. In India you are billed in rupees with 18% GST; outside India in US dollars. There is no fee per booking.

See your plan and invoices in Settings, Billing. Cancel any time from there. The pricing page has a calculator for your number of properties.