Check-in & Scanning

Run check-in and room assignments

See every stay on a calendar, assign guests to rooms, check them in and out, and handle cancellations.

4 min readUpdated 2026-07-29

The Reservations page is BrightStar's front desk. It exists to answer the two questions any property actually asks itself each morning: who is arriving today, and which room are they in.

It opens on an operations panel of six counts, ordered by urgency, then gives you the stays themselves as either a list or an occupancy calendar. Bookings that came in through an event and standalone stays booked directly both land here, so you're working from one picture of the property instead of checking two different places to find out if a room is free.

What the six operations numbers are telling you

The panel is ordered by urgency on purpose, so the thing you need to act on fastest sits at the top.

Arrivals today and departures today are your two action lists — who you're greeting, and the checkouts that create the turnover you need to plan around before the next guest shows up. In house tonight answers a different question: not who's checking in or out, but how many people are actually on the property right now.

Needs room assignment exists because BrightStar places most bookings into a specific room automatically at the moment they're paid, and a small number can't be placed that way. Those sit in this count until a person looks at them, and the count links straight to the calendar so you can act on it without hunting for the booking.

Rooms out of service covers anything blocked for maintenance or staff. It's counted separately so a blocked room reads as unavailable rather than as an empty room you might try to sell by mistake.

Arrivals in the next 7 days is the only number here that isn't asking for action today — it's for looking a week out, so you can plan staffing or turnover before the week is on top of you.

How to work a check-in day

A normal day at the desk moves through the panel and the calendar in the same order every time.

1Open Reservations from the Stays area of your dashboard.
2Check the operations panel first — anything needing action is highlighted, and a calm row of zeros means there's nothing to chase.
3Switch to the calendar view to see the room map: every room down one side, every night across the top, each booking drawn as a band across the nights it covers.
4Open a guest to see their booking, assign or reassign their room, change their arrival or departure dates, or leave a staff note.
5Check them in when they arrive. Check them out when they leave. Mark a no-show if they never appear.
6Every one of those actions has an undo, because a busy front desk presses the wrong button sometimes, and you need to be able to correct it rather than leave a wrong record standing.

How room assignment, moves, and blocks actually work

Most bookings get a specific room the moment they're paid — BrightStar assigns automatically wherever it can. The ones that can't be placed that way are what show up in the needs-assignment count, and you place them by hand from the guest panel or directly on the calendar.

From that same guest panel you can move someone to a different room, or change their arrival or departure dates — useful when a group decides they want to be together, or a room turns out not to suit a guest after all.

Blocking a room takes it out of the pool entirely. You'd use it for a unit that's under maintenance, held for staff, or one you deliberately keep back from sale. A block occupies its nights on the calendar exactly the way a guest booking would, so nothing else can be sold into it while it's active.

Cancelled bookings become read-only. Their history stays visible on the calendar and in the guest record, but no further check-in, check-out, or reassignment can be applied to them — the record is closed, not deleted.

If a guest's stay came through an event, BrightStar won't let you cancel it from the Reservations page — and that's deliberate, not a missing feature. Their money lives on the event order, not on the stay itself. Cancelling here would release their room while their event order kept the payment, leaving you with an empty bed and a guest who's still been charged. Refund that order instead, from the event's Orders page — the refund cancels the stay and returns the money as one action, so the room is never freed without the guest also being made whole. A paid standalone stay, booked directly with no event attached, works differently and does cancel from this page. The order there matters too: the refund runs first, and the room is only released once that refund has actually succeeded — never before it.

Common questions

Where do I check guests into their rooms on BrightStar?

On the Reservations page in the Stays area of your organizer dashboard. It shows arrivals, departures and who is in house today, and you check a guest in from their booking panel. The same panel handles check-out and marking a no-show, and every one of those actions has an undo. This is separate from event ticket scanning — it records occupancy of a room, not admission to a session.

These actions are ordered so they can't be applied out of sequence, which matters once several staff share one desk. You can't check someone in after checking them out without first undoing the check-out, can't check out someone who never checked in, and can't mark a no-show after arrival. Cancelled bookings stay read-only, so the record reflects what actually happened, not the order buttons were pressed in.

How do I see which rooms are occupied on a given night?

Switch the BrightStar Reservations page to calendar view. It draws a room map — every room on the property down one axis, every night across the other — with each booking shown as a band across the nights it covers. Blocked rooms appear too, so a unit that is out of service for maintenance reads as unavailable rather than as empty.

Because each stay is drawn as a band running from arrival night to departure night, you can see at a glance where a turnover is tight and where a room sits empty between two bookings. Blocked rooms use the same visual language, so a room held for maintenance reads as occupied rather than as available space you might accidentally try to sell.

Are guests assigned to rooms automatically?

Mostly, yes. BrightStar assigns a specific room at the moment a booking is paid where it can. The ones it cannot place are surfaced in the needs-assignment count on the operations panel, and you place them yourself from the guest panel or the calendar. You can also reassign any guest to a different room later, which is what you use when a group wants to be together or a room turns out to be unsuitable.

That automatic placement happens the instant payment clears, which is also the moment BrightStar knows the booking is real rather than an abandoned attempt. Whatever can't be placed then waits in the needs-assignment count until a person looks at it, and the same guest panel you'd use to place a new arrival is what you use later to move someone once they're already checked in.

Why can I not cancel a guest's stay from the reservations page?

Because their booking came through an event, and their money lives on the event order rather than on the stay. Cancelling from the reservations page would release the bed while the event order kept the payment — a cancellation without a refund, which BrightStar refuses to perform. Refund that order from the event's Orders page instead: the refund cancels the stay and returns the money as one action.

A paid standalone stay, booked directly with no event attached, also cancels from this page — refund first, room released only once it succeeds. An unpaid hold is simpler: BrightStar closes any open payment session before releasing it, so a guest can't pay into a booking that no longer exists, and receives a note confirming they weren't charged.

Can I block a room so nobody books it?

Yes. BrightStar lets you block rooms for maintenance, for staff, or for any unit you want to hold back. A blocked room occupies its nights on the calendar the same way a guest booking does, so nothing can be sold into it, and it is counted separately on the operations panel as out of service rather than being mistaken for availability.

A block behaves on the calendar exactly like a paid stay: it takes up the nights so nobody else can be sold into them, which keeps a room you're repairing, staffing, or holding back from being booked by mistake. Because it's tracked as out of service on its own, a gap in the room map reads as intentional rather than as a booking you might be missing.

Do I need Elevate to use the front-desk tools?

Yes. The Stays tools on BrightStar, including reservations, the room map and the day-of operations, are part of the Elevate feature set. The pages stay visible as a preview on other plans so you can see what they do, but the tools themselves unlock when you run on Elevate.

Seeing the pages before you're on Elevate is intentional: it lets you check whether the room map, the operations panel, and check-in and check-out match how your property actually runs before you commit to the plan that includes them. Once you're on Elevate, nothing about the workflow changes — the same Reservations page, the same panel, the same calendar — it simply becomes active instead of a preview.

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