Everything you need to know about using Motel Light.
The core of Motel Light is managing your bookings efficiently. Here's how to handle the reservation lifecycle:
Navigate to the New Booking page. Select the check-in and check-out dates, then choose an available room. Fill in the guest details. If the guest has stayed before, their information will auto-populate as you type their name.
On the Dashboard or Reservations page, find the guest's booking. Click on it to open the details modal and click Check In. This will update the room status to 'Occupied'.
When a guest is ready to leave, open their reservation and click Check Out. The system will calculate the final balance and prompt you to mark the room as 'Dirty' for housekeeping.
You can change dates or rooms by clicking the Edit button within a reservation modal. The system will automatically check for conflicts before allowing the change.
Setting up your location correctly is vital for smooth operations. Follow these steps to get started:
Go to the Rooms page. Here you can add your rooms, specify their types (e.g., King, Double Queen), and set their base prices. You can also list amenities for each room type.
Navigate to the Staff page to invite your team. You can assign different roles:
On the Location page, you can update your motel's contact information, address, and upload a hero image for your public booking portal.
Adding a staff member is a single step — no separate approval is needed once they've been invited.
Go to the Staff page and click Add Staff. Enter their name, email address, and assign a role (Admin, Front Desk, Housekeeping, or Maintenance). They'll immediately appear in your staff list with an Invited status.
Motel Light automatically sends an invitation email to that address with a sign-in link for your location. If they already have a Motel Light account, they just sign in. If they're new, they can create a password right there to sign up — either way, they should use the exact email address you invited.
As soon as they sign in with the invited email, they're automatically granted the role you assigned — there's no admin approval step to complete afterward. Their status on the Staff page updates from Invited to Active once they've logged in.
You can update a staff member's role or remove their access at any time from the Staff page using the edit and remove icons next to their name.
Motel Light provides a public-facing portal where guests can browse available rooms and make their own reservations.
Your Location Slug is a unique identifier for your motel. It must contain alphanumeric characters only (no hyphens or special characters). It is used to generate your public booking URL. For example, if your slug is sunsetmotel, your public portal URL will be /portal/sunsetmotel. You can share this link on your website, social media, or business cards.
If you prefer a custom URL (e.g., bookings.yourmotel.com) forwarded to your Motel Light portal, we offer this as a premium service. Please contact our support team at support@motellight.com for setup and pricing details.
When a guest makes a reservation through the public portal, it is created with a Pending status. This allows you to review the booking, verify details, and ensure room availability before officially confirming it. You can manage these in the Reservations page.
The system automatically handles communication during the booking process:
Motel Light allows you to configure customizable base room rates, seasonal pricing, and transaction taxes/fees.
On the Rates & Pricing page, under the Taxes & Additional Fees section, you can configure your motel's Stay Tax rate. This percentage is automatically applied to the base stay subtotal of all reservations. This rate is permanent and cannot be deleted, but it can be set to 0% if tax is not required.
You can create additional fees for things like cleaning charges, pet fees, or guest amenities. Click Add Custom Fee and configure:
When booking from the front-desk console, the final step shows a breakdown. You can toggle optional custom fees (like pet fees) on or off depending on the guest's needs. On the public booking portal, all "Always" fees and the stay tax are automatically calculated and added to the guest's reservation request.
Welcome to the first public release of Motel Light! We are thrilled to have you as a beta partner.
Since this is our first release, you may encounter minor issues or find areas we can improve. If you are a logged-in user, please report any bugs or requests by creating a support ticket in your Admin Console under the Help & Support page. Otherwise, please reach out to us directly via email at support@motellight.com.
Your hands-on feedback is extremely valuable to us as we prepare for our general production release. Thank you for helping build a better, simpler management system for independent motels everywhere!