Beds24 tutorial: how to set up Beds24, step by step

Before you start: what to prepare

Beds24 is a PMS and channel manager you set up yourself. “Setup is free and you can do it yourself”, says its introduction: you need internet access and some comfort with online instructions (Beds24 wiki). It goes much faster if you gather this first:

• Your room list: each type of room or unit, how many of each, the maximum number of guests and the beds.
• Your rates for at least the next twelve months: seasons, weekend prices, minimum stays, and the conditions you sell, such as flexible, non-refundable or breakfast included.
• Photos and descriptions in every language you sell in, with room names a guest understands.
• Your channel logins: the Booking.com extranet, the Airbnb account that owns your listings, and any other site you sell on.
• A payment account, ideally Stripe, plus your deposit and cancellation rules.
• Your tax rules: your VAT rate, and how your municipality calculates its city or tourist tax.
• Upcoming bookings taken elsewhere, so that nothing is booked twice when you switch on.

The Beds24 control panel uses the English number format: type decimals with a full stop, not a comma (99.50, not 99,50), as its setup guide points out.

Step 1: account and property

Start in (SETTINGS) > ACCOUNT. Beds24’s initial setup guide has you check the look of the control panel, the address that sends guest emails, host notifications, account access (password and two-factor authentication) and privacy rules. It recommends different email addresses for sending and receiving, because some email programs, Gmail for example, hide incoming mail sent from the same address.

Then create the property, in one of three ways:

• Import from Airbnb: Beds24 creates a property with a room from your listing, or adds the listing as a room to a property you already have.
• Import from Booking.com: your property comes over from your Booking.com account.
• Create it by hand in (SETTINGS) > PROPERTIES, then complete (SETTINGS) > PROPERTIES > DESCRIPTION.

One property or several? Hotels and B&Bs are usually one property with several rooms. But if your units have different hotel or property codes on Booking.com, Beds24 says they must be set up as separate properties, so that each one can be connected. Each property can then have its own booking page, or you can use one page that lists them all.

Selling in several languages? Tick them in (SETTINGS) BOOKING ENGINE > INTERNATIONALIZATION. Beds24 then adds a tab per language to your descriptions and notifications, and each tab has to be filled in.

Step 2: room types and units

In Beds24, a “room” is any part of your property that can be booked on its own; it does not have to be a physical room. A room with a quantity above one is a room type: three identical doubles are one room type with a quantity of 3 (Beds24 wiki). You create them in (SETTINGS) > PROPERTIES > ROOMS, with a name and a quantity for each (setup guide).

• Holiday rental let as a whole? You still need one room: as Beds24 puts it, that room “is what the guest books”.
• Copying saves time: a copied room takes all its settings along. If rooms should share linked prices, remove the prices before you copy.
• Offers are “the price combined with certain conditions”. Every room has a standard offer; add more in (SETTINGS) > PROPERTIES > ROOMS > OFFERS, for example a non-refundable rate or one with breakfast.
• Names guests understand. Internal codes such as “XGL” or “DBLV”, which we see in real Beds24 accounts, mean nothing to a guest: use clear names and real descriptions.

Step 3: prices and availability, so guests never see “No price found”

This step decides whether you get bookings at all. Beds24 says it plainly: “Without prices the system can not show availability.” Without a price, Beds24 also sends no availability to your channels (Beds24 wiki). There are two kinds of prices (setup guide):

The price setup wizard walks you through it. When a room shows no price, click Price Check on the CALENDAR or SUPPORT page, then Calculate: Beds24 shows why no price was found, or how a price is calculated. Availability follows from the quantity of each room minus its bookings; to close rooms without a booking, lower the number in the “Inventory” row of the CALENDAR.

Then test like a guest: open your booking page in a private window and search 2 nights for 2 adults, about 30, 60 and 90 days ahead. A room type with no price on all three dates cannot be sold. Our guide to “No price found” in Beds24 covers every cause and fix.

Enter prices at least as far ahead as your guests book, and repeat the three-date test after every season change: a missing or expired rate is the usual reason a room stops selling.

Step 4: connect Booking.com, Airbnb and other channels

Connect channels only once rooms and prices are right. They are set up in (SETTINGS) > CHANNEL MANAGER, and connecting one is mostly mapping: telling Beds24 which room on Booking.com or Airbnb matches which Beds24 room. Beds24 advises setting up your rooms as close as possible to the way they are set up on your channels (setup guide).

1. Connect the channel and map every room, following the Beds24 page for that channel (channel list).
2. Import upcoming bookings. For Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia, Beds24 can import all upcoming bookings and recommends doing so; the button, in (SETTINGS) > CHANNEL MANAGER > AIRBNB/BOOKING.COM/EXPEDIA, works while the channel is set up but not yet activated.
3. Add your other bookings: upload a .csv file in (SETTINGS) > PROPERTIES, or click the suitcase icon in the CALENDAR.
4. Activate, then check that each channel shows the prices and availability you expect.

Each channel has its quirks: see our guides to Beds24 and Booking.com, Beds24 and Airbnb, and how the Beds24 channel manager works.

Step 5: payments, deposits and taxes

To collect payments on direct bookings, connect a payment processor in (SETTINGS) BOOKING ENGINE > DEPOSIT COLLECTION DIRECT BOOKINGS. Beds24 calls Stripe its “preferred partner which offers the best functionality” (setup guide); PayPal works too.

Then decide what guests pay when they book: nothing, a deposit, the full amount, or a card held as a guarantee. Our Beds24 deposit guide compares the options and the Stripe settings behind them.

Beds24 handles two kinds of taxes differently (Beds24 wiki). VAT included in your prices is set per property, in (SETTINGS) PROPERTIES > DESCRIPTION. City or tourist tax is added to the price as an obligatory upsell item in (SETTINGS) BOOKING ENGINE > UPSELL ITEMS, charged per day or once, per adult, per person or per room. Guests should see that tax before they pay, not at check-in: our guide to the Beds24 tourist tax explains how.

Step 6: your booking page and website

Every Beds24 account includes a booking page. Its settings are in (SETTINGS) BOOKING ENGINE > PROPERTY BOOKING PAGE (layout, style, content, behaviour), and its address looks like https://beds24.com/booking2.php?propid=… (Beds24 wiki). Put that link behind the “Book now” buttons on your website, in your Google Business Profile and in your emails.

To take bookings on your own site, Beds24 offers widgets (buttons, boxes, strips, calendars) in (SETTINGS) BOOKING ENGINE > BOOKING WIDGETS; you need to be able to edit your site’s HTML to install them (setup guide). For the details, see how to customize the Beds24 booking page, the Beds24 booking widget, Beds24 on WordPress or, if you have no website yet, your website builder options.

Last, the messages guests receive: confirmation messages in (SETTINGS) > GUEST MANAGEMENT > CONFIRMATION MESSAGES, and automatic emails in (SETTINGS) > GUEST MANAGEMENT > AUTO ACTIONS. Both use templates and variables, explained in our guide to Beds24 templates.

If the standard page does not fit your brand, Bookpage24 replaces it without leaving Beds24. This Beds24 booking engine reads prices and availability live from Beds24, shows each room type with a real name, photos and descriptions in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, lists its offers side by side, adds the city tax upfront and writes every booking into Beds24, whose channel manager then closes the room on all channels. It connects with a Beds24 invite code and goes online as a hosted page, a two-line widget or a WordPress plugin.

The setup mistakes we see most

Our booking engine was born in a group of eight Swiss hotels on Beds24. At the first test, 10 of their 35 room types had no bookable price, and nobody had noticed. These are the mistakes we come across most often:

• Prices that stop too soon. The rate ends with the current season, and later dates show “No price found”, on your booking page and on your channels.
• A rule stricter than the search, such as a three-night minimum stay when most guests search for two nights.
• Rooms never meant for sale, like test rooms or old room types, still published without a price.
• Internal room names such as “XGL”, shown to guests who cannot tell what they mean.
• Channels connected before prices were finished, so the channels show no availability.
• Upcoming bookings not imported before a channel was activated, which invites double bookings.
• One property for units with different Booking.com codes, which then cannot be connected.
• Decimal commas typed into a control panel that expects full stops.

Before going live, check three things: every room type has a price 30, 60 and 90 days ahead, every channel room is mapped, and your upcoming bookings are in Beds24.

Videos, webinars and paid setup help

Beds24 offers plenty of free self-help, in English and partly in German:

• The written setup guide, Do the initial Setup, the source of most steps above.
• Setup wizards that walk you through the basics (Beds24 wizards).
• Video tutorials: a YouTube playlist, plus short videos inside the help pages.
• Webinars every Thursday, alternating between 11:00 am and 5:00 pm Amsterdam time, including “Getting started with Beds24”, with recordings of past sessions (Beds24 webinars).
• Free support on technical issues through the SUPPORT area of your account.

For hands-on help, Beds24 offers online training sessions for a fee, in which its team helps you set up your account; you book one with a support ticket. Its pricing page lists personal onboarding and online training “from €79.00”.

For the booking page itself, our team can do the work. You send us a Beds24 invite code and your photos; we connect Bookpage24, name the rooms, add photos in your languages, set colours, city tax and deposit, and put the link on your website. You check and approve before anything goes live, and the setup ($199 per property) is paid only when the page is live. Have our team set it up, or start on your own: Connect Beds24 – free diagnosis shows which room types Beds24 cannot sell right now.

Frequently asked questions