Charging a meal to a hotel room

A guest signs the restaurant bill to their room, and it appears on their folio at reception. Aura posts it to your property management system — Opera or Mews — instead of the paper docket somebody re-keys at midnight.

43.1 Connecting

Your PMS credentials live on the server's configuration, not in Aura's database — nobody can read them back out through the app. Your installer sets them; Back Office → Settings → Room charge then shows whether this server can actually reach the PMS, which is the difference between "nobody connected it" and "the token expired".

Not connected is a normal state, not an error: the till simply does not offer the tender.

43.2 Taking the charge

At the till, Room charge asks for the room number and confirms the guest's name back to you before anything is posted. Check it against the person in front of you — this is the whole reason the step exists.

• Nobody in that room: refused, and it cannot be overridden. Charging room 302 because someone

said "302" is how a hotel loses money.

• PMS unreachable: refused too — unless your property has switched on *allow unverified

charges*, in which case the charge goes through marked unverified, with the reason recorded against it. That switch trades a busy service against the risk of an unconfirmed folio; think about which costs you more before turning it on.

43.3 It cannot post twice

Aura claims the posting in its own database before it sends anything, so a double-tap, two tills at once, or a manager pressing re-send all resolve to the same single folio line.

When the PMS answers "no" — a closed folio, an unknown room — that is final, and the charge lands on reception's worklist rather than being retried for ever. When the PMS answers nothing — a timeout, a dropped line — Aura holds the charge and tries again later with the same reference, because a timeout does not tell you whether it landed. That is why you may briefly see a charge as pending: it is being careful, not stuck.

Room charges never count as cash. They post to the guest ledger, so they never appear in a drawer count and never inflate a cash-up.