Turnovers

Every checkout leaves work behind: the clean that makes the apartment ready for the next guest. A turnover is that job as a first-class record — created automatically, assigned to a housekeeper, worked room by room from a photo checklist, and reviewed by a manager before it’s accepted.

How turnovers are created

You never create a turnover by hand. ShortletBox watches every stay and decides whether it needs a clean:

• A confirmed, checked-in or checked-out booking always gets one, due on the checkout day. A guest who leaves early moves the clean to the day they actually left. Bookings still awaiting approval or pending payment get nothing — no stay, no clean.
• A channel reservation — an Airbnb or Booking.com block that looks like a real stay — gets one too. Closed dates, your own calendar reflected back from a channel, and manual blocks are not stays, so they never do.

The same machinery keeps each turnover in step with its stay: move the booking, the clean moves; cancel it, the clean is cancelled. Only a clean nobody has started is ever moved or cancelled — once a housekeeper is in the unit, the record of that work outlives whatever happens to the stay. One open turnover per apartment per day is a database rule, so two sources can never book the same clean twice.

A cancellation always records why: the stay was cancelled, the block vanished from the channel feed, the dates turned out to be closed dates, the unit was archived, or — your own call — it was not a stay. That last dismissal is a manager decision and sticks: a channel block you’ve dismissed as noise never reopens.

The lifecycle

scheduled ──Start──▶ in_progress ──Mark ready──▶ ready ──Pass──▶ passed
                        ▲                          │  ▲
                        └── sent_back ─────────────┘  └── Send back ──▶ sent_back

• Scheduled: created and assigned, waiting for checkout day. The unit is the guest’s until their check-out time.
• In progress: the housekeeper tapped Start in the app. Ready: every room is ticked with its photos up.
• Passed / sent back: a manager’s review either accepts the clean or sends named rooms back with what needs fixing. A sent-back job goes back through the app — the housekeeper sees the reason and redoes just those rooms.
• Failed: a send-back the next guest has already overtaken. There’s no time for a redo, so the clean fails rather than pretending.
• Cancelled: only from scheduled, always with a reason above.

Checklists and photos

Each apartment carries its own checklist — the list of rooms or checks the housekeeper works through, and how many photos each one needs. The job is copied from that checklist the moment it’s created, so later edits don’t change jobs already in flight.

Until you edit it, a property uses the ShortletBox default:

Turnover room	Photos
Bedroom	3
Bathroom	2
Kitchen	2
Fridge	1
AC filter	1
Damage check	Photos if anything’s wrong

Edit the three lists (turnover, monthly inspection, quarterly audit) on the property’s Field operations card. A room can only be ticked once its photos are uploaded, and Mark ready stays locked until every room is done. Photos must be JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC under 10 MB; the app shrinks each one and queues it offline, so a bad connection never loses evidence.

Deadlines

Nothing here is stored — a deadline is always worked out fresh, so a guest booked in for the same afternoon moves it without anyone saving anything:

• Ready by your Settings → Field operations time (14:00 WAT by default) on the checkout day — or when the next guest arrives, if that’s earlier. The job screen names the next arrival (“Arrives 2pm · early check-in”).
• Expected duration from the bedroom count: 180 minutes for a one-bed, plus 60 for each extra bedroom.
• Latest start is the deadline minus that duration, but never before the guest’s check-out time — a unit still occupied at 09:00 is not late at 09:00.

The housekeeper’s app

Field staff work from the field wing of the ShortletBox mobile app: Today (the day’s jobs, plus this month’s inspection), Upcoming (the next 7 days) and You. A job opens with Getting in — the property’s access note, shown only on the job’s own day — and then:

1. Start, which unlocks at the guest’s check-out time.
2. One card per room: photographs, then a tick.
3. Readings: meter units and inverter battery percentage.
4. Flag low stock with a note.
5. Mark ready, once every room is ticked.

A new job pushed to a housekeeper arrives as a notification that opens the job directly.

The day board and review

Admin → Field → Turnovers is the day board: every clean with its deadline, assignee and state, plus the board header’s spot-check score (“In-person checks this month: N% · target T%”). The detail page shows each photo with the time it was taken, the readings, the low-stock note and — once the job is ready — the review panel.

The review is a manager’s call: Pass, or Send back with tick-boxes for the rooms to redo and a reason the housekeeper will read. Both take an I checked this in person box, which feeds the spot-check target. Two managers can’t review the same job at once — the second is told it’s just been reviewed — and a send-back is refused outright once the next guest has arrived.

For channel cleans that were never real, Not a stay — remove this turnover cancels and dismisses the block in one move.

When nobody’s watching

You don’t have to watch the board. The alert job runs every 10 minutes and pushes your team once when a clean hasn’t started by its latest start and once when it misses its ready-by; a nightly sweep at 04:15 WAT re-checks every upcoming stay behind the scenes. A housekeeper whose clean was sent back gets a push with the reason and the rooms to redo. The first time each job is marked ready is recorded — when, against which deadline and by whom — because that’s the version the scorecard judges, not the redo.