Places, stays and halls

A place is somewhere a guest takes over for a stretch of time: an istiraha, a chalet, a farm, a wedding hall. It isn’t booked on the slot grid a barber uses. A guest picks a date on a calendar of prices and books a day or one or more nights, and the place stays theirs until check-out.

Choose A place as the booking shape when you first open /app/bookings, then add each place under Who takes bookings. A chalet with two units gets two places, and a hall gets one place for each section plus one for the whole hall. When you have more than one, the guest picks which place they want. There’s no “any place” option, because places differ in size and price.

A place venue doesn’t use services, opening hours or prayer pauses. Its blocks are its hours, and its price comes from its own terms. Everything below lives in the Place & pricing section of /app/bookings. Your agent can set the same terms with the set_place tool.

Blocks

Each place offers a Day block, an Overnight block, or Both, each with its own start and end time:

Day runs from its start to its end on one date. The default is 09:00–21:00.
Overnight starts on the check-in date and ends at its end time the next day. The default is 16:00–12:00. A guest can book several nights in a row, and Minimum nights sets how few you’ll accept.

Up to (guests) caps how many people the guest can say are coming.

The cleaning gap

The Cleaning gap is how long the place needs between one stay’s check-out and the next stay’s check-in. It follows the stay already booked, so two stays end up exactly one gap apart, not two. With the default blocks and a 4-hour gap, a day stay and an overnight stay on the same date always clash, which is what you want at a place that can’t be turned round in an afternoon.

Prices

Prices are set by day. Two rows, Sat – Wed and Thu – Fri, fill in their weekdays for you, and Each day opens all seven if one day needs its own price. A day stay is priced by its date’s weekday. Each night of an overnight stay is priced by the weekday it starts on, and a stay’s total is the sum of its nights.

Special dates replace the weekday price on the dates you list. A stay that covers a special date pays the special price for that night only.

The total is fixed when the guest books. Changing your prices later never re-prices a stay someone has already booked. Moving a stay to another date prices it again at the new date.

Paying: pay now, the balance, the security deposit

Pay now (% of the total) is the share the guest pays when they book. It’s the deposit’s A share of the total option (see Deposits).
Rest of payment is a short note on how the guest pays the balance at the door, for example cash or a transfer. The balance is shown to the guest and never charged online.
Security deposit is charged in the same payment as the pay-now amount and refunded automatically 48 hours after check-out, unless you keep part of it for damage.

Deposits need the Pro plan and a way to take money. A place venue with no payment account connected and no transfer details starts with deposits off. Nothing is taken up front, including the security deposit, until you connect a payment account or add transfer details under Deposit. Setup tells you when this applies.

How the security deposit comes back

Automatically. From check-out, you have 48 hours. When they end, Qaema refunds the whole security deposit to the guest’s card through your own payment account. You don’t need to do anything.
When you keep part of it. Inside those 48 hours, Today shows the stay under Security deposits. Enter the Amount to keep and What for, then tap Keep this and refund the rest. The rest goes back to the guest straight away. After 48 hours a claim is no longer possible.
A stay that never happens. If it’s cancelled, declined or expires before check-in, its security deposit is refunded on the next run, without waiting 48 hours.
Don’t refund in your provider’s dashboard before the security deposit settles. Qaema counts anything already refunded there as security deposit returned, whatever you meant it for, and sends only the difference. A pay-now refund made there first leaves the guest short on the security deposit. Record a pay-now refund on the stay instead, and it waits for the security deposit to settle.
If the refund keeps failing. Qaema retries every hour and records the failure on your activity. If the refund still hasn’t gone through after a week, it becomes your task. Today shows Return the security deposit to the guest, and you tap I returned it once you’ve done so.
On a bank transfer, Qaema can’t send money back. When the 48 hours end, the stay shows Return the security deposit to the guest on Today. Return it the way you received it, then tap I returned it.

A pay-now refund you record on a stay waits until the security deposit has been settled, so the two amounts are never mixed up. The amount refunded is always what the guest was charged, even if you change the place’s security deposit afterwards.

Free cancellation

Free cancellation until is the same moment Qaema asks the guest on WhatsApp to confirm the stay: 1, 2, 3 or 7 days before check-in. The select shows this as a reminder. If you change one, the other changes with it.

The gate code

Under On the day, set the Gate / smart-lock code and the time it’s Sent at. On the check-in date, at that time in your venue’s clock, the guest gets the code on WhatsApp with their check-in time and a short line of your house rules. Each stay gets it once.

The send time must be earlier than the earliest check-in time you offer. Setup won’t save a later one, so a guest never ends up at a locked gate waiting for the code.
The code only goes to a confirmed stay, never to a cancelled one. A stay still waiting for your confirmation on its check-in date shows Gate code not sent — it goes only to a confirmed stay on Today. Confirm it and the code goes out on the next run.
Qaema sends whatever code is saved when the message goes out. You can change it whenever you like. A code that rotates on its own through a smart-lock integration isn’t supported.
The code never appears in logs or analytics.

Halls

A hall is a place venue that takes requests instead of instant bookings. Set How guests book to By request (halls).

Sections. Add each section as its own place, with its own name and Up to (guests). On the whole-hall place, tick the sections under Whole hall: also takes. Booking the whole hall then blocks those sections, and a booked section blocks the whole hall. Sections don’t block each other.
A request holds nothing. The guest picks a section, a date and how many guests, and can add the occasion. To other guests that date shows as Pending, and they can still ask for it. The guest is told the hall replies within 48 hours and that their date isn’t reserved until you confirm.
Answering. Requests appear on Today. Approve checks that the place is still free and then takes the pay-now share and the security deposit. Counter offers another date. Decline says no. A request with no answer after 48 hours expires.
Catering. Choose one section of your own published menu under Catering from your menu. The hall page lists its items, and the guest can pick one. The page shows an estimate, the item’s price times the number of guests. It’s an estimate, never a charge, and it’s saved on the request so you can see it.

Hijri dates

The guest’s place and hall pages show the Hijri date next to the Gregorian one, using the Umm al-Qura calendar built into the browser and server. Where that calendar isn’t available the Hijri line is left out; it’s never guessed. Your own screens stay Gregorian.

Today

A stay appears on Today on every day it covers: one card on its check-in day (check-in 16:00 · check-out Sat 12:00) and a continuation card on each day after that. Its nights never show as free time. See Run the day.