Start here if you run or administer an agency

This guide is for the person who administers an agency account: you prepare the portfolio, control the subscription, onboard users, and decide which access and connections are enabled. It does not assume that you will also work the front desk, clean rentals, or resolve every ticket; your responsibility is to give each function a safe, testable system.

Do not attempt to configure the whole portfolio in parallel. Work with a small pilot group and repeat the process only when its data, access, and channels have been reconciled.

If you are onboarding several properties, use Onboard an agency portfolio of 50 to 150 properties as the implementation plan. This page explains your administrator journey; the portfolio guide defines the inventory, cohorts, and acceptance criteria that prevent duplicates and unsafe cutovers.

Before preparing the pilot, open Decide what is ready to launch for an agency. This board separates self-service, assisted, deferrable, and not-yet-promisable areas, with concrete evidence for every decision.

Which device to use first#

Configure the portfolio, users, permissions, channels, billing, and compliance on a computer with a wide screen. The documentation is responsive, but that does not establish that every administrative product screen works on mobile or tablet. Then validate, with each role and real device, only the compact tasks that belong to its routine. If a control, summary, or confirmation is missing, do not complete the action blindly: use the computer and record the workflow that needs acceptance.

1. Prepare the administrative context#

1. Confirm with Holidario that the commercial account and Agency plan are active.
2. Sign in with your own account and complete the first-session orientation.
3. Verify the active team before opening settings, billing, or property data.
4. Review the plan, limits, renewal, and payment history.
5. In Settings, check the company identity, operating office, tax details, and available preferences. If a field cannot be edited or you do not know which value should be used, resolve it before issuing documents or configuring integrations.
6. Configure the operational language and, if you work with the Canary Islands or multiple timezones, check time-based workflows before promising times to the team.
7. Name the people who approve portfolio, channel, pricing, operations, finance, compliance, and user-access decisions.

Your first onboarding list should state, for each property, its responsible person, the system currently controlling its calendar, active OTAs, and intended cutover date.

2. Achieve the first useful result with a pilot property#

The first milestone is one complete pilot property and a second person working through their own account.

1. Choose a representative property without an unusually complex migration.
2. Collect its data with the property onboarding form, or gather the same information from the owner through an agreed channel.
3. Create the first property manually, then create its rental operation once. This is the public path while URL-based import remains outside the self-service journey pending its security review.
4. Do not enter a listing URL or use the importer even if you find that option. If Holidario agrees an assisted import, verify the result instead of repeating creation: a compatible import creates both the property and its rental operation.
5. Prepare the operational data.
6. Review the associated owner, company or office, license, capacity, keys, cleaning fee, and any required financial relationship.

Do not continue to channels or owner payouts while you still cannot explain who owns the data, who operates the rental, and who authorizes commercial changes.

3. Design roles and resource scope before the first invitation#

First, understand the difference between membership, roles, positions, and resource authorization. Before inviting anyone, create an access profile for each person covering their function, required properties, allowed actions, excluded actions, required modules, and approving owner.

Then onboard each profile through its specialist process:

• manager or front desk: follow Onboard an employee from start to finish, then provide the manager or front-desk journey;
• cleaning employee: follow Onboard an employee from start to finish, then provide the cleaning-team journey;
• managed property owner: complete property-limited authorization, then provide the managed-owner journey;
• external cleaning provider: complete provider onboarding and a test task, then provide the external-cleaning journey;
• external maintenance provider: complete provider onboarding and a test ticket, then provide the external-maintenance journey.

Each onboarding is complete only after the person accepts the invitation with their own account, receives the intended role and resources, completes one allowed task, and confirms one action that must remain denied. Accepting an invitation does not grant features or properties by itself; a job position does not grant permissions either.

4. Define pricing and prepare distribution#

For the pilot property:

1. Configure the global pricing baseline.
2. Create the rate plan and assign it to the months that will be sold.
3. Review prices, minimum stays, and availability on representative dates.
4. Add the exact details for each OTA listing.
5. Prepare the Channel Manager infrastructure.
6. Complete the pre-activation checklist, including reconciliation of reservations and blocks.

Holidario manages the technical Channel Manager layer. Your agency decides the correct listing, prices, and time of cutover; it does not need its own Channex account.

When the checklist is complete, coordinate the assisted activation of one pilot rental with Holidario. Preparing infrastructure or creating a connection does not mean that the channel is active, and the agency should not attempt to enable it through an unpublished procedure. Preserve the previous system unchanged until the cutover is agreed, and do not allow two systems to write the same calendar.

After Holidario confirms activation, immediately compare one occupied, one blocked, and one free date, plus one representative price and minimum stay. If a reservation is missing or any value differs, stop expansion and follow channel recovery.

5. Rehearse operations before expanding#

Run a short session with each responsible person, using controlled real data:

• the manager opens the Daily PMS Agenda, identifies exceptions, and opens the source record; the agenda is a summary and does not assign owners by itself;
• front-desk staff find and verify a reservation, review the arrival, and know how to escalate a discrepancy;
• an administrator or manager prepares cleaning availability and distribution, while the employee follows the internal-cleaning journey or the provider follows the external-cleaning journey to open, perform, and evidence only their task;
• maintenance follows the external-provider journey, opens only assigned tickets, and knows the escalation route;
• property owners access only their rentals and the documents that the agency has chosen to share.

The test is not valid from your administrator account: you will see more menus and resources than the onboarded person.

6. Decide which modules go live and how to exit#

Do not treat a module appearing in the menu as proof that the agency is ready to depend on it. For the Channel Manager, guest operations, cleaning, maintenance, messaging, finance and invoicing, compliance, and HR, record before expanding:

• whether it joins the first cohort or is deferred;
• who owns it and who covers their absence;
• which data, permissions, and integration it needs;
• which real task proves that it works;
• which route the agency will use if the module or an integration is unavailable;
• which data must be retained outside an operational screen for legal or contractual reasons.

If you decide to enable the optional tenant chat, follow Configure and use the Internal Support Agent. Before the pilot, approve its dedicated BYOK profile—provider, model, region, cost, and key—along with available FAQs and pages, limits, allowed actions, and which users retain each domain permission; enabling the agent never expands those permissions or changes the provider used by other AI features.

Also clarify with Holidario, before subscribing or cutting over from the previous system, who can request a plan change or cancellation, when it takes effect, which invoices remain due, which exports and retention periods are available, how channels will be disconnected, and how team access will be removed. Do not assume self-service cancellation, export, deletion, or disconnection that is not present in the public interface and documentation; request and retain the commercial answer that applies to your account.

7. Criteria for expanding the portfolio#

Add the next group only when the pilot property meets all of these conditions:

• property and operation data have been reviewed by a responsible person;
• future reservations, blocks, prices, and minimum stays are reconciled;
• the channel is stable and two systems are not writing availability;
• users work through personal accounts with the minimum required access;
• arrivals, departures, cleaning, issues, and messages have clear owners;
• the property owner and agency agree on documents, finances, and contacts;
• every outstanding error has an owner, evidence, and next review.

Do not treat “the import finished,” “the invitation was accepted,” or “the connection was created” as completion of those stages.

8. Administrative routine#

Every week#

• review pending tasks and connection alerts;
• check recent user additions, roles, and property authorizations;
• review recurring issues and work without an owner;
• confirm that notification preferences remain useful;
• compare selected future dates across every activated group.

Before a sensitive change#

• confirm the team, property, and scope;
• identify who approved it and the expected result;
• record the previous state when channels, pricing, access, or money are affected;
• change a controlled group and verify it before continuing.

Periodically#

• compare the plan with the size of the portfolio;
• review licenses, certificates, and NRA status where applicable;
• confirm that documents shared with owners are still appropriate;
• validate that every active person still needs their access.

9. Denials, errors, and recovery#

• A user accepted but cannot see their work: confirm team, role, property authorization, and module; test again using their account.
• An action appears that they should not have: stop the test, avoid viewing data, and restrict access before continuing.
• An option is missing or access is denied: use the access and plan guide; do not grant full administration for convenience.
• A limit is reached: review the subscription and inventory; do not delete operational data to bypass it.
• An OTA reservation is missing or differs: do not recreate it manually; follow synchronization reconciliation.
• Channel preparation fails: correct the first stated prerequisite and follow channel recovery; do not duplicate the property, listing, or connection.
• Data from another team or owner appears: stop viewing it, suspend use of the affected access, and escalate immediately.

10. Escalate to a clear owner#

The agency should know who receives each type of problem: access and portfolio, daily operations, channels, finance, compliance, and Holidario support. For a product issue, follow the support request template and include identifiers, time, screen, expected result, and exact error without credentials or unnecessary personal data.

Onboarding is ready to repeat when each responsible person completes their first task without using your account, cannot see unrelated information, and knows what to do when the normal path stops.