Guide
Hotel PMS migration checklist: how to switch systems safely
Changing property management system goes wrong in predictable places: future bookings, deposits already paid and the first night's close. This checklist covers each one.
· 6 minute read
A property management system (PMS) holds every future booking, every deposit already paid and every open bill. Moving to a new one is less a software project than a stocktake. You count what you have, carry it across, and count again on the other side.
Most of the trouble comes from a small number of places. This checklist works through them in order. It applies whichever system you are leaving and whichever you are joining.
Decide what is moving and what stays
Write down every system that touches a booking or a payment. Decide for each one whether it moves now, later or not at all.
| System | Questions to settle |
|---|---|
| Front desk and room plan | Does the whole desk switch on one day, or one function at a time? |
| Website booking engine | Does it move with the PMS or before it? What happens to links on your website and in old emails? |
| OTA connections | Which system holds the availability that OTAs sell from during the change? |
| Payments | Do card terminals, online payments and saved cards carry over, or start afresh? |
| Restaurant and other outlets | Can charges still reach the room bill on day one? |
| Accounting | What does your accountant need exported, and in what format? |
| Door locks, telephones, television | Which of these talk to the PMS today? |
Moving in stages is slower and safer. One order that can work is the website and booking engine first, then the front desk, then the outlets. Whichever order you choose, name one system as the owner of availability at every stage and decide how bookings taken in the other system reach it, or the same room can be sold twice. The old system stays in use until each replacement has been tested with real bookings.
Choose the date with care
- Pick a quiet week, with few guests in house and few arrivals.
- Avoid the last and first days of a month, so that each accounting period sits wholly in one system.
- Avoid a day when your most experienced receptionist or your accountant is away.
- Agree a time at which the old system stops accepting changes. After that moment, every new booking goes into the new system.
Decide which data to take with you
Not everything deserves the journey. Decide line by line.
| Data | Carry it across | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Future reservations | Yes | The agreed price and terms must survive. A system that reprices an imported booking at today's rates will show the wrong balance. |
| Deposits and prepayments | Yes | Each amount paid must arrive against the right booking, with its date and method. |
| Guests in house on the day | Usually by hand | Enter each one in the new system as checked in, with the charges and payments so far, or let them finish their stay in the old system. |
| Guest profiles | Yes, cleaned | Merge duplicates first. Bring marketing consent with its date and source, or ask again. |
| Company and agency accounts | Yes | Contract rates, credit terms and every unpaid invoice. |
| Rates, restrictions and taxes | Rebuild | Entering them afresh is a good moment to retire rate plans nobody sells. |
| Past stays and old invoices | Often no | Keep them readable in the old system or in an export for as long as the law requires. |
| Stored card details | Ask | Card data normally stays with the payment provider. Ask both suppliers what can be transferred. |
The checklist, stage by stage
Six to eight weeks before
- Name one person at the hotel who owns the move and can make decisions.
- Ask the old supplier how long you keep access after the contract ends, and in what form you can export your data.
- Export a sample of reservations and check that every field you need is in it.
- List rooms, room types, rate plans, taxes, cancellation terms and deposit rules as they are today.
- Tell your accountant, your OTA contacts and your payment provider what is planned.
Two to four weeks before
- Build rooms, rates, taxes and policies in the new system. Have a second person check them against the list.
- Create a login for each member of staff, with the right role.
- Train each team on its own tasks: check-in and check-out for the desk, room status for housekeeping, closing the day for whoever runs the night audit.
- Run a rehearsal, as described below.
- Write a one-page plan for cutover day: who does what, in what order, and who decides if something goes wrong.
Cutover day
- Run the last night audit and close the day in the old system, freeze it at the agreed time and take the final export, so deposits, in-house balances and account ledgers are final.
- Load future reservations and deposits, then reconcile them.
- Move or re-enter the guests in house.
- Switch the booking links on your website.
- Make one test booking from the website, and check in one real arrival before the desk gets busy.
- Keep the supplier's support contact and your own decision-maker within reach all day.
The first week
- Compare the arrivals list with the old system's every morning.
- Run the night audit every night and read it. Our guide to what a hotel night audit is explains what to look for.
- Check the first invoices with your accountant: numbering, tax lines and company details.
- Collect staff questions in one place and answer them daily.
Rehearse with real data
A rehearsal finds problems while they are still cheap to fix, and it is the step most often skipped. Load a copy of your real future bookings into a test copy of the new system. Then compare these totals between old and new:
- the number of future reservations
- room nights sold for each date
- the total value of future bookings
- the total of deposits already paid
- the amount owed by each company account
If the totals differ, find out why before cutover day, not on it.
Then ask two members of staff to work through an ordinary day in the test copy: an arrival, a room move, a charge to the room, a check-out with a split payment, a cancellation with a refund. Whatever puzzles them in the rehearsal will puzzle everyone on the day.
Keep the old system readable
You will need to look things up for months: a disputed invoice, a guest asking about a past stay, a tax inspection. Before access ends, export invoices, payment records and daily closing reports in a format you can open without the old software. Ask your accountant how long the law in your country requires you to keep them.
Mistakes that come up again and again
- Switching in high season because the old contract happened to end then.
- Importing bookings without their deposits, so every arrival appears to owe the full amount.
- Forgetting the links in old confirmation emails and on partner websites.
- Training everyone in one long session, weeks before they touch the system.
- Ending the old contract before the first month-end has been closed in the new system.
Hemmz, the platform we build, is rolled out in stages for these reasons: a hotel's current systems stay in use until each replacement is tested and accepted. Its property management module is available to founding properties, and no property is live on it in production yet.
