An offline-first front desk for a walk-in hotel
We replaced the paper registers at SLDT Stay Inn with one front-office system for bookings, KYC, GST billing, housekeeping and reports, running fully offline.
- Client
- SLDT Stay Inn, Sabbavaram
- Users
- Owner, manager, front desk, housekeeping, accountant
- Platforms
- Cloud web app, then an offline-first Windows desktop app
- Delivery
- 100 commits over 10 weeks
- Location
- Sabbavaram, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh
- Timeline
- Specification April 2026, MVP in 14 days (May 2026), offline desktop release July 2026
What stood in the way
SLDT Stay Inn ran its front desk on paper registers and spreadsheets, and every gap cost money or time.
- 01
Double-bookings and lost records
Reservations lived in a paper register with no overlap check.
- 02
Slow room turnover
Housekeeping status moved by word of mouth or WhatsApp, so rooms sat unready.
- 03
Error-prone GST billing
Invoices were handwritten or built in Excel, with three GST slabs applied by hand.
- 04
No owner visibility
The owner could not see occupancy, revenue or staff activity in real time.
- 05
No guest history
Repeat guests were not recognised, and ID proofs sat in paper files.
- 06
Unreliable internet
A cloud-only tool would stop check-ins whenever the connection dropped.
How we solved it
We built a staff-only front-office suite that covers every step of a stay, from walk-in to GST invoice, in one screen flow.
- 01
One flow for the whole stay
Each step updates room status, the ledger and the owner's dashboard automatically, so staff never re-enter data.
- 02
Offline first
The desk PC is the single source of truth. The installer bundles its own database, API and PDF engine, and the desk keeps working with no internet at all.
- 03
Safe cloud backup
Changes flow one way to a cloud backup and are applied exactly once, so money records can never conflict or be counted twice.
- 04
Roles that match the hotel
Front desk, housekeeping and the owner each see what their job needs, from 43 permissions across 14 areas.
A stay, end to end
- 01Walk-in or booking
- 02KYC and ID photos
- 03WhatsApp OTP
- 04Check-in
- 05Check-out and GST invoice
- 06Room back to available
Every step updates the room board, the ledger and the owner's dashboard without anyone re-entering data.
What we delivered
16 modules built around the way a small Indian hotel actually runs its desk.
Front desk
- Walk-ins, pre-bookings, multi-room and hourly stays
- Double-booking guard enforced inside the database
- Guest KYC with ID photos, duplicate detection and stay history
- WhatsApp OTP verification at check-in
Money
- Automatic GST slabs with CGST and SGST split, credit notes and PDF invoices
- Cash, UPI, card, bank transfer or collect later
- Collections by age with one-tap WhatsApp reminders
- Guest wallet and expense tracking
Owner and operations
- Live dashboard and a WhatsApp alert on every check-in and check-out
- Housekeeping board and maintenance tracking
- 10 report tabs, each exportable to CSV
- Global search and an append-only activity log
What we did
- Product specification
- UX and UI design
- Full-stack engineering
- Windows desktop app
- Security
- Test automation
Technology
- React 18
- TypeScript
- Vite
- Tailwind CSS
- Tauri 2
- Node.js
- Express
- PostgreSQL 16
- Drizzle ORM
- Zod
- Supabase
- Twilio WhatsApp
- Playwright
- Vitest
By the numbers
- From first line of code to a live MVP
- 14 days
- Modules in one front-office system
- 16
- Screens
- 23
- Of desk operations run offline; only WhatsApp messages wait for a connection
- 100%
Delivery and scope figures counted from the project itself, not client sales or traffic numbers.
Engineering that holds up
Encrypted guest identity
ID numbers are stored with AES-256-GCM and only the last four digits are readable. ID photos are resized and stripped of location data.
Self-healing desk
A watchdog checks the local API every few seconds and restarts it if it stops, and the database recovers from power cuts on its own.
Queued messaging
WhatsApp messages wait in an outbox while offline and send once the connection returns.
Tested where it matters
Unit tests cover GST slabs, date-overlap rules and invoice totals, and end-to-end tests drive both the web app and the installed Windows app.
Before and after
The MVP went live in 14 days, and the full offline desktop system followed within 10 weeks of the first line of code.
- Before
Paper register, double-bookings
AfterOverlapping bookings blocked by the database
- Before
Handwritten or Excel GST invoices
AfterCorrect GST slab, CGST and SGST split and a numbered PDF invoice in one click
- Before
Housekeeping updates by word of mouth
AfterChecked-out rooms appear on the housekeeping board instantly
- Before
Owner blind to daily business
AfterLive dashboard, daily cash-up and a WhatsApp alert on every check-in and check-out
- Before
Desk stops when the internet drops
AfterDesk runs fully offline; only WhatsApp messages wait for a connection
We ran the front desk on a paper register and handwritten bills. Now bookings, guest ID proofs, GST invoices and housekeeping are in one system, and it keeps working when the internet goes down. I see the day's business on the dashboard and get a WhatsApp alert on every check-in.
What happened next
This project grew into Stayvia, our own product
Stayvia started as the single-property front desk we built for SLDT Stay Inn in Sabbavaram. In July and August 2026 we rebuilt it as multi-hotel software: every hotel gets its own isolated data, document numbers, settings and branding.
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