Coming from Gurita 2.3? Here's what's new for you
If you were on Gurita 2.3 until recently, your last update was a big one. Most of our customers got a small update every two weeks since January. You got all of them in one go, with Gurita 3 on top.
That's a lot to take in, so we wrote this one just for you. We'll start with what looks different, give you five things to try on your first day, and then walk through the rest by team, so everyone can skip to their part.
You don't have to do anything
Your bookings, guests, invoices and settings are exactly where you left them. There's nothing to install and nothing to move, and everyone signs in with the same password as before.
And don't worry about waking up to a screen full of new menus. Most new features stay switched off until you turn them on under Settings → Active Modules.
One small thing: if a computer at your place runs a very old browser, check the system requirements.
What looks different
Some everyday things have changed. It's worth a quick word with your team before they run into them in the middle of a busy shift.
- The booking calendar has a new view. The Occupancy Timeline puts every room in a row and every day in a column. If you miss the old calendar, it's still one click away.
- Payments take one step now. You record the money and put it on the right invoice in the same window, instead of doing it in two goes.
- The bar has a new counter. The new POS is made for touch screens. You can switch back to the classic one whenever you like while the team gets used to it.
- Connections have moved. Booking sites, Xero, payment providers and the rest now live together in the Plugin Shop. Each one tells you whether it's connected or needs a look.
- Checking out a guest who still owes money now asks you to tick a box first. You can still do it. It just can't happen by accident anymore.
- Booking sites now get your strictest minimum stay, so a few of them may show a longer minimum than you're used to.
- Boat Maintenance is now called Equipment, and it covers compressors and gear as well as boats. Your old maintenance records don't come across by themselves, so drop us a line and we'll help you move them.
Five things to try on your first day
- Drag a booking around the timeline. Drop it on another room, or pull its edge to add a night.
- Split a bill. Got a booking where the company pays the room and the guest pays the bar? Open it and try folios. Drag each charge to whoever's paying, and everyone gets their own invoice.
- Let a guest pay on the invoice itself. Send one out, and the guest can pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and more, right on the page.
- Answer "Do you have four nights for two sometime in March?" The availability finder lists the free dates, shows you the best one, and books it for you.
- Tidy up your menu. Open Settings → Active Modules, switch on what you'll use and hide what you won't.
Those five will already change how your week feels. Here's the rest.
At the front desk
On top of the timeline and the availability finder, check-in and check-out got their own screens. Everything's on one page: the times, whether an early arrival or late departure costs extra, and a short list of what's still open. If you want to let a fee go this once, pick a reason and carry on.
The booking list remembers the views you use every day, for you or for the whole team, and it shows what each booking has paid and what's overdue. New bookings are made on one clear screen, and a booking with several rooms now gives each room its own tab.
A few smaller things that save a lot of fiddling:
- Two bookings that should have been one? Merge them, and rooms, charges and payments all come along.
- Not sure what Booking.com actually changed? Channel messages show every update and exactly what's different.
- Rooms you've promised to an agency hold themselves, and free up on their own if the agency doesn't sell them in time.
- A guest who never turns up can be marked as a no-show. The room frees up, and the bill stays as it is.
Getting paid
This is where many of you will feel the biggest difference.
With folios, one booking can have as many payers as it needs. Once a folio's invoice is issued, it's locked, so nothing shifts after it has left the house.
Guests now pay right on your invoice instead of being sent off to someone else's website. If they agree, they can leave a card on file for extras or a no-show. And when it's just the bar tab or one guest's share you need, send a payment link for exactly that amount.
To see who still owes you, open the Invoices page. It shows what's open, what's due soon and what's late. Card details from booking sites now open on a secured page, so the numbers never touch Gurita. And Xero is steadier, handles refunds properly and puts each sale in the right account.
Your books and your numbers
The big one here is bookkeeping, built right in. If somebody at your place has been typing the month into a second program, they can stop. Bookings, payments, bar sales, bank lines, purchases and payroll all land in a proper double-entry ledger by themselves, and you get the reports your tax advisor asks for. Here's the full story.
Also new:
- Profit & Loss, where you can lock a month once it's reported, so the figures stay put.
- A hotel dashboard that follows occupancy, average room rate and the other numbers you watch, month by month.
- Each team member can pick the currency they see amounts in.
- If you're in Fiji: Gurita now invoices the way TaxCore wants.
Prices and selling
Your prices can now follow demand. Switch on Yield, set your limits, and rates nudge up as the house fills and back down when it's quiet. Guests who've already booked keep their price.
Price lists got a lot less repetitive. Board types, weekend prices and child rates all live in one place, and a second list can simply follow the first, say "10% less", so you only change prices once. Specials understand far more conditions, like early booking or returning guests. You can also set group prices that improve as the group grows, and dates when an offer doesn't apply.
Your website can sell for you too: an online shop with a basket and customer accounts, guests picking their room by name, and a WordPress plugin that shows your rooms, trips and prices with a "Book now" button. More on that here. And club members can now get vouchers, straight from the CRM.
Bar, restaurant and kitchen
The new counter shows your tables on a floor plan. Bills stay with their table, so anyone can pick up where a colleague left off. Splitting a bill takes seconds, and one tap puts a drink on the guest's room.
In the kitchen, a screen shows new orders with a beep and turns slow ones a different colour. Your stock now knows its recipes: sell a mojito, and the rum, mint and lime come off the shelf. When you run out of something, the POS stops selling the dish. Read about ingredients and recipes.
And your team can put their own drinks on account and settle up at the end of the month.
For dive centers and liveaboards
- Booking a course or a dive is quicker, and dive prices have their own page.
- There's a dive-center calendar and a clearer schedule view.
- Dive dispatch and the shift plan sort out who dives with whom, on which boat, and who's working when.
- Equipment keeps track of fuel, engine hours and service dates, and reminds you when something's due.
- A dive report shows your busiest sites and how much each guide dives.
- Moving guests between cabins no longer sets off pointless availability warnings. More for boats in managing a liveaboard season.
Running the place
Housekeeping now has a live board showing every room's state, and the day's work plans itself. Activities covers courses, classes and excursions, and makes sure no guest who paid gets forgotten.
Airport pickups and boat shuttles can come off the whiteboard, too. Transfer planning knows your vehicles and routes, adds guests straight from their booking, and warns you before a car is booked twice. You'll also find an overview of your agency commissions.
Your guests
The new guest profile puts everything on one page: stays, dives, forms, bills, what they've spent with you over the years, and when their birthday is.
Want to write to "German divers who stayed with us last year"? Find them in a few clicks and send them a newsletter, which only goes to people who said yes. You can build your own guest forms from ready-made parts, and a passport photo can fill in the details for you.
You also get to choose which messages go out, send them by WhatsApp if you like, and pick an email design in your own colours. If a guest ended up in Gurita twice, merge the two. And the search bar at the top now finds just about anything.
Apps for the people on the move
This one is new with Gurita 3. Not everyone works at a desk, so there are now apps for the bar (Gurita POS), the boat (Gurita Diving) and the housekeeping team (Gurita Housekeeping). They keep working when the Wi-Fi drops and catch up once it's back. Meet the apps.
Working with other tools
- The Plugin Shop now includes WooCommerce and HighLevel, alongside Xero, your booking sites and payment providers.
- You can connect an AI assistant like Claude and ask it things like "How full were we in August?" It can read your numbers but never change anything. See how.
- For the day the internet goes down, the Operations Pack emails your team a spreadsheet every night with arrivals, who's in house, the room plan and open payments.
- The photo library has folders now. You can upload several files at once and crop pictures without leaving Gurita.
- And when someone asks "who changed this?", the audit log knows.
Faster, safer, and in more languages
Gurita 3 runs on a completely new base, and pages have much less to load. You'll notice it most on slow hotel Wi-Fi or a satellite link out at sea.
We also went through everything twice with security in mind. Your profile now lists every device you're signed in on, so you can sign out the tablet you left at the dive shop.
And ¡hola, 你好 and halo: Gurita now speaks Spanish, Chinese and Indonesian, and our French and Italian got a polish.
Good to know
- Most new features are switched on under Settings → Active Modules.
- The WordPress plugin, the Operations Pack and the other plugins come with the Advanced plan and up.
- Bookkeeping is part of the Accounting module on the Premium plan. An administrator switches it on and picks the day your books begin.
- The AI assistant connection is on the Premium plan.
That's nine months of Gurita in one post, and nobody expects you to learn it all this week. Start with the five things above and pick up the rest as you need it.
If you'd like one of us to show your team around the new screens, just send us a message. We're happy to help, and it's always good to hear how you use Gurita.
Welcome to the new Gurita!
Your Gurita Team