Welcome to Gurita 3

Back in April we said hello to Gurita 2.5. A lot has happened since. Many of you asked for things, a few of you told us — kindly — where Gurita got in your way, and we spent the summer building.

So this isn't a small update. It's a new version number, a set of apps for the people who never sit at a desk, and a long list of things that make the everyday a little easier. Get a coffee. We'll walk you through it.

Why a "3"?

We never let Gurita grow old. Under every screen you use sits a base of technology you never see, and keeping it current is part of our everyday work. Most of the time you don't notice. We renew a piece here and a piece there, and your Monday morning looks like your Friday afternoon.

This time we renewed all of it in one go. The whole base under Gurita is new, from the ground up. A step that big deserves its own number, so here it is: Gurita 3.

Here's what that means for you:

• It's quicker. Pages have a lot less to load now, often almost half as much. You'll notice it most where the internet is slow: a busy hotel Wi-Fi, a satellite link out at sea.
• Everything is where you left it. We didn't want your team to relearn their screens on a Monday morning. Gurita 3 looks and works the way you know it. A fresh look will come later, as its own step and in its own time.
• It's ready for what comes next. A new base means we can build faster and keep building for years. Much of what you'll read below is already the result.
• You don't have to do anything. No installing, no moving data, no new passwords. If one of your computers runs a very old browser, have a quick look at the system requirements.

Apps for the people on the move

Not everyone at a resort sits behind a screen. The dive guide is on the boat. The bartender is behind the bar. The housekeepers are somewhere on the second floor. Gurita 3 now comes with an app for each of them.

You'll find them in the App Store, on Google Play and in the Microsoft Store. They work on phones and tablets, and POS and Diving also run on Windows and Mac computers. Several colleagues can share one device: everyone has their own PIN and switches in a second.

Gurita POS puts the counter on a tablet, at the bar, by the pool, wherever you sell. Open a bill, add the drinks, split it when the table wants to pay separately, print the receipt. And when the Wi-Fi drops in the middle of happy hour, it keeps working. Everything waits safely on the tablet and catches up as soon as you're back online. If a colleague changed the same bill in the meantime, the app shows you both and lets you decide.

Gurita Diving is the dive day in your pocket. Open it and you see today's trips and how many dives are already logged. Guides have their divers, boats and logbook with them and can log dives right on the boat. No signal out on the reef? No problem. It all syncs when you're back in range.

Gurita Housekeeping gives every housekeeper their own day on their phone: their rooms, the checklist for each one, a photo where you want one, the minibar, and one big button that always shows the next step. A room finished on shaky Wi-Fi still counts, and tapping twice by accident never counts twice.

At the front desk

See the whole house at a glance. The Occupancy Timeline shows every room in a row and every day in a column. A guest wants another room or one more night? Just drag the booking.

"Do you have four nights for two, sometime in March?" Now that's a ten-second answer. The availability finder lists the free dates for each room type, points out the best one, and lets you book it straight away.

Check-in and check-out without surprises. The new check-in and check-out screens show everything on one page: the times, whether an early arrival or late departure costs extra, and a short checklist of what's still open. Want to let the fee go this once? Pick a reason and move on. It's noted for later.

Finding bookings is easier too. The new booking list lets you save the views you use every day, for yourself or the whole team. Each booking shows how much is paid and what's overdue. And a new booking gets made on one clear screen: the rooms or cabins on one side, the summary on the other, and the price adding up as you go.

A few more things your front desk will like:

• Two bookings that should have been one? Merge them. Rooms, charges and payments all move across.
• A guest wants a different trip or cabin on the boat? Before you save, you see the difference in price and what's already been paid.
• The booking page is yours to arrange. Drag its cards into the order that suits you. Gurita remembers it.
• Sending an email to several guests? Each one gets their own personal copy, and you can preview every single one first.
• What did the booking site actually send? Channel messages show every update from Booking.com and friends, and exactly what changed.
• Rooms promised to an agency hold themselves, and come back on their own when the agency doesn't sell them in time.
• A guest who never arrives can be marked as a no-show. The room is free again, and the bill stays as it is.

Getting paid

One booking, several people paying. The company pays the room, the guest pays the bar, the agency covers the airport transfer. With folios you drag each charge to whoever pays for it, and everyone gets their own invoice.

Guests pay right on the invoice. No more sending them off to some other website halfway through. They pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and more, on your page. If they like, they can leave a card on file for extras or a no-show, always with their clear agreement.

A link for just one bill. The bar tab, one room's extras, one guest's share: send a link for exactly that, and the guest pays it from their phone.

Know who still owes you. The Invoices page now answers the question you actually have: what's open, what's due soon, what's late, and how late.

And a few more:

• Recording a payment and putting it on the right invoice is now one step instead of two.
• Xero gets refunds right and puts every sale into the right account.
• Close a month in Profit & Loss, and the numbers stay the way you reported them.
• A new dashboard shows your occupancy, average room rate and more, month after month.

Your books, kept for you

Bookkeeping, right inside Gurita. Until now, somebody typed the month into a second program. Not any more. Every booking, payment, bar sale, bank line, purchase and payroll run now writes itself into a proper double-entry ledger, with both sides balanced to the cent.

• You decide where things land. Your own chart of accounts, your departments, and simple rules like "dive courses go to this account". Anything Gurita can't place waits in one list for you to sort.
• The reports your tax advisor asks for. A cash-basis statement, a profit and loss, and a VAT summary that shows every tax on its own line, even when one sale carries two of them.
• Numbers that stay put. A posted entry can't be changed quietly. You correct it with a reversal, and both stay visible. Lock a month, and it stays the way you reported it.
• No empty start. Pick the day your books begin, and Gurita fills in everything it already knows from that day on.

Read the full story.

Prices that work for you

Let your prices follow demand. With Yield, your rates go up a little when the house fills and down when it's quiet, within the limits you set. A guest who has already booked keeps their price.

Less copying of prices. Price lists now handle breakfast, half board and full board in one place, weekend prices, and child rates. A second list can simply follow the first, say "10% less", so you only change prices once.

Special offers that say exactly what you mean. Specials gained 19 new kinds of conditions: early booking, returning guests, number of rooms, language and many more. You can finally say "for agent A or agent B, if they stay at least five nights" in one offer instead of two.

Also new: group prices that get better as the group grows, and dates when an offer simply doesn't apply.

Running the place

Housekeeping, done properly. A live board shows every room's cleaning state. The day's work plans itself, rooms are shared out fairly among whoever is working, and there's a printed sheet for the morning meeting. Here's the full story.

Courses, classes and excursions. Plan everything you sell besides rooms and dives, with sessions, groups and a list that makes sure no guest who paid is forgotten. Read about Activities.

Who works when. The Shift Plan puts your team's week on one page, including days off.

Airport pickups off the whiteboard. Plan transfers with your cars, routes and guests, and print a list for the driver.

A few more:

• Guest lists on screen. Boat and resort lists open right on the page, and the crew can fill in visa numbers at the port before printing. See how.
• Notes on a trip that the whole team sees, and a trip report that sums up each boat's season.
• Setting up a new building? Create or change many rooms at once, or copy a whole resort or boat.

For dive centers and liveaboards

• Plan the dive day. One board shows your boats and today's trips, and a finished trip turns straight into the logbook. Every diver's history is one click away. Read more.
• Know your equipment. Tanks, regulators, BCDs and engines, each tracked on its own, with a reminder when a service is due. Read more.
• A dive report shows your busiest sites and your guides' dives.

Bar, restaurant and kitchen

• A new POS counter. Easy to use by touch, with your tables on a floor plan, bills you can split, and one tap to put a drink on the guest's room. Read more.
• Staff drinks on account. Your team buys during the month and settles up at the end of it.
• A screen for the kitchen. New orders appear with a beep, and slow ones change colour so nothing waits too long.
• Stock that knows its recipes. Sell a mojito and the rum, mint and lime come off the shelf. Run out of something and the POS won't sell the dish. Read more.

Your guests

Everything about a guest, on one page. The new guest profile shows their stays, their dives, their forms, their bills and what they've spent with you over the years, and it reminds you of their birthday.

• Find the right guests. "German divers who stayed with us last year": find them in a few clicks and write to all of them at once.
• Newsletters that go straight from Gurita and only reach people who said yes.
• Guest forms. You see exactly what a guest filled in before it goes into their profile, and a photo of their passport can fill in the details for you.
• Your own guest forms. Put them together from ready-made parts like emergency contact, diet, insurance or flights. Read more. Arrival times and expiring passports then show up on your lists on their own.
• Messages. Choose which messages go out, send them by WhatsApp if you like, and pick one of four email designs in your own colours.
• Guests in there twice? Merge them. And the search bar at the top now finds anything, from anywhere.

Working with other tools

• All connections in one place. Every connection and payment provider lives in the Plugin Shop, and you can hide the parts of Gurita you don't use.
• Just ask. Connect an AI assistant like Claude and ask things like "how full were we in August?" It can look, but never change anything, and you decide what it may see. Read more.
• Your WordPress website can now show your rooms, trips, prices and a "Book now" button, always up to date. You'll find the plugin in the Plugin Shop.
• The Operations Pack is there for the day the internet goes down. Every night your team gets a spreadsheet by email with the coming weeks: arrivals, who's in house, the room plan and open payments. For now it covers resorts and dive centers; liveaboards come next.
• Also new: WooCommerce, HighLevel, and an easy move over from LittleHotelier.
• A tidier photo library, with folders and a list of where each picture is used. Read more.
• An audit log for the question "who changed this?"

In your language

¡Hola, 你好 and halo! Spanish, Chinese and Indonesian are new, and French and Italian got a fresh polish. Everyone on your team can use Gurita in the language they're most comfortable with.

Safe and sound

We went through Gurita from top to bottom, twice, to make it safer. Your profile now shows every device you're signed in on, so you can sign out the tablet you left at the dive shop. And a strength meter helps you pick a good password.

Good to know

• 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 sets the day your books begin.
• To check a guest out while something is still unpaid, you now tick a box to confirm it. That way it never happens by accident.
• Booking sites now always get your strictest minimum stay, so some of them may show a longer minimum than before.
• Equipment replaces the old Boat Maintenance page. Your old maintenance records don't move over by themselves, so just get in touch and we'll help.

---

That's Gurita 3. Log in, take a look around, and switch on what you need under Settings → Active Modules. If you'd like us to show you anything, just send us a message. We read every single one, and a lot of what's in this post started exactly that way.

Thank you for being with us.

Your Gurita Team