Weak signal is normal
Basements, cold rooms and back corridors have poor Wi-Fi. Work is saved on the phone and sent when the connection returns, without creating duplicates.
Hospitality · operations
Hotel and restaurant back-office software your staff will actually use
Your teams run the day on paper lists, WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets, because the apps you bought don't fit how your sites work, and what staff do enter never reaches the PMS, the POS or the managers' reports. We design back-office tools with the people who will use them, connect them to your systems and build them in your repository.
Typical lengthweeks
From€10,000 · £8,700 · $11,500
Connects toYour PMS, POS and accounting
When teams call us
What usually triggers the work
“The app that worked for one hotel doesn't fit how we run twelve.” “We pay for fifteen tools and still keep the real numbers in a spreadsheet.” “We rolled out a staff app and nobody opens it.” Hotels commonly run 15 to 20 systems, and the work between them is done by people.
The cost is quiet but steady. Managers spend evenings reconciling, head office sees last week's numbers, and guests wait while reception phones housekeeping to ask whether a room is ready. A tool that staff don't open is a licence you pay for and data you never get.
What we deliver
In your repository, demoed every week
- Kitchen, housekeeping and operations tools designed with the people who use themWe watch the work before we draw screens, and staff try each version in the weekly demo. In our own products, that is why a housekeeper reports a room in two taps and a cook sends a photo instead of filling in a form.
- Connected to your PMS and POS, so nobody types data twiceStays, rooms, sales and stock are read from the system that owns them, through its API. Each figure on screen can be traced to where it came from.
- Phone-first screens for staff on the floorMade for one hand and a busy shift: few steps, large buttons, and the languages your staff actually speak.
- Reports for managers across every siteOne set of definitions for every site, so managers compare like with like, with exports for finance.
How it holds up
The questions a reviewer will ask, answered in the build
Every change has a name
Who marked a room clean, who wrote off stock, who changed a price, and when. Ready for a manager's question or an auditor's.
The right people see the right sites
Staff see their own tasks, managers their own sites, head office all of them. Access ends the day someone leaves.
Proof
Where we have done this before
In our own products: a housekeeping app for hotels, and a back office for restaurants built on our Kitchen app.
Kitchen Back Office
Our own back-office service for restaurants: the kitchen sends photos and voice notes, we close the stock counts and report P&L and food cost on our Kitchen app.
Housekeeping app
Our own app for hotel housekeeping: daily room tasks on staff phones, live room status for supervisors and reception, supplies tracked per room.
From our own products
- Staff task lists
- Live room status
- Mobile stock counts
- Recipe costing
- Manager reports
Often built together: POS integration and PMS integration.
Price
What it costs
Operations software starts from €10,000 (£8,700 · $11,500), billed by milestone. Typical length: weeks. If the tool has to connect to your PMS or POS, the integration audit is a good first step: fixed price, and the fee is credited in full if you build with us.
Questions
Before you book
Why not just buy an app from a marketplace?
Often you should, and we will say so. Mews alone lists more than 1,000 integrations, and most single needs (housekeeping, guest messaging, upselling) are covered by a subscription. Custom work pays off when your sites run differently from each other, when the tools you need don't share data, or when the way you work is what sets you apart.
Can we start from your own products?
Sometimes. If the housekeeping app or Kitchen app is close to what you need, you can use it, set up and adapted for your sites, but you would not own its code. If you need software you own outright, we build it new for you and bring what we learnt from our products. We set out both options, with costs, before you choose.
Who owns the software you build for us?
You do. It is written in your repository and runs in your cloud accounts from the first commit, and the contract assigns the IP to you. Our own products stay ours unless we agree otherwise in writing.
Who owns the code and the IP?
You do, from the first commit. We work in your repository and your accounts, and the contract assigns the IP to you in the present tense, not at some later date.
Who will actually work on our project?
The engineers named in the proposal, and you meet them before you sign. A key-person clause means nobody is swapped without your written consent.
How do time zones work for a UK or US team?
We work on Lisbon time, which is the same clock as London: Mon–Fri, 08:00–18:00 UK time. That leaves about four working hours a day in common with the US East Coast. You get a demo of working software every week and a short written update every working day.
What contracts do you sign?
A master services agreement with a statement of work for each project, or your own paper if you prefer. A mutual NDA before we see anything, and a GDPR data processing agreement. US clients get a W-8BEN-E from us. Which law governs the contract is answered on Contracts & security.
How do we pay?
The fixed-price first step is paid upfront. Builds are billed by milestone, after you have seen the work running. Monthly care, if you want it, is billed at the start of each month. We invoice in euros, pounds or dollars.
Free 30-minute call
Tell us what has to work, and by when
You talk to an engineer who would work on it, not a salesperson. You leave the call knowing what it would take and what the first step costs, or we tell you that you don't need us.