Bill rooms now (manual trigger)

This is the "don't wait for the schedule, run it now" button for auto-billing. The page hits the same routine the scheduled auto-billing job hits — so the result is identical, just earlier.

Use it when:

• You're closing the front desk and want to flush all pending charges before cash-up.
• A guest is checking out and you want the day's room charge stamped before generating the final folio.
• You changed billing brackets and want to verify the new policy fires correctly.

Before you start

• You need Booking Management access.
• Auto-Bill Guests (Setup → Preferences) does not matter here. With it on, rooms bill themselves at their billing time and this button just bills early. With it off — for hotels that prefer to bill by hand — this button (or the Night Audit's first step) is how rooms get billed.
• If a scheduled fire is currently running, the button is blocked. Wait the status indicator out.

Steps

1. Open Reservation → Bill Rooms Now (or the chip on the Preferences page → Bill Rooms Now).
2. The page shows the current state:
   • Ready + the time of the last run.
   • Billing in progress + who started it (scheduled or manual).
3. Click Run now.
4. A confirmation explains what will happen. Click Run now again.
5. A toast confirms the result:
   • "Billed rooms in 2.3s." — done.
   • "Billing failed: …" — see the message + share with support if you can't resolve it yourself.

Tips

• The button never double-bills. If a charge is already stamped for the day, it's left alone.
• The same per-tenant mutex that prevents the scheduled job from running twice also prevents two browser tabs from kicking off two manual runs. Second click → "Already running, try again shortly."
• The chip on the Preferences → Hotel / Reservation tab shows the same status at a glance, with a direct link here.

Common problems

• Button says "Already running" → a scheduled fire is in progress. Wait ≤ 15 min (or whatever your auto-bill interval is), or refresh the page to see live progress.
• Run completes but folio doesn't update → the page refresh isn't automatic. Reload the folio and the new charge will be there.
• Rooms aren't billing by themselves → Auto-Bill Guests is off in Setup → Preferences. Turn it on for automatic billing, or keep billing by hand here and at the Night Audit.
• "Billing failed" → the message is what the database engine sent back. Common causes:
  • Missing or invalid check-out time bracket → fix the brackets, retry.
  • One of your daily rooms has a corrupt billing chain → contact support with the failing room number; this isn't an operator-fixable issue.
• Bills fire at wrong wall-clock → not a bug here; check your tenant Time Zone on Organization Profile.