We use two terms in Rentlio to describe potentially problematic reservations and it is very important to learn the difference and how to handle them.
Overlapped reservation
A synonym would be an "overbooking". This means, that at the time when the reservation was made your availability for that unit type was 0, and you already have units reserved for that period. These reservations are marked with a red underline:
If you are not sure how this happened, please get in touch with us through our support chat — our team can review your account logs and identify the exact cause. Our experience shows that overlapped reservations mostly happen in these cases: > if you manually increase your availability on Rentlio, > if you increase availability on online sales channels > if you have allotment with online sales channels
Another, less frequent, cause for overlapped reservations is manual cancellation of reservations that come from OTA channels. When you cancel manually reservation which came from a channel, in your Rentlio calendar, you are increasing the availability which is then sent towards all connected channels. However, if that same reservation gets cancelled directly on the channel by the guest (or the channel itself), the availability on the channel will increase once more, and create this fictitious availability which will not be visible in your Rentlio calendar, if your availability limit has already been reached. Therefore, this situation poses a risk of overbooking.
Therefore: Under no circumstances should one cancel manually reservations that came from OTA channels. Those reservations should be cancelled on the channel where they came from because manual intervention can create an issue. Manual cancellation should be used only for reservations which were done directly via your Booking engine, by phone/email, or walk-in.
What do the logs show — and what don’t they?
Rentlio logs record reservation events and channel sync actions. However, they do not show who manually changed availability or exactly when that happened. This is why identifying the root cause of an overlapped reservation usually requires our team to review your account directly.
Why did a closed unit still receive a booking?
Some OTA channels (e.g. Booking.com, Airbnb) use an autoreplenishment mechanism — when a guest cancels a reservation, the channel may automatically reopen those dates without waiting for a sync from Rentlio. In that short window, a new reservation can arrive even if you have set availability to 0 or closed the unit in Rentlio. This is not a Rentlio error, but a behaviour specific to how certain channels operate.
What does -1 availability on the calendar mean?
When you see -1 on the calendar, it means one more reservation has been recorded than there are available units — in other words, an overbooking has occurred. The in-app alert triggers at the moment a reservation arrives and availability drops below zero. If you manually adjusted availability after the reservation was already created, the alert may not appear retroactively.
Have an overlapped reservation and not sure why it happened? Contact us via support chat and have the following ready so we can find the cause as quickly as possible:
The reservation number(s) involved in the overlap
The channel the reservation came from (e.g. Booking.com, Airbnb, direct)
The date and, if possible, the exact time the reservation was received
The name of the unit (room/apartment) where the overlap occurred
Split reservation
In most cases split reservations are not problematic and can be solved within seconds. The term "split reservation" describes a longer reservation where Rentlio was unable to assign a single unit to your guests for the duration of their stay. These reservations are marked with a yellow underline.
Here is split reservation and instructions how to solve this issue:
Reservation Test 01 is marked with a yellow underline, because at the moment these guests cannot be accommodated in a single unit during their entire stay.
In order to resolve this you have to rearrange reservations in that period. Reservations can be moved from one unit to another with left mouse click (drag&drop action).
Pro tip: we advise to monitor split reservations closely, as they can happen regularly if you have more units assigned to one unit type. By actively working on them in advance you will avoid any potential issues.