Get the most out of Nestora

Sign in to the console

Your first password arrives in the welcome email sent when your account was created. Signing in lands you on the dashboard. Your own details, your password and the list of devices you're signed in on all live under Your profile, reached from your name at the top right.

Signing in to the console.

Put your own name on it

Settings › Branding. This isn't decoration — it's what residents, staff and guests see, and what's printed on every invoice and receipt. Set your display name, logo and brand colour, then your registered company name, GSTIN, address and UPI ID, which together form the legal block on a bill.

Invoice terms, the receipt note, the letterhead footer and the authorised signatory are written once here and appear on every document afterwards.

Settings › Branding. What you set here reaches the console, the app, invoices and email.

Add the property and its geo-fence

Properties › Add property. Give it a name, a short code that appears on invoice numbers, and a gender policy — men, women or anyone. Then set the geo-fence while standing at the building and tap Use my location rather than typing coordinates.

That circle is what staff attendance and resident meal marking are checked against. 50 m suits most buildings. The tolerance is an outer band where a check-in is still allowed but flagged for you to look at, so ordinary GPS drift indoors doesn't stop somebody working.

Your properties, each with its own occupancy and geo-fence.

Build the rooms and beds

Open the property and use its Bed board tab. The shape is building → floor → room → bed. Even a single house needs one building; call it Main block.

When you add a room you can create its beds at the same time — give it a number, a capacity, the monthly rent per bed and who may stay. Beds are labelled A, B, C… and count towards your plan's bed limit. Every bed then shows on the board as a tile you can tap.

The bed board — building, floor, room, bed, colour-coded by state.

Add your team, and scope what they see

Settings › Users & roles › Add someone. Everybody gets their own sign-in; nobody shares the owner's. The role decides what a person can do; the property scope decides what they can see.

A manager scoped to one building sees only that building's residents, invoices, complaints and reports — everywhere in the product, totals included. When somebody leaves, Switch off keeps their record and history but ends the access.

Log every enquiry, not just the good ones

Enquiries › Log an enquiry. Name and mobile are all that's required, but How did they reach you? is what makes the conversion report worth reading later. Move each one along its stage as things happen, and use Log a follow-up to record what was said so whoever picks up the call next isn't starting cold.

Convert, and register the person

Convert to resident carries the name, mobile, email and gender straight onto the registration form — nothing is retyped. Fill in the food preference, which the kitchen headcount uses, and the emergency contact, which is required for good reason: nobody wants to be looking for it at two in the morning.

Allocate a bed

Open the resident and choose Allocate a bed. Only genuinely available beds appear, filtered by the room's gender policy. Set the move-in date, agreement length, monthly rent, security deposit, notice period and lock-in — the rent defaults from the room but can be overridden for this person.

On confirm, the bed turns Taken, the agreement starts, the deposit is recorded as held, and the resident joins that month's billing run.

The resident register, with rent, dues and status on every row.

Bill the whole house in one action

Invoices & payments › Bill everyone for a month. Choose the month and confirm — every active resident is billed for rent and whatever recurring charges they carry. Somebody who moved in on the 18th is prorated for the days they were actually here.

Run it twice and nothing doubles: a resident already invoiced for that month is skipped, so a nervous second click is harmless. Overdue bills pick up late fees overnight on the terms your plan sets.

Record money as it arrives

Record a payment takes the resident, amount, method — cash, bank transfer or cheque — the date received and a reference such as a UTR or cheque number. You don't pick invoices: the money settles the oldest unpaid bill first and works forward, which is what an ageing report assumes. Anything left over is held as credit and comes off the next bill automatically.

One-off invoice bills a single resident outside the cycle — a replacement key, a damaged wardrobe — with as many charge lines as you need. Cancel invoice asks for a reason and keeps the record: invoices are never deleted, because a missing number in a sequence is exactly what an auditor asks about.

Invoices and payments — what was billed, what came in, and what is still owed.

Transfers, notice and checkout

Three actions on the resident's own page. Move bed takes a new bed, a date and a reason — the old bed frees up and the stay history keeps both. Record notice marks them On notice so the bed can be shown to the next person without being double-booked.

Check out settles the deposit on the same screen. Add deductions with a reason and an amount; the panel shows deposit held, outstanding dues and deductions, and lands on either a refund or a shortfall they still owe. Confirm, and the final statement goes out by email while the bed becomes Free the same moment.

Set your meal times and cut-offs

Breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner arrive ready-made with serving windows. Set each one's cut-off — how long before serving a resident can still change their mind — and the guest and staff prices. A meal with no guest price simply isn't sold to visitors.

Add your dishes, then their recipes

A recipe lists the items a dish consumes and how much. It is what lets a production run deduct stock and tell you what the food actually cost.

Plan the menu, read the headcount

The menu is set a week at a time, per property, so residents can see what's coming in their app. Who's eating then builds the headcount for each meal from what residents have marked plus guest bookings — and flags any resident whose food preference nobody ever recorded.

The kitchen: who is eating, production runs, the menu, dishes and meal times.

Close each production run

Plan a production run against a dish and a quantity. When the meal is over, Close and deduct stock — the ingredients come out of the store you name, the expense is posted against the right category, and the run is costed. This is the single action that keeps stock, spend and food cost honest.

Keep the store stocked

Add each item you buy with its unit and a reorder level — that level is what puts it on the To order tab and triggers the overnight low-stock alert. Raise a purchase order against a vendor, have it approved, then receive it: receiving raises the stock and posts the expense in one action.

Movements is the ledger of every in and out — receipts, production deductions, wastage and adjustments. It's where you look when a number surprises you.

Inventory — what is on the shelf, what it is worth, and what is on order.

Complaints, housekeeping and the gate

Complaints arrive on their own when a resident raises one from their app. Assign it to a person — an unassigned complaint is nobody's job — then keep the status honest through to Resolved, with a line describing what was actually done. The resident sees that line, and the page shows how many are past their promised time.

Housekeeping generates tasks per cleaning area per shift; visitors and gate passes track who is on site right now; maintenance handles jobs against assets, including recurring servicing, and posts each cost as an expense.

Staff and attendance

Add each staff member against the property they work at — that link is what lets them use the staff app at all. Attendance is then built from real GPS check-ins on the phone rather than typed in.

When somebody's phone was flat or the GPS refused, they send a correction request from the app and you approve or decline it with a note. Location checks logs every attempt including the failures — outside the fence, mocked location, unapproved device — which is where you look when an attendance figure is disputed.

Staff and attendance, with every location check kept behind it.

Install it, and sign in without a password

Open the app address on the phone. On Android the browser offers to install it; on an iPhone, tap Share then Add to Home Screen. Sign in with the mobile number or email the PG has on record — a six-digit code arrives by email. There's no password, so there's nothing to forget.

The app sign-in — a mobile number or email, then a six-digit code.

Residents: food, rent, issues and alerts

Food shows today and tomorrow meal by meal, with the menu against each. Tap to switch between Booked and Skipping — after the cut-off it locks, because by then the cook has already bought the vegetables.

Rent holds every bill with its status, the amount due right now, each receipt, and the deposit being held — with the PG's UPI ID on the bill so it can be paid from the screen. Issues reports something broken in a line or two and follows it through to Fixed. Alerts carries notices and reminders.

Staff: attendance, tasks, scanning and the gate

Tap Check in on arrival. The card shows how far you are from the PG and whether you're inside the fence, then Confirm check in records it. If it won't go through, the screen says why — outside the fence, location blocked, or no GPS fix — and Ask your manager to correct a day sends the date and what happened.

Tasks lists complaints assigned to you, cleaning rounds for your areas and your own leave. Scan reads guest meal codes with the camera, or takes the short code typed in. Gate logs visitors with an ID and marks residents out and back in, always showing how many people are inside now.

Scan the poster and pick a meal

The phone camera is enough — the page opens carrying the PG's own name and colours. Today and tomorrow are shown with what's being served and the price. Meals past their cut-off, or already full, can't be picked.

The guest booking page, carrying the PG's own name and colours.

Give a name, mobile and email

The name is what gets read out at the counter; the email is where the code is sent. A six-digit code verifies the mobile is real. Some PGs also require you to be at the property — that's checked before any money is taken.

Pay, and keep the collection code

The seat is held while you pay — take too long and the hold expires and it returns to the pool. On payment a QR code and a short code such as K3M9-PQ7X appear on screen and arrive by email. Show either at the counter.

At the counter

Staff open Scan in their app and read the QR, or type the short code. The screen shows the guest's name, the meal and how many portions. The code is single-use: a second scan says Already collected, and it won't open twice even if two people scan it at the same instant.

The guest meal board in the console — every booking, its state, and the settings behind it.