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What is an inventory pool?

An inventory pool is a named group of units a guest can book interchangeably — three identical doubles, say, or a row of near-identical studios. Price the pool once and every unit in it inherits that price. Pools live under Units → Inventory Pools in the sidebar. A pool has a name and a description; everything else about it comes from the units inside it.

Why use pools?

  • Shared pricing — one rate plan covers the whole group instead of a copy per room.
  • Substitution — any unit in the pool can satisfy a booking, so a maintenance problem in one room does not cancel a stay.
  • Grouped availability — the pool sells from a shared count rather than from one room’s calendar.
Pools are optional. A unit that should never be handed out interchangeably — a VIP suite, a one-off apartment — stays Standalone.

How do I create a pool and add units?

1

Open Inventory Pools

Go to Units → Inventory Pools in the sidebar.
2

Create the pool

Click New inventory pool, give it a name and an optional description, then click Create.
3

Assign units

Open each unit’s settings page and use its Inventory pool card to pick the pool. Choose Standalone (never pooled) to take a unit back out.
Membership is set on the unit, not on the pool. The pool’s Member units section lists what belongs to it and is read-only — it shows each member’s name and whether it is currently bookable.

How does pool booking differ from booking a specific unit?

A reservation can target a pool instead of one room. The guest books “a double”, the stay is confirmed, and a specific unit is picked closer to arrival. Until then the booking shows as Unassigned on the Calendar and you can assign a room from the reservation. Availability for a pool on any date is the number of bookable units in it, minus the pool bookings that have not been assigned a room yet, minus the units already blocked by a specific reservation or by maintenance. Booking a specific unit is the alternative: the reservation is locked to that room from the moment it is created.

How do pools relate to rate plans?

A rate plan prices exactly one target — one pool, or one unit. Put units that share a price in a pool and price the pool once. Then give a single unit its own plan only where it genuinely differs; a unit plan takes priority over the pool plan for that unit. A pool with no units in it prices nothing. A pool only prices what belongs to it.

Distribution

If you sell through connected channels, one member of the pool acts as its representative — the room whose photos and content are used for the whole group’s listing. You can change which unit that is from the pool page.
Archiving a pool removes it from every picker and makes its units standalone again; they keep their own rates. A pool that is currently live on a channel cannot be archived until it is withdrawn.

Common use cases

  • A block of identical rooms — pool them, price once, let the front desk assign rooms on arrival day.
  • Apartments let individually — still worth pooling for one shared rate plan, even though each has its own listing.
  • One premium exception — keep the suite standalone, or pool it and give it its own rate plan.