Every month, ViennaHouse by Wyndham's faced the same operational nightmare: their front desk team processed hundreds of long-stay guest invoices manually, calculating room rates, parking fees, breakfast charges, generating PDFs, and tracking payments.
The cost? What should take 5 minutes per guest was stretching into 2+ hours of manual work per guest, consuming over 100 staff hours monthly across their 40 European properties.
We at Makeitfuture came with a solution: Complete billing automation that reduced this workload by 90%.
The Challenge: Manual Billing at Scale
The core problem was simple: their long-stay guests required monthly billing that their systems couldn't handle efficiently.
What this meant in practice:
- 300+ manual invoices generated monthly
- Hours of payment tracking across multiple cycles
- German compliance documentation challenges
- Staff overwhelm from repetitive administrative work
- Inconsistent processes across 40 European properties
The result: Front desk teams spent more time on paperwork than guest experience.
The Solution: Advanced Hotel Management System Automation
When Makeitfuture approached this challenge, we didn't just automate existing processes. We reimagined the entire billing workflow, creating an intelligent system that thinks, decides, and acts on its own.
The solution leverages n8n's workflow orchestration capabilities integrated directly with Apaleo's property management APIs.
The solution addressed every pain point, from guest identification and charge calculation to payment processing and German compliance documentation.
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Here's how it works:
1. Automated Guest Detection
The system runs daily scans of all reservations in Apaleo, automatically identifying guests with stays exceeding 30 days and outstanding balances that require monthly billing. This workflow uses Schedule Trigger for daily execution, Code functions for date formatting, and Search Reservations to identify qualifying guests, then splits them into processing batches.
2. Smart Charge Calculation
Each month, the workflow retrieves guest folios and calculates exact charges: room rates × nights, plus parking fees, breakfast costs, and additional services. The Execute Workflow Trigger starts the process, Search Folios retrieves guest data, and the sophisticated "loop inside loop" structure (Split in Batches + IF conditions) ensures each guest is processed individually while filtering for outstanding balances.
Result: 300+ guests processed in minutes, not days.
3. The Email Intelligence Layer
Finding guest contact information shouldn't require detective work. The system searches across multiple data sources: booking platforms, reservation systems, guest profiles, using custom algorithms to identify and verify the most reliable email address.
When charges exceed zero (because why process empty invoices?), the system makes intelligent decisions:
Path A: Direct Guest Communication If an email exists, the guest receives a professionally formatted invoice with payment links, automatically generated in compliance with German tax regulations. The entire sequence, from charge calculation to email delivery, takes under 30 seconds.
Path B: Staff Notification Protocol No guest email? The system immediately alerts the appropriate staff member with all necessary details for manual follow-up. Nothing falls through the cracks, but staff only intervene when truly necessary.
4. Compliance Documentation & Tracking
All transactions are automatically logged in Google Sheets through dedicated nodes, capturing payment IDs, dates, reservation details, and guest information. This creates complete German tax compliance documentation.
The Results: Measurable Operational Transformation
Operational Efficiency Gains:
- 90% reduction in billing-related labor (from 100+ to 10 hours monthly)
- 300+ invoices processed automatically each month
- Zero calculation errors since implementation
Financial Impact:
- 5-day billing advance improved cash flow predictability
- €15,000+ monthly savings in labor costs alone
- 100% compliance rate with German invoicing regulations
The Technology Stack: Enterprise-Grade Yet Surprisingly Accessible
You might assume this level of automation requires massive IT infrastructure. It doesn't.
Core Components:
- n8n: Open-source workflow automation platform (think Zapier on steroids, but you own the data)
- Apaleo: Cloud-native property management system with robust APIs
- SendInBlue: Email automation for guest communications
- Google Sheets: Familiar interface for compliance documentation
- 1saas: Integration layer for seamless connectivity
Conclusion: From Billing Chaos to Operational Excellence
ViennaHouse transformed their 100-hour monthly billing nightmare into a 10-hour automated process by focusing on one thing: their biggest operational pain point.
The same principle applies to any business drowning in manual processes, identify your worst challenge, automate it completely, then expand.
Your competition is already automating. Every month you wait costs you time, money, and competitive advantage.
Ready to eliminate your operational problems? Contact us at Makeitfuture today and discover how intelligent automation can transform your business operations, because your competition won't wait, and neither should you.
