How to configure Solidres Channel Manager
The Solidres Channel Manager is our own built-in channel manager. It connects your Solidres properties straight to online travel agencies such as Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Agoda and Vrbo, so your availability and rates stay in sync and channel bookings land in Solidres automatically.
Unlike the MyAllocator and Beds24 integrations, there is no second dashboard, no second account and no second vendor to pay. You never re-create your property, your room types or your rate plans anywhere else — Solidres provisions all of it for you. The only thing you still do by hand is pick which OTA channels you want to sell on, and even that happens inside your Joomla administrator.
IMPORTANT The MyAllocator integration is deprecated and will be removed in a future Solidres release. It keeps working for now, but a new setup should use the Solidres Channel Manager or Beds24, and existing MyAllocator users should plan the move rather than wait.
PREREQUISITES:
- Solidres 4.2.0+
- An active Solidres Channel Manager subscription — one subscription per property
- An active Solidres subscription, any level — it is what carries the Rate Plan and Limit Booking plugins below
- Channel Manager plugin v3.1.0+ installed and enabled
- Task - Solidres Channel Manager plugin installed and enabled (bundled with the Channel Manager plugin — installed and enabled automatically when you install it)
- Rate Plan plugin installed and enabled, with at least one dated rate plan per synced room type — without one, availability syncs but no price ever reaches a channel
- Limit Booking plugin installed and enabled — blocked dates, and availability editing in the Inventory grid
- Inventory plugin installed and enabled (included with your Channel Manager subscription)
- Your Download ID entered in Solidres → Options → Subscription & updates
- A complete property address with map coordinates (OTA channels will not accept a property without them)
How the Solidres Channel Manager works
Solidres is the master of your inventory. Everything flows out of Solidres and into your channels, and reservations flow back:
- Solidres → channels. Whenever something changes — a rate plan price, a booking, a cancellation, a limit-booking rule — Solidres queues only the affected dates and pushes them out on the next scheduled task run. Availability is calculated from your real rooms minus confirmed reservations and blocked dates.
- Channels → Solidres. When a guest books on an OTA, the reservation is delivered to your site within seconds and saved as a normal Solidres reservation, with the guest, the dates, the rooms and the per-night prices the channel sent.
NOTE Solidres is the only place you manage rooms, rate plans, prices and availability. There is no separate channel manager dashboard to log into, and no second copy of your inventory to keep in step — the Manage OTA channels screen described in STEP 7 exists purely to connect your channels and map them to your Solidres room types and rate plans.
Subscription plans
The Solidres Channel Manager is sold as its own subscription, priced per property and tiered by the number of rooms you sync. Only room types you actually enable for syncing count towards the limit.
| Plan |
Rooms synced |
| CM Starter | Up to 5 |
| CM Small | 6 – 15 |
| CM Standard | 16 – 30 |
| CM Plus | 31 – 60 |
| CM Pro | 61 and above |
Current pricing is on the subscription page. Each property you connect needs its own subscription — if you run three properties on one Solidres site, you need three.
Every plan also includes the Inventory plugin, downloaded from your solidres.com account alongside the Channel Manager plugin: a spreadsheet-style grid at Solidres → Inventory where you see and edit availability, nightly rates, stay restrictions and channel restriction flags per day, with bulk updates across date ranges. It is mentioned throughout this article.
You also need a Solidres subscription
The Channel Manager subscription pays for the connection service and gives you the Channel Manager and Inventory plugins. Everything it sends to your channels, though, is built in Solidres itself, by plugins that are part of a Solidres subscription — any level:
| Plugin |
Why the Channel Manager needs it |
Comes with |
| Rate Plan |
Required. Nightly prices, minimum stay and maximum stay all come from a rate plan. The free edition's built-in standard tariff has no validity dates, and a tariff without dates is never sent to a channel — so without Rate Plan your availability syncs and your prices never do. |
Solidres subscription |
| Limit Booking |
Blocks rooms and closes dates everywhere, including your own website, and pushes the change to your channels. It is also what makes the availability row of the Inventory grid editable — without it that row is read-only. |
Solidres subscription |
| Front Desk |
Optional. Compares your Solidres availability against what your channels currently hold, so a mismatch is visible immediately. |
Solidres subscription |
| Dashboard |
Optional. Hosts the Channel manager activities widget, which is where the sync activity log is displayed. |
Solidres subscription |
IMPORTANT If you are upgrading from an older Solidres, the legacy Complex Tariff plugin satisfies the rate plan requirement in the same way — its tariffs carry validity dates too. Rate Plan is its replacement and is the one to use on a new setup.
Setup
Please follow the following steps to join:
STEP 1. Buy the subscriptions and enter your Download ID.
Purchase a Solidres Channel Manager subscription on solidres.com — and, if you are not already a Solidres subscriber, a Solidres subscription as well, for the Rate Plan and Limit Booking plugins described above. Then copy your Download ID from your solidres.com account.
In Joomla, go to Components → Solidres → Options → Subscription & updates and paste it into the Download ID field. This is the same Download ID you already use for extension updates — it is how the Solidres Channel Manager recognises your subscription, so the connection cannot be made without it.
STEP 2. Enable and configure the Channel Manager plugin.
Go to System → Plugins, search for Solidres - Channel Manager plugin and enable it.
Open it and set Provider to Solidres Channel Manager, then save. That is the whole configuration — there are no API keys, tokens or invite codes to manage.
IMPORTANT The provider is a site-wide setting. Switching it changes which channel manager every property on the site talks to, so only one provider can be active at a time.
STEP 3. Set up the Joomla Scheduled Tasks.
Three background jobs keep the sync running. The Task - Solidres Channel Manager plugin that provides them ships inside the Channel Manager plugin and is enabled for you on install — confirm it under System → Plugins if in doubt, then go to System → Manage → Scheduled Tasks and create one task of each of the following types:
| Task type |
Interval |
What it does |
| Solidres - Channel Manager Sync |
1 minute |
Sends queued availability and rate changes to your channels |
| Solidres - Channel Manager Watch |
1 minute |
Tracks the progress of each batch that was sent |
| Solidres - Channel Manager Log |
1 minute |
Records completed sync operations in the activity log |
NOTE There is a fourth task type, Solidres - Channel Manager Token. It renews the Beds24 API token and is not needed for the Solidres Channel Manager — leave it out.
Joomla's Scheduled Tasks only run when something triggers them, and for channel syncing the choice of trigger matters: lazy scheduling and Web Cron both run only one due task per trigger, so the three tasks above would take three passes to cycle through. A real cron job on your server runs all of them in one go. Our How to set up Joomla CRON for the Task Scheduler guide walks through it, including the exact command and the cPanel and Plesk equivalents.
STEP 4. Complete your property details.
Edit your property in Solidres → Properties and make sure all of the following are filled in — OTA channels require them, so the connection will refuse to start until they are:
- Street address
- City
- Country
- Map coordinates (latitude/longitude)
Also check the property's currency: your channel rate plans are created in that currency and cannot be changed afterwards without reconnecting.
STEP 5. Connect the property.
Still editing the property, open the Channel Manager tab and click Connect to Solidres Channel Manager.
If anything is missing the button is disabled and the panel lists exactly what to fix first. Otherwise the connection completes in a few seconds and Solidres creates your property in the channel manager for you.
The panel then switches to Status: Connected and lists Property UID, Connected since, Last full sync, Subscription plan (with its room limit) and Subscription expires — plus four buttons: Manage OTA channels, Full sync, Refresh subscription status and Disconnect.
NOTE If the connection times out, or you close the tab before it finishes, simply click Connect again. Retrying is safe: while a property is still connected, connecting again returns the property you already have instead of creating a duplicate. (This is not the same as connecting again after a deliberate Disconnect — see Disconnecting below, which does create a new one.)
STEP 6. Choose what each room type syncs.
Edit a room type, open its Channel Manager tab and set Sync options:
| Sync option |
What is sent to your channels |
| None — disconnect from channels | Nothing. The room type is not on your channels and does not count towards your room limit. |
| Availability | Free-room counts only |
| Rate | Prices and minimum/maximum stay only |
| Both | All of the above |
On the first save with any option other than None, Solidres creates the room type and a channel rate plan for every eligible rate plan under it, then pushes 500 days of availability and rates. The read-only Room type ID field fills in once that has happened.
Repeat for every room type you want to sell online. Room types you leave on None stay off the channels and off your bill.
IMPORTANT Setting Sync options back to None on a room type that was syncing disconnects it: it is removed from the channel manager together with its rate plans and channel mappings, and your channels stop selling it. Your Solidres room type, its rooms and its existing bookings are not affected. Switching sync back on later creates a new room type in the channel manager, so you will have to map it to your channels again.
STEP 7. Connect your OTA channels.
Back on the property's Channel Manager tab, click Manage OTA channels. The channel management screen opens in a dialog inside your Joomla administrator.
For each channel you want to sell on:
- Add the channel and sign in with the credentials or hotel ID that channel gave you.
- Map each channel room and rate to the matching Solidres room type and rate plan.
- Activate the channel and run its initial sync.
NOTE Every channel has its own onboarding rules — some connect instantly, others need the OTA to approve the connection first, and going fully live on the channel's own side can take one to two weeks. Follow the instructions the channel shows you in this screen.
STEP 8. Run the first full sync.
Once your channels are mapped, go back to the property's Channel Manager tab and click Full sync. This queues 500 days of availability and rates for every synced room type.
The push is processed by the Solidres - Channel Manager Sync task, so allow a few minutes. When it finishes, Last full sync updates and your inventory is visible on the channels.
You only need to do this by hand after a big change (for example after mapping new channels), and it can run at most once per 24 hours — if you click it again sooner, the message tells you when the next run is allowed. Day-to-day edits sync on their own, so you will rarely need it.
STEP 9. Add the activity log widget.
Go to Solidres → Dashboard, click Widgets in the toolbar, add a new widget of type Channel manager activities and save it. This gives you a running log of every sync operation, in both directions — including warning entries when a channel accepted an update but rejected some of its values — so you can confirm at a glance that things are flowing.
What syncs, and what does not
Channels sell rooms by the night, so only rate plans that can be expressed as a nightly price are sent. Solidres syncs a rate plan when all three of the following are true:
- it is enabled (published);
- its type is Rate per room per stay or Rate per person per stay;
- it has no customer group assigned — member and negotiated rates stay private and are never published to an OTA.
Rate plan types
| Rate plan type |
Synced? |
Notes |
| Rate per room per stay |
Yes |
The nightly price is sent as-is. |
| Rate per person per stay |
Yes |
Sent as the price for one adult multiplied by the room type's maximum occupancy. This is deliberately an upper bound — smaller parties still get the correct, lower price when they book directly on your site. |
| Package per room |
No |
A fixed price for an exact stay length has no nightly equivalent on a channel. |
| Package per person |
No |
Same reason. |
| Rate per room type per stay |
No |
Booking a whole room type is not an OTA concept. |
IMPORTANT If a room type is set to sync but none of its rate plans are eligible, the room type's Channel Manager tab shows the warning No rate plan is synced for this room type. Availability will still sync, but the room will have no price on your channels until you add an eligible rate plan.
Rate plan modes
| Mode |
How the nightly rate is calculated |
| 7-day week | The price for each weekday, repeating across the validity range. |
| Daily | The price entered for that date. Dates you left empty send no rate at all — availability still syncs, but the channel keeps its previous price for those days. |
| Weekly | The week price divided by 7, for every night in the week. |
| Monthly | The month price divided by 30, for every night in the month. |
Alongside the rate, Solidres sends minimum stay, maximum stay and stop-sell — see Channel restrictions below for closing dates on your channels by hand.
Not sent to channels
- Percentage pricing beyond the first adult's price, unoccupied prices, and child age buckets — a channel gets one nightly price per rate plan.
- Allowed check-in days.
- Extras and services booked on the channel — they arrive as note lines on the reservation rather than as Solidres extras.
- Guest credit card details for channels where the property collects payment. Retrieve those from the channel's own extranet.
NOTE Unpublishing a rate plan does not delete it from your channels. It is paused with a stop-sell across its remaining validity, and your channel rate mappings survive — so a seasonal rate plan can be switched off and back on without re-mapping anything. Changing a rate plan's type, or assigning a customer group to it, does remove it from your channels permanently.
Channel restrictions
Sometimes you want your channels to stop selling certain dates while your own website keeps taking bookings. Components → Solidres → Channel restrictions does exactly that: each restriction covers one property, one or more of its rate plans (listed by room type) and a date range, and applies any combination of three flags on your channels:
| Flag |
What the channels do |
| Stop sell |
The covered nights cannot be sold at all — no new stays touching those dates. Existing bookings are not affected. |
| Closed to arrival |
No check-ins on the covered dates. Stays passing through those dates remain bookable. |
| Closed to departure |
No check-outs on the covered dates. To block departures the morning after a closed range, include that morning's date in the range. |
Give each restriction a title that records why the dates are closed — "Close OTAs for regatta week", "Renovation floor 2" — pick the rate plans, set the date range and switch on the flags you need. The restriction is pushed to each selected rate plan, for up to 500 days ahead — to close a whole room type, simply select all of its rate plans. Only published restrictions are pushed; unpublishing or deleting one reopens the dates on your channels automatically (dates still covered by another restriction stay closed). If a selected rate plan's room type is not synced yet, the restriction saves with a warning and simply takes effect once the room type is synced.
NOTE Channel restrictions apply to your connected channels only — your own website keeps selling the covered dates, and your availability numbers do not change anywhere. To close dates everywhere, including your own website, use a limit booking instead.
When to use it
The classic case is the peak-date closeout. On dates you will fill anyway — a festival, a conference, high season — every OTA booking costs you 15–25% commission on a room that would have sold regardless. Stop-selling those dates on the channels while your own site keeps taking bookings is routine revenue management: the OTAs simply show no availability, and your direct guests still book. Closed to arrival and closed to departure shape stays instead of blocking them — for example, closed to arrival on a festival Saturday stops one-night stays from fragmenting the weekend, forcing Friday–Sunday bookings.
Pick the tool that matches your intent:
| You want to… |
Use |
Effect |
| Close dates everywhere |
Limit booking, with all rooms selected |
Your own website stops selling too, and the channels receive zero availability |
| Close the channels, keep selling direct |
Channel restriction |
The flags are pushed to your channels; your website is untouched |
| Restrict check-in weekdays on your own website |
The rate plan's allowed check-in days |
Your website only; not sent to channels |
Note that a channel restriction closes sales, not the hotel: if arrivals are genuinely impossible on a date (reception closed, for example), close it everywhere with a limit booking as well.
NOTE With the Inventory plugin (included with your Channel Manager subscription) installed, you can also toggle stop sell, closed to arrival and closed to departure per rate plan, per day, directly in the Solidres → Inventory grid. Grid toggles create and adjust channel restriction records for you, so both screens always show the same picture — use the grid for quick day-level tweaks and this screen for named, date-range closeouts.
IMPORTANT Two things to keep in mind before closing channels on a large scale. First, check your OTA contracts: some historically demand rate parity and occasionally last-room availability, and while such clauses have been banned or weakened in much of the EU, your own contract governs. Second, the big OTAs factor availability into their search ranking, so habitually closing out desirable dates can cost you visibility. Deliberate but sparing use is the professional norm.
Day-to-day operation
Once everything is connected there is nothing routine left to do. Solidres pushes an update automatically whenever you:
- save a rate plan (price, minimum/maximum stay, validity);
- save, cancel or delete a reservation — including bookings made on your own site;
- add or remove a limit-booking rule;
- save, publish, unpublish or delete a channel restriction;
- edit availability, rates, stay lengths or restriction flags in the Solidres → Inventory grid (the Inventory plugin is included with your Channel Manager subscription) — grid edits go through the same save paths, so they sync exactly like the changes above;
- change a room type's rooms or occupancy.
Only the affected dates are sent, so updates stay small and fast.
Bookings arriving from a channel
A channel booking becomes a normal Solidres reservation within seconds:
- the guest is created or matched in your customer list;
- the reservation's origin is the channel name (Booking.com, Airbnb and so on) and the channel's own reference number is stored with it;
- rooms are assigned from the mapped room type, with the per-night prices the channel sent;
- if the channel collected the payment the reservation is marked as paid; if you collect at the property it is left pending;
- modifications update the same reservation in place, and cancellations move it to the cancelled state and release the dates back to your channels.
NOTE If a channel booking arrives for dates that have no availability left, Solidres still saves it — as a cancelled reservation with a note explaining why. Nothing is ever silently dropped, so you can see the overbooking and deal with it.
Keeping an eye on things
- Properties list — a Channel Manager badge next to each connected property: green when syncing, amber when something needs attention soon, red when syncing has stopped — either because the subscription lapsed or because the property was disconnected on the channel manager side (each red state has its own icon and tooltip). Click it to copy the property ID.
- Room types list — a connection badge next to each synced room type. Its tooltip carries the channel room ID, and clicking the badge copies that ID.
- Front Desk — the availability grid compares your Solidres numbers against what your channels currently have, so a mismatch is visible immediately.
- Inventory grid (included with your Channel Manager subscription) — Solidres → Inventory lays out availability, rates, stay lengths and restriction flags per day in one spreadsheet-style screen, exactly as they are pushed to your channels — and lets you edit most of them there. Rate plans in Daily mode are editable in the grid (per-room plans inline, per-person plans through a popover); plans in 7-day week, Weekly or Monthly mode are shown as calculated nightly rates and are read-only there — edit those in the rate plan itself. The availability row needs the Limit Booking plugin to be editable.
- Channel manager activities widget — the full sync log, in both directions.
Your subscription and room limit
The property's Channel Manager tab shows your plan, its room limit and the expiry date. Refresh subscription status re-checks all of it immediately — use it right after renewing or upgrading instead of waiting for the hourly check.
Four notices can appear on that tab:
| Notice |
What it means |
What to do |
| Your Solidres Channel Manager subscription expires on … |
Your subscription ends soon and syncing to your channels stops on that date. |
Renew before then — the notice carries a Renew subscription button. |
| This property syncs n rooms, but the … plan covers m |
You have enabled more rooms than your plan allows. Syncing keeps working for a 14-day grace period. |
Upgrade the subscription (the notice carries an Upgrade subscription button), or set Sync options to None on a room type until you are back under the limit. |
| Your Solidres Channel Manager subscription has expired. |
Availability and rate updates are paused and incoming channel bookings are held for you. |
Renew — syncing resumes instantly. The notice carries a Renew subscription button. |
| This property was disconnected on the channel manager side on … |
The property is no longer live in the channel manager, so availability and rate updates no longer reach your channels. The Status line shows Disconnected on the channel side. |
Click Refresh subscription status to re-check — if the property has been reconnected, syncing resumes automatically. If it stays disconnected, click Disconnect to clear the local link and then connect the property again, or contact Solidres support if the disconnect is unexpected. |
NOTE An expired subscription is never destructive. Your channel connections and mappings stay exactly as they are, and incoming channel bookings are held for you rather than lost — they are delivered as soon as you renew. The same is true when a room limit is exceeded: outgoing updates pause, but reservations keep arriving.
Disconnecting
Use Disconnect on the property's Channel Manager tab to stop using the channel manager for that property. It removes the property from the channel manager and clears every local mapping — the property UID, the room type IDs and the rate plan IDs.
WARNING Disconnecting is not reversible. Unlike retrying an interrupted connection in STEP 5, connecting again after a disconnect provisions a brand-new property — the old one is never reused — so all of your OTA channel connections and room/rate mappings have to be set up again from scratch. To take a single room type off the channels, set its Sync options to None instead.
Your Solidres property, its room types, its rooms and all of its reservations are untouched by a disconnect.
Troubleshooting
| Message |
Cause and fix |
| Set the Channel Manager plugin provider to 'Solidres Channel Manager' to manage the connection here. |
The plugin is still set to MyAllocator or Beds24. See STEP 2. |
| Save this property first, then return to this tab to connect it to the Solidres Channel Manager. |
You are on a brand-new property that has never been saved. Save it, then reopen the tab. |
| Enter your Solidres Download ID in the component options (Options → Subscription & updates) before connecting. |
See STEP 1. |
| The following property details are required before connecting: … |
Fill in the listed fields on the property. See STEP 4. |
| No active Solidres Channel Manager subscription was found for this Download ID. |
Buy or renew the subscription on solidres.com, then click Connect again. If you just bought it, use Refresh subscription status. |
| Every subscription is already in use / property limit reached |
Each property needs its own subscription. Buy another one, or disconnect a property you no longer sync. |
| The Solidres Channel Manager service could not be reached. |
A temporary network problem, or your server blocking outbound HTTPS. Retry in a few minutes; if it persists, contact Solidres support. |
| The Solidres Channel Manager is busy processing earlier updates for this property. |
Normal after a burst of changes. The update is queued and retried automatically — no action needed. |
| Availability and rate updates are paused. |
Either the subscription lapsed or the room-limit grace period ended. See Your subscription and room limit above. |
| A full sync already ran for this property in the last 24 hours. |
Normal — the channel allows one full sync per day, and day-to-day changes sync automatically anyway. The message tells you when the next full sync is allowed. |
| A full sync is already queued for this property. |
Normal — the queued sync is pushed by the Solidres - Channel Manager Sync task within a few minutes. Just wait for it. |
| This property has been disconnected from the Solidres Channel Manager. |
The property was disconnected on the channel manager side. See the disconnected notice in Your subscription and room limit above. |
Nothing is syncing at all
- Check that System → Manage → Scheduled Tasks really runs — an unrun Sync task is the single most common cause. Use Run Manually on the task once to confirm, and see How to set up Joomla CRON for the Task Scheduler if it never runs on its own.
- Check the Channel manager activities widget for error and warning entries — a warning means the channel accepted the update but rejected some of its values, so check the affected rates and restrictions.
- Check the room type's Sync options is not None, and that its Room type ID is filled in.
- Check the rate plan is eligible — see What syncs, and what does not.
Channel bookings are not arriving
- Your site must be reachable from the internet. Bookings cannot be delivered to a local or password-protected site.
- Confirm the channel is activated and mapped in Manage OTA channels.
- If you moved your site to a new domain, contact Solidres support so the delivery address can be updated.
NOTE Held or failed bookings are never thrown away. If something goes wrong on your side, contact Solidres support and the reservations can be re-delivered.
How it compares with MyAllocator and Beds24
|
Solidres Channel Manager |
MyAllocator / Beds24 |
| Extra account |
None |
Required |
| Property, room types and rate plans |
Created automatically from Solidres |
Re-created by hand in the vendor dashboard |
| Mapping IDs |
Assigned automatically |
Copied over by hand |
| Where you manage channels |
Inside Joomla |
In the vendor dashboard |
| Rate plans per room type |
One channel rate plan per eligible Solidres rate plan |
Room-level or price-slot mapping |
| Rate Plan plugin |
Required — no dated rate plan, no price on your channels |
Required — same rule, it is where prices come from either way |
| Billing |
One vendor — your Solidres subscription and your Channel Manager subscription, both from us |
Two vendors — your Solidres subscription, plus the channel manager's own bill |
| Long-term support |
Our own service, developed alongside Solidres |
Beds24 supported; MyAllocator deprecated and scheduled for removal |
Both integrations keep working today — see How to configure MyAllocator Channel Manager and How to configure Beds24 Channel Manager. Beds24 stays supported; MyAllocator is deprecated and will be removed in a future Solidres release. There is no automatic migration between providers yet: switching means disconnecting from the old one and setting your channels up again on the new one.
