1Melo User Guide

Contents

• Quick Start
• Dashboard
• Business Profile
• Properties
• Availability & Calendars
• Booking Settings
• Pricing
• Direct Booking
• Direct Listing
• Reservations
• Guest Messaging
• Payments
• Payment Settings
• Team Members
• Audit History
• Account Access
• Search

Quick Start

New to 1Melo? This is the whole journey, in order. Each step links to the detailed section further down.

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Dashboard

The dashboard is your home page after signing in. It shows who you are signed in as, which business you are working in, and a card for every area your role can open.

Account setup checklist

Until your account is fully set up, a Finish setting up your account panel appears at the top with a progress line such as 1 of 3 steps complete. Each item shows a small red outlined circle while it still needs attention and a green circle with a checkmark once it is done:

• Complete your business profile — done when your business name, timezone, contact email and contact phone are all filled in.
• Add your first property — done when at least one property exists.
• Configure payment settings — done when your PayPal credentials are saved and payments are switched on.

Incomplete items are links to the right page; completed items become plain text. The same red/green indicators appear on the matching dashboard cards and beside the matching links in the left sidebar, so you can see your setup state from anywhere. The checklist cannot be dismissed — it retires itself when the steps are done, replaced by Your 1Melo account setup is complete.

Manage cards

The Manage panel is a grid of cards, one per area. You only see cards your role can open:

Everything else on the page

• Your access — the business you are in, who you are signed in as, your role, and what that role may do.
• Switch business — appears only if your email belongs to more than one 1Melo business; one click switches you.
• Search — the search box in the top bar finds properties, reservations, guests and messages. See Search.
• User menu — your initials in the top-right corner open the menu with Sign out.
• Left sidebar — every area your role can open, grouped into Overview, Operations and Settings. On a property page a This property group is added with that property's own pages.

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Business Profile

Open Business profile from the sidebar or dashboard. The page has two parts: values managed by the 1Melo team, and the four details your business edits itself.

Managed by the platform team

These are shown for reference and cannot be changed here: your web address name (slug), account status, plan, property allowance, public key and creation date. If one of them needs to change, contact the 1Melo team.

Business details you can edit

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Properties

The property list

Properties in the sidebar lists every property with its name, status, city and capacity. You can search by name and filter by status, and clicking anywhere on a row opens that property. Your account has a property allowance (new self-service accounts start at two); the Add Property page shows how much of it you have used.

Adding a property

Choose Add property. The form asks only for what 1Melo needs to represent the listing:

The property page

Opening a property shows a header with its name and status, summary tiles (location, capacity, timezone), and action cards linking to that property's own pages: Availability, Calendars, Pricing, Booking widget and Rental terms. A small Platform details disclosure shows the generated web address name, the property's public key and its creation date.

Below that, two forms:

• Property profile — the same fields as the Add Property form (plus the web address name, which you may adjust here if you ever need to; it must stay unique within your business). The timezone selector offers the common zones, and if your property was saved with a different valid timezone it stays selectable as the (current setting). Changing a timezone changes how every future date for this property is interpreted, so change it deliberately.
• Booking settings — everything that governs when the property may be booked. See Booking Settings.

Active and inactive

Setting a property Inactive retires it from new business: its booking page stops answering, and it leaves the quick-navigation list. Its history — reservations, messages, payments — is untouched, and you can make it active again at any time. Properties are never deleted.

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Availability & Calendars

1Melo decides whether dates are free by combining four things: confirmed and pending reservations, dates you block by hand, events imported from other platforms' calendars, and short-lived holds while a guest is mid-checkout. All four appear together on the availability calendar.

The availability page

Each property has an Availability page with three tools:

• Check dates — enter an arrival and departure and 1Melo tells you whether that stay could be booked, and if not, why: dates already taken, or a rule such as minimum stay or advance notice. Team members who can see availability also see which existing booking, block or imported event is in the way.
• The calendar — a month-by-month grid showing every reservation, imported event and manual block together. Reservations link to their reservation page; each entry names its source in words, and today is highlighted in the property's timezone. A Today button brings you back to the current month.
• Blocked dates — the list of your manual blocks, with edit and remove.

Blocking dates by hand

Removing a block frees its dates immediately.

Importing other platforms' calendars

On the property's Calendars page, choose Add calendar connection:

Each connection shows its status, when it was last checked, what the last check found, and when the next check is due. You can Sync now to check immediately, pause a connection, or delete it. Deleting a connection releases the dates its imported events were holding.

Imported events block dates exactly like your own bookings do. When an event disappears from the other platform's calendar (for example a cancellation), the next sync releases those dates.

Your published 1Melo calendar

The Calendars page also shows your property's own calendar address — an iCal link you paste into Airbnb, Vrbo and anywhere else you list. It publishes every pending and confirmed 1Melo booking and every manual block, each simply marked Reserved: no guest names, prices or notes ever leave 1Melo. If the link is ever exposed somewhere you did not intend, use Regenerate address — the old link stops working instantly, and you must paste the new one into the other platforms.

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Booking Settings

Booking settings live on each property's page, under the profile form. They control when the property may be booked directly:

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Pricing

Each property's Pricing page defines exactly what a direct booking costs. Prices resolve per night in a fixed order: a single-night override beats a seasonal rate, which beats the base rate.

Base rate

Seasonal rates

A season is a named date range with its own nightly rate — Summer 2027, Jun 1 – Aug 31, 219.00. Both end dates are included in the season. Active seasons may not overlap; 1Melo refuses a season that would make a night ambiguous. Seasons can be edited or deactivated at any time (deactivating keeps the record but stops it applying).

Single-night overrides

An override prices one specific night — ideal for holidays or event weekends. Enter the night and its rate; an override wins over everything else for that night.

Fees

Taxes

Quote preview

The Quote tool prices any stay exactly as a guest would see it — arrival, departure and guest count in, an itemized quote out: each night with the rate that applied, each fee, each tax, and the total. If the stay could not be booked, it tells you why. A quote is only a preview; it reserves nothing.

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Direct Booking

Each active property gets its own public booking page. You can share it as a link, embed it in a website you already run, or put it in front of guests as a Direct Listing — a full property page hosted by 1Melo. Guests see the property's name and details, a two-month date picker (available, unavailable and too-soon dates clearly marked, with no reasons disclosed), live quotes, and a booking form.

The Booking widget page

Rental terms

On the property's Rental terms page you can write the agreement guests must accept before booking — plain text, up to 20,000 characters, with a title. Terms start switched off; once activated, the booking form requires guests to tick acceptance, and each booking stores the exact wording that guest accepted. Editing the terms later affects future bookings only. Properties without active terms simply skip the step.

What a guest experiences

1. They pick dates and a guest count, and see an itemized quote.
2. They enter their name, email and phone number (all required for online bookings), and accept your terms if you have them.
3. If PayPal is connected and on, they pay to confirm; the booking is held while they check out and confirmed the moment payment completes. If a started payment is abandoned, the pending booking releases its dates automatically. Without online payment, the booking arrives as pending for you to confirm and settle directly.
4. They receive a confirmation email and a private confirmation page with their booking, charges and accepted terms — and a message thread to you opens automatically.

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Direct Listing

Direct Listing gives your property a public booking page on 1Melo. It is useful if you do not have a website, or if you want a simple property-specific link you can share directly with guests.

If you already have a website, you can carry on using the Booking widget and embed it there. Direct Listing is an additional way to publish the same booking experience without maintaining your own site — you do not need both.

Open Direct Listing

Go to Properties, select the property, then Direct Listing. It also appears in the Manage this property cards on the property page and in the property navigation alongside Booking widget and Rental terms.

Your public URL

Each listing gets its own address in the form 1melo.com/direct/your-property. 1Melo generates it from the property name the first time you open the Direct Listing screen, and the Copy link button puts the full address on your clipboard.

Add your listing content

You do not re-enter anything 1Melo already knows. The property name, bedrooms, bathrooms, maximum guests and location come from Property details, and your booking rules come from Booking settings. Change them there and the public page follows.

Location privacy

The default is City and state only, so a guest sees something like Parker, AZ. Your street address is not shown, and it does not appear in the page's search-engine or social preview either.

Photos

• Upload JPEG, PNG or WebP images, up to 20 per listing.
• The first photo you upload becomes the cover automatically.
• Make cover promotes any other photo to the cover.
• The arrows reorder the gallery; the cover is shown largest, at the top of the page.
• Delete removes a photo. If you delete the cover, the next photo becomes the cover.

Preview before you publish

Preview opens the real page exactly as a guest would see it, while it is still a draft. Only signed-in members of your business can open the preview, and a draft is not indexed by search engines.

Publish

A Direct Listing starts as a Draft. Nothing is public until you press Publish Direct Listing. Before you can publish:

• the property must be active;
• the About this property description must not be empty;
• at least one photo must be uploaded.

Unpublish takes the page down again immediately. Nothing is deleted, and publishing again restores the same address.

Booking is included automatically

You do not need to copy or paste the Booking widget into your Direct Listing. 1Melo places the property's booking experience on the page for you.

It uses the property's existing setup, not a second copy of it: availability, imported calendar blocks from Airbnb and Vrbo, your own manual blocks, nightly rates, seasons, fees and taxes, stay rules, rental terms and your payment configuration. A booking taken here is the same reservation, in the same place, as one taken through the embedded widget.

Share the page

Copy the link and use it wherever you already reach people:

• your own website, blog or newsletter;
• your social profiles and posts;
• your email signature;
• printed cards, welcome books and signage;
• a QR code in the property or on a vehicle.

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Reservations

The list, arrivals and departures

Reservations lists every booking with its guest, property, dates and status. You can search (guest name, email, phone or confirmation number) and filter by status. Two companion views, Arrivals and Departures, show who is coming and going.

Statuses

Recording a booking yourself

Add reservation records a booking you took by phone or arranged manually:

The price is always calculated from your pricing setup — there is no field to type a custom total.

A reservation's page

• Guest details — name, and email/phone where provided. Only your team sees these; they never appear on public pages.
• Stay — dates, nights, guests, source (online, phone or manual) and confirmation number.
• Charges — the itemized amounts frozen when the booking was made.
• Payments — what has been paid or refunded, for roles that may see money. See Payments.
• Actions — Confirm, Cancel and Complete, each deliberate and each recorded. Cancelling releases dates but never deletes; cancelling does not refund by itself (refunds are their own action).
• Notes — a private, permanent note trail for your team. Notes cannot be edited or deleted once added.
• Confirmation email — resend it to the guest at any time.
• Conversation — jump to the guest's message thread.

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Guest Messaging

Every direct booking opens a message thread automatically, so you can send arrival instructions before the guest ever writes to you. Guests read and reply on a private page linked from their confirmation and notification emails; your team works from one shared inbox.

The inbox

Messages lists every conversation with the guest, property, dates and the latest message. Filters: text search, channel, property, and Unread. The unread count on the dashboard counts conversations waiting for a reply — it is shared by the whole team, so anyone dealing with a thread clears it for everyone.

A conversation

• The full history, newest last, with the booking's key details alongside.
• Message to the guest — type a reply and send. The guest gets an email notification pointing them to their private reply page. Every role can reply, including staff — answering guests is the front desk's job.
• Start from a template — pick one of your saved templates to prefill the reply, then edit before sending.
• Mark read — clears the thread from the unread count.

Message templates

Templates (owners, admins and managers) hold reusable messages:

Placeholders you can use: {{guest_name}}, {{property_name}}, {{business_name}}, {{confirmation_number}}, {{check_in}}, {{check_out}}, {{nights}}, {{guests}}, {{total}}, {{business_email}}, {{business_phone}}. Anything else stays as typed, so a typo is visible to you rather than sent broken to a guest.

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Payments

Money features are visible to owners and admins only.

On a reservation

The reservation's payments panel shows each charge and refund with its status and amounts. From there you can:

• Refund — enter an amount up to what remains refundable and a reason (required, up to 500 characters, kept for your records only — it is not sent to the guest or to PayPal). Partial refunds are fine; the remaining refundable balance updates as refunds settle. When a refund completes, the guest's message thread automatically gets a note of the amount.
• Re-check — ask PayPal for the current state of a payment or refund if something looks stuck.

Refunding never cancels the booking, and cancelling never refunds — they are separate, deliberate actions.

The Payments ledger

Payments in the sidebar is a read-only ledger of every charge and refund across the business, with filters for type, status, live/test mode, property and date range. Totals are shown per currency: collected, refunded and net, alongside PayPal's own fees where PayPal reported them (a blank fee means not reported, never zero). Refunds made directly inside PayPal's own website are detected and recorded here too, flagged so you can spot them.

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Payment Settings

Payment settings (owners and admins) connects your own PayPal business account, so guests can pay at booking time and the money goes directly to you. Card details never touch 1Melo — checkout happens on PayPal.

• Configured means your client ID and secret are saved.
• Enabled is the on/off switch — it can only be turned on once configured, and while it is off guests cannot pay online.
• Test connection checks your saved credentials against PayPal and reports the result in plain language.

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Team Members

Team lists everyone who can sign in to your business. The person who created the business is its first owner; everyone else is invited.

Adding a member

Two ways, on the same page:

• New person — enter their full name, email address and role. Then, from their member page, generate a setup link: it is shown once, works once, and expires after 24 hours. Send it to them yourself; opening it lets them choose their own password (nobody at 1Melo or on your team ever sees or sets it). Generating a new link cancels any previous one.
• Someone who already uses 1Melo — enter the email their existing account uses and choose their role here. One person can belong to several businesses and switches between them after signing in.

Roles

Managing a member

• Change role — takes effect on their very next page load, even if they are signed in.
• Revoke access — removes their access to this business immediately, without deleting history. You can restore it later.
• A business must always keep at least one active owner — 1Melo will refuse the change that would remove the last one.
• A member who forgets their password uses Forgot password? on the sign-in page themselves — see Account Access.

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Audit History

Audit history is a read-only record of what has happened in your business: sign-ins, profile and property changes, pricing edits, booking actions, payment events, team changes and more. Each entry shows when it happened, who did it, and what changed — filterable by action type.

Use it to answer who changed this, and when? — why a rate is different, when a booking was cancelled, who revoked a member. Entries are permanent: nothing in the history can be edited or removed, by anyone.

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Account Access

Creating an account

From the sign-in page, choose Create your 1Melo account. Enter your full name and email; 1Melo emails you a verification link valid for 24 hours. Opening it shows a completion form: your name (editable), your business name, and a password of at least 12 characters, entered twice. Nothing exists until you finish this form — you can open the link, come back later, and complete it any time within the 24 hours. Submitting the signup form again sends a fresh link and cancels the old one. On completion you are signed in and taken to your dashboard as the owner of your new business.

Signing in and out

Sign in with your email and password. Repeated failed attempts are slowed down for your protection. Sign out from the user menu in the top-right corner. For your security you may be signed out automatically after a long period of inactivity.

Forgot password

Choose Forgot password? on the sign-in page and enter your email. If an active account exists for it, a reset link arrives, valid for 60 minutes and usable once. The link opens a form for a new password (minimum 12 characters, entered twice). A typo on that form does not waste the link. Completing a reset signs you out on every device, everywhere — so if you reset because you suspect someone else had your password, they are locked out too. Requesting a new link cancels any earlier one.

Invited team members

If your business added you as a new member, you receive a one-time setup link from them: open it, choose your password, then sign in normally. The link works once and expires after 24 hours.

More than one business

If your email belongs to several businesses, signing in shows a chooser; with one business you go straight to its dashboard. Switch at any time from the dashboard's Switch business panel.

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Search

The search box in the top bar finds things across your whole business:

• Properties — by name or location.
• Reservations — by guest name, or by a guest's email or phone number. Pasting a complete confirmation number finds that exact booking.
• Messages — by guest, or words inside the conversation.
• Dates — type a date like 2027-07-04 to jump to that day on a property's availability calendar.

Results appear as you type, grouped by kind, up to five per group. Use the arrow keys to move through them, Enter to open one, and Escape to close the panel. Selecting a result takes you straight to that property, reservation, conversation or calendar day. You only see result types your role can open, and searches are not saved anywhere.

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Still stuck?

Check the FAQ, browse the guides in Resources, or reach out via the contact details on our About page. If you already have an account, everything in this guide starts from your host dashboard.