# What Santara AI does

> One workspace for the channels you sell on, the calendar behind them, the people who clean, and the money at the end.

Source: https://docs.santara.ai/start/

Santara AI is operations software for short-term rentals. You connect the places you already
sell — Airbnb, Booking.com, your own booking site — and from then on there is one calendar, one
inbox, one cleaning schedule and one set of books, instead of a browser with six tabs open.

It is not a listing site. Santara never takes a commission on a booking, and guests never book
"through Santara" unless you publish your own [direct booking site](/setup/booking-site/), which
is yours and paid into your own Stripe account.

## What it replaces

| Instead of | You get |
| --- | --- |
| Checking three extranets each morning | **[Today](/daily/)** — arrivals, departures, and what needs a decision, written out |
| Copying dates between calendars | **[One calendar](/daily/calendar/)** — every night, every room, pushed to every channel |
| Two message inboxes | **[Messages](/daily/messages/)** — one thread per guest, replies go back out on the channel they booked on |
| A WhatsApp group for cleaning | **[Tasks](/daily/tasks/)** — turnovers created automatically the night before a checkout |
| Editing prices by hand every Sunday | **[Smart pricing](/money/pricing/)** — rules that move nightly rates by season, lead time and how full you are |
| A spreadsheet per owner | **[Reports and accounting](/money/reports/)** — revenue in, costs out, owner statements |

## What is actually automatic

Santara is deliberate about this, because software that acts on a live listing without being
asked is how a host loses a booking:

- **Turnover tasks** appear on their own the night before each checkout.
- **Bookings, guests, messages and reviews** sync from every connected channel.
- **Prices** worked out by your pricing rules are published to the channels.
- **Upsell opportunities** — late checkout, an extra night, early arrival — are spotted from the
  calendar and offered to you as a draft.
- **The daily brief** is written for you each morning, in your language.

And what is not:

- **Your calendar is not taken over when you import a listing.** Importing reads your listings;
  it changes nothing on the channel. Control only moves when you press **Go live**. See
  [Going live](/channels/going-live/).
- **Prices you type by hand stay put** unless you explicitly allow the pricing engine to
  overwrite them.
- **Nothing is sent to a guest without you.** The assistant and the message tools draft; you send.

## Who it is for

Hosts with one villa up to operators running a few hundred doors. The screens are the same; what
changes is who can see what — see [Team and roles](/setup/team/). Cleaners get their jobs and
nothing else. Owners get statements, not your inbox.

:::tip[Set up in the order the product suggests]
The [setup checklist](/start/quickstart/) at the top of the workspace is three steps —
connect a channel, import your listings, check prices and details. Doing them in order means the
data lands correctly the first time and there is nothing to unpick later.
:::