Guest access

Airbnb guest code automation

Manually creating and deleting guest door codes works fine for one rental. Across dozens of stays a month it becomes another turnover task — and one mistake either leaves a guest locked out or leaves an old code live on the door.

Automating it means one code per stay, cut from the reservation, live from shortly before check-in until after checkout, and removed afterwards with the removal verified rather than assumed.

Start free — no credit card See the code lifecycle

Why doing it by hand stops working

The failure is not that anyone is careless. It is that the task is invisible when it goes wrong:

• A code you forgot to create is discovered by the guest, at the door, usually in the evening.
• A code you forgot to delete is discovered by nobody. It is the one that matters and the one nothing tells you about.
• A code reused between guests works perfectly and quietly means everyone who has ever stayed can still get in.
• A code typed into a vendor app on the wrong property works perfectly too, for the wrong house.

All four scale with the number of stays, not the number of properties, which is why the problem arrives suddenly rather than gradually.

The lifecycle of one code

Who enforces the window — the lock, or us?

This is the question nobody asks and everybody should, because the two look identical until something goes wrong.

Lock	End of window enforced by	What that means
Schlage, August, Yale	The lock	The code carries a start and end time the lock itself applies. It stops working at the end even if nothing reaches the lock afterwards.
SmartThings-connected locks, Kwikset, RemoteLock, Igloohome	Homatic’s removal timing	The code works until it is removed. If the lock is offline at removal time, the code is still live until the removal succeeds — and you are told when it has not.

Both are usable. The difference matters most for a cleaner’s code, where the whole point is that it is dead before the next guest arrives — so Homatic refuses to issue a crew code on a lock that cannot enforce its own end, rather than issuing one whose expiry is best-effort and hoping.

When a push fails

A failed push is recorded against the code with the reason the vendor gave and surfaced on the access-code screen rather than in a log nobody reads. The state you most need is the one most systems omit: the code is still on the lock and we could not remove it. That is the only one Homatic treats as urgent, because it is the only one where someone who has checked out still has access.

Bookings change

Codes are recomputed against the calendar continuously rather than issued once. A cancelled stay has its code revoked; a stay that moves has its window moved; a stay extended overnight keeps working. This is why it is a reconciliation rather than a one-shot job — calendars shift constantly and a code minted once against an old date is wrong silently.

Several locks, one guest

A property with a front door, a side door and a garage keypad gives the guest one PIN across all three by default. It is a small thing that removes a whole category of message, and it is switchable per property when you would rather each door had its own.

Which locks work

Directly: Schlage, August, Yale, RemoteLock, Kwikset, Igloohome.

Through a hub: a lock on SmartThings works when the lock itself reports a lock-codes capability. Many Z-Wave and Matter locks do; some do not, and a Matter-paired lock that reports no code capability will lock and unlock perfectly while codes have nowhere to go. Homatic checks the capability rather than assuming it, which is what turns that into a message instead of a guest at a door.

That last case is also why, when you ask Homatic how to reach a given lock brand, a stated goal outranks convenience: if you want per-guest codes, it will not route you to the hub you already have connected when the hub cannot carry them.

Schlage in detail →  ·  All smart lock automation →

Who did what, and when

Every physical action is audited: codes created, revealed and revoked, locks and unlocks, and whether a person or an automation did it. For a managed property that record is the difference between an incident you can describe and one you can only speculate about.

Common questions

How is the code chosen?

Generated per stay and checked against the codes already on that lock, so a new guest PIN cannot silently collide with a live one.

When is it active?

From shortly before check-in — five minutes by default, adjustable — until a delay you set after checkout.

Is the window enforced by the lock or by Homatic?

It depends on the lock, and the difference is worth knowing. Schlage, August and Yale accept a start and end time the lock itself applies. On other locks the window is enforced by Homatic pushing and removing the code, which matters when it has to be dead before the next arrival.

Can I give a cleaner a separate code?

Yes. Crew codes are separate from guest codes, sized to the turnover gap, and restricted to locks that enforce the window themselves — because the whole point is that the cleaner code is dead before the next guest arrives.