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The front desk

Form C for foreign guests

Recording a passport and visa, raising the form, reading out what the portal asks for, and the register.

Section 14 of the Foreigners Act requires a hotel to report every foreign national's arrival to the Bureau of Immigration, in practice within 24 hours, on Form C. Operations → Form C is where that whole job is done.

![The Form C tab: the guest to record, and the foreign arrivals not yet reported.](help-img/form-c.png)

Do this

  1. Choose the guest — everybody in house or arriving this week. Pick one and their passport, visa and date of entry can be recorded; saving a nationality that is not Indian raises the Form C in the same act.
  2. Filing data — the form as the FRRO portal wants it, to copy across.
  3. Record filing — once the portal has accepted it, so the row stops counting as overdue.
  4. Withdraw — for a Form C raised on the wrong guest. It is voided with a reason, never deleted.

Export at the top of the list gives the whole register as a file for the police.

Recording the passport

Under Raise a Form C, pick the guest. The list holds everybody in house and everybody arriving in the next seven days, and it opens with whatever is already on file — a returning guest's passport is not retyped.

Filing it

Filing data on a row opens every field the Bureau of Immigration portal asks for, and Copy all fields puts them on the clipboard to paste beside it.

The system does not transmit anything to the FRRO portal. There is no public interface to it. Somebody files it on the portal, in the hotel's own registered login, and then presses Record filing here and enters the acknowledgement number the portal returned. That is what makes the register complete.

A row goes red past 24 hours. That is the Bureau's window, not ours.

Guests with no nationality

The red box lists guests in house whose nationality nobody recorded. The system assumes a guest with no nationality is Indian and raises no Form C for them — so if a foreign national is in that box, the filing is being missed silently and nothing else will tell you. Record nationality takes you straight to the form for that booking.

Withdrawing one

A form raised against the wrong booking is withdrawn with a reason. It leaves the outstanding list and stays in the register, marked *withdrawn*, because a register that can lose rows is not a register. The same guest can have a form raised again afterwards.

The register

Every form this hotel has ever raised — outstanding, filed or withdrawn — with its acknowledgement number and who recorded it. Download CSV is the copy to hand an inspector or keep with the month's papers.

When it refuses

More in The front desk

Checking a guest inRoom, identity, and the folio opens. What stops a check-in and what to do about it. Aadhaar, PAN, passport and Form CWhat identity the law wants, what the system checks, and where Form C is filed. The folioOne guest, one stay, every charge and payment on it — and what its balance means. Sending money backHow a refund is recorded, who may authorise one, and the four things that will stop you. Posting a chargePost a charge on the folio, choose what it is for, and it lands with your name on it. Taking a paymentTake a payment on the folio: method, amount, reference. It is the reference that saves you later. Splitting a payment across methodsOne settlement, several methods, checked against the folio as one movement. The registration card (GRC)Print it from the booking card. It carries the guest details, the stay, and the declaration they sign. Reprinting a registration cardReprints are allowed and counted. The second onwards is stamped COPY. Advances and depositsMoney taken before the charges exist, held against the stay and applied when they do. Correcting an invoice that has already been issuedDo not reopen the bill. Issue a credit note if the value falls, a debit note if it rises. The deadline for reclaiming tax on a credit noteTax may be adjusted until 30 November after the invoice financial year. After that, the money is credited and the tax is not. Voiding a posting, writing off a balanceNothing is deleted. A mistake is reversed with a reason, and both lines stay visible. Checking out, and the tax invoiceSettle the folio, print the invoice, and the room goes dirty for housekeeping. Splitting a stay across several invoicesRoom, food and spa on one bill or three — the guest decides, and you tick the lines. Proforma invoice — a bill before the stayWhat a company needs to raise a purchase order. Not a tax invoice, and it says so. Billing a company: the city ledgerA folio routed to a company instead of collected, and the ageing that follows it. Money owed and open balancesThe list that stops a hotel losing money quietly, and the red dot that counts it.