SIBA portal vs Web Services — which should AL hosts use?

Manual boletins in the SIBA portal, bulk file upload, or automated Web Services. The real differences in effort, error rate and audit trail, and how to choose.

There are three ways to get a guest into SIBA. Hosts often start with the first, discover it does not scale, and never learn that the third exists.

The three channels

1. Manual entry in the SIBA portal. You log in and type each guest's boletim by hand.

2. File upload. You prepare a fixed-format text file of guests and upload it in one go.

3. Web Services. Your software submits each guest automatically over an authenticated connection and receives an acknowledgement back.

Side by side

When the portal is fine

If you have one apartment, a handful of bookings a month and you enjoy the routine, manual entry works. The risks are the usual human ones: a busy weekend, a forgotten arrival, a mistyped country code.

When file upload helps

Useful if you already keep a spreadsheet of arrivals and you are comfortable with a strict fixed-width format. The catch is that a single formatting mistake can invalidate the whole file, and you still have to remember to do it.

When Web Services wins

From roughly the second property onwards, Web Services is the only channel that stays reliable:

Filing happens on the check-in date without anyone remembering.
Data is validated before submission, so the usual rejections never leave your system.
Each acknowledgement is stored against the booking, which is your evidence in an inspection.
Multi-unit buildings with one SIBA registration per AL licence are handled per unit automatically.

Enabling Web Services

Web Services is not on by default. In the SIBA portal you request the Web Services access type for the establishment, and you receive the credentials your software uses. Older SIBA accounts sometimes have a user without the Web Services role, which causes silent 403 failures — see the Web Services setup walkthrough for the exact steps.

Important: one SIBA registration per AL licence. A six-unit building with six licences needs six registrations and six sets of credentials.

What Chave AL does

Chave AL submits over Web Services, stores your credentials encrypted, validates every field on the guest form before anything is sent, files on the check-in date, and keeps the acknowledgement against the booking. If you prefer to stay manual, you can still export a clean, validated boletim to type or upload yourself.