6 Reports Your Hotel Should Run Every

Night
Posted by  Alex Gaggioli January 20, 2016 
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Running a hotel property of any size is no easy feat. Small and medium sized property owners
are in charge of manually creating reports every day. Keeping track of revenue, reservations, and
inventory can be a handful. But, reporting is a necessary evil and makes your life as a hotelier
easier in the long run. We created a list of the top six nightly reports your property should run to
ensure a smooth operation. These reports will help you gauge success and complete weekly and
monthly reports as well.

1. Room and Tax Report

What is it: This report is fairly straightforward. The room and tax report lists all your room
revenue and associated taxes for the day. Start by pulling all your revenue and taxes for that day.
You want to conduct this report every day in order to know exactly how much money is coming
into your property each day. Then, use this report to identify potential issues. For example, you
can compare it to your departures, arrivals, and continuous reports to make sure that your
revenue falls within a normal range for your current occupancy.

The Risks: If you decide not to do this report, you could run into several problems. For example,
if someone forgot to check out, but their revenue posted, it will cause accounting problems later
on. Instead of having to make an adjustment later, you can catch it immediately and reduce
confusion later.

Cloudbeds Solution: You can complete this report in Cloudbeds’ pms system, myfrontdesk,
within the transaction report section. For examples and more thorough directions on how to
create a room and tax report, click here.

2. Shift Audit Report

What is it: Each cashier or user needs a shift audit report at the end of the day or their shift. The
report includes a breakdown of every transaction sold by category and item. It also should
include a breakdown of payment methods including cash, credit cards (mastercard, visa, AMEX,
etc), other other means. The purpose of this report is to check and balance each revenue and cost
source.

This should be used for each agent to balance their daily shift. When you create a shift audit
report you need to include:

 Cashier or User ID
  Category/Department Breakdown
 Payment Type Breakdown

An example shift report is below. You will see that on top the transactions are sorted by category
and item. First category is food and beverage, item Coca Cola, Corona, second category Serenity
Spa and item Plumeria Facial, etc. After each item, there is a subtotal and under each category is
a department grand total.

After the department grand totals, there is a payments section that lays out each form of accepted
payments. When you have completed the grand totals for both departments and compare them to
the payments grand total in make sure they match. Occasionally, the grand totals will not match.
With these reports, you’ll be able to find where the payment discrepancy occurred.
The Risk: If your staff does not complete daily audit reports, you may create accounting
problems in the future.  These reports allow you to see patterns, track them over time, and
identify problems when they occur.

For example, if your gift shop usually sells a lot of ice cream and one day your inventory levels
are zero with no associated payments, you know there’s a problem. But, if you don’t complete a
daily audit, you won’t find out until the end of the month there was a power outage that melted
all your ice cream.

It also helps keep your cashiers and other employees in check. A daily report will show
discrepancies in the cash flow or inventory levels. If there is missing cash or missing inventory,
you’ll know exactly who was in charge during that time period.

Daily audits will help you easily create monthly reports, which help quarterly reports, which then
help yearly reports and beyond.

Cloudbeds Solution: You can create audit reports using the filters functionality on transaction
reports. Although you will not be able to create a report exactly as shown above, you will be able
to get the data to create a dashboard on Excel or Google Sheets. Click here to learn about filters.

3. Departures Report
What it is: A departure report shows who was scheduled to leave your property today and who
will be leaving the next day. Every night, your night manager or auditor should create two
departure reports, one for the present day and one for the next day. The present day departures
will show everyone who was supposed to check-out that day. This will help identify any guests
that didn’t check-out and identify other potential issues such as overbookings.

The next day departure report helps your staff prepare for the next day’s departures. Your front
desk needs to know which rooms will be vacant and available for incoming reservations and
cleaning staff will need to take the necessary steps to prepare the rooms.

Each report should include the following:

  Room assignment
 Reservation/Confirmation Number
 Guest Name
 Arrival Date
 Departure Date
 Room Status (in-house, checked-out)
 Balance

A sample departure report from Setup My Hotel is below.

The Risks: If you do not complete nightly departure rates, you could put yourself at risk for
overbookings. For example, if someone does not check out of their room the day they were
supposed to and someone has that room booked for tomorrow, you need to investigate what
happened. Without nightly reports, you can’t audit your current occupancy situation.

Cloudbeds Solution: You can easily identify guests who are departing your property with the
Daily Reports function in myfrontdesk. You can run these reports by following these directions.

4. Arrivals Report
 Arrivals
o Room #s blocked out, rooms that aren’t assigned need to be assigned and checked
for overbookings
o Changes need to be checked for rooms and room types

What it is: The night manager or auditor should also produce the arrivals report for the morning
staff. This report includes the list of arrivals for the upcoming day and includes basic
information:

 Reservation/confirmation number
 Guest name
 Arrival date
 Departure date
 Number of nights
 Room type booked  
 Room assignment
The report helps you identify which guests have been assigned rooms and those who have not.
You need to make sure that the assigned rooms will be open at check-in and identify where
unassigned guests will stay. This is when having a departure report comes in handy. Use the
departure report to ensure the arrivals list match up and make necessary changes.

The arrivals report also helps you keep track of no-shows. If a guest doesn’t check-in and
subsequently cancels their reservation, your arrivals report will catch it. Then, you can make the
necessary changes in your property management system so that your daily audits and departure
reports remain accurate.

The Risks: If your property doesn’t create an arrivals report, your front desk staff will likely
become flustered. Arrivals reports help prevent overbookings while enabling you to plan out the
day’s logistics.

Cloudbeds Solution: You can easily identify guests who are arriving to your property with the
Daily Reports function in myfrontdesk. You can run these reports by following these directions.

5. Housekeeping Report
What it is: The housekeeping report shows the property’s room number, front desk status,
housekeeping status, departure dates, and unit type. This enables the front desk and the
housekeeping staff to know which rooms have to be cleaned when. Housekeepers need to know
which rooms are being checked out of so they can replace the sheets, towels, toiletries, etc.

The Risks: Without this report, properties run the risk of not having clean rooms that cause
check-in delays. Also, if guests have not checked-out by the designated time, housekeepers will
know to contact the front desk and get the problem sorted out.

Cloudbeds Solution: Myfrontdesk has an entire housekeeping module that helps you keep track
of your staff and your rooms. In order to understand how it works and see reports, you can click
through our helpdesk article, here.

6. Continuous Report
 Continuous/Contingency report
o changes in room types and source of revenue
o example: extending guest stay originally direct, now OTA needs to be checked-
out and checked back in

What it is: A continuous report helps you keep track of guests who have extended their stay.
Often when a guest extends their stay, they have to create a new reservation. Often the new
reservation is created through a different method than the original booking. For example, the
guest originally booked on booking.com, but they extended their trip through direct reservations.
These two reservations often can’t be combined, so you need to either make sure the get re-
assigned to their same room or moved to a new one. Then, using your departure and arrivals
reports, make sure that the room the existing guest is in was not supposed to be occupied by an
incoming guest.

Also, continuous reservations often mean the rate per night is different. So, the correct room rate
needs to be reported so your room and tax report is accurate.

Hopefully you can find instances of continuous bookings because the guest told you they were
extending their trip. But, you can also check for continuous reservations by searching for
duplicate names in reservations. For example, if a guest’s name appears on both your departures
report and arrivals report, it’s likely a continuous reservation.

The risk: If you don’t complete a continuous report, you run the risk of assigning arriving guests
to occupied rooms. In order to report the correct room and tax report, you need to know which
guests are extending their reservation and at what rate.

Cloudbeds Solution: You can use the arrival and departure reports to create your continuous
reports. The daily reports function includes today’s reservations, arrivals, departures, and stay
overs, so they will help you build continuous reports. Click here to learn more.

Conclusion
There are many reports your property needs to run on a continuous basis in order to operate
smoothly. The six reports listed will help you keep better track of your daily revenue and
effectively manage your reservations.

Cloudbeds property management system, called myfrontdesk, helps properties of all sizes easily
create these reports. Managing a hotel includes a lot of moving parts, so having the tools to
generate accurate reports is essential.