For hotels and B&Bs

Hotel rota software: reception around the clock, housekeeping to the checkouts

A hotel never closes, so its rota has no end of the day: an early, a late and a night on reception, housekeeping sized to the rooms leaving that morning, breakfast from six, and a night porter whose shift starts on one date and ends on the next. InShift keeps every department on one rota, counts the night as one shift, gives each manager rights to their own part of the house, and puts the rota in every pocket.

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Three shifts on the desk, a housekeeping count that changes daily, and one night that spans two dates

Reception in a 40 room hotel is three shifts that meet at a handover: an early from seven, a late from three, a night from eleven. That is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 168 hours of desk cover a week before anyone takes a holiday, which is four and a half full-time receptionists at the very least. Housekeeping is the opposite shape: a fixed team whose number on the day depends on how many rooms are leaving. A Sunday with 30 checkouts needs five room attendants; a Tuesday with eight needs two and a supervisor.

Between them sit breakfast, a maintenance person, a duty manager on the late and a night porter who is alone in the building. The night shift is where spreadsheets fail first: a shift from 23:00 on Friday to 07:00 on Saturday is one shift, on one date, paid at one rate with the night premium on top. A sheet that ends its day at midnight splits it into two stubs, and the hours never add up for the person who was actually there.

The other thing a hotel rota needs is more than one author. The head housekeeper builds housekeeping, the front office manager builds the desk, the general manager sees the whole house and the accountant sees only the payroll. Below is how a hotel of thirty people looks in InShift, screen by screen.

The day board

Who is on the early, the late and the night, as a list by day

The “List” view of the planner reads like the sheet behind the desk: a row per date, a column per shift type, the names in each. For a hotel that is early, late and night on reception next to the housekeeping day and the breakfast shift, a fortnight down the page. The demo location on the frame has morning, midday and evening; a hotel names its own types and their times, including a night that ends the next morning.

  • A week, a month, a year or a list view of the same rota, per location or all locations at once
  • A shift type can cross midnight: “Night 23:00–07:00” is one shift on the date it starts
  • Departments as rows in the week view: reception, housekeeping, kitchen, maintenance
  • “Print” for the sheet behind the desk, “Export to Excel” for the owner
The admin panel screen by screen

A Sunday on the rota of a 40 room hotel with 30 checkouts

Reception in three shifts, housekeeping sized to the rooms leaving, breakfast from six, and a night porter who is the only person in the building after eleven.

06:00–14:00 · Breakfast × 2

Breakfast service and the restaurant reset

07:00–15:00 · Receptionist

Early: checkouts, the morning rush at the desk, handover at three

08:00–16:00 · Housekeeping supervisor

Allocates the 30 departures, checks the rooms back in

09:00–15:00 · Room attendant × 5

Six rooms each, departures first, stayovers after

15:00–23:00 · Receptionist

Late: arrivals, the evening desk, handover at eleven

15:00–23:00 · Duty manager

Runs the evening, takes the complaints, closes the bar

23:00–07:00 · Night porter

Alone in the house: the desk, the audit, the early departures

The same hotel on a Tuesday with eight checkouts has two room attendants and one breakfast shift; reception and the night do not change. The night shift is entered as 23:00–07:00 and counts as one shift on the Sunday.

Who edits what

The head housekeeper, the front office manager and the accountant, each with their own rights

A role in InShift is a set of rights on the “Access rights” tab: “View rota”, “Edit rota”, “View team”, “Manage employees”, “View payroll” and “Manage payroll”, each set to “None”, “Own”, “My locations” or “Entire network”. A duty manager edits the rota of their own hotel, a group manager sees every site, an accountant opens payroll and nothing else. A role sits on the person’s card, and a person can build the rota from the app as well as from the browser.

  • “Add role” for any set of rights; the demo has “Manager”, “Director”, “Accountant” and “Team Member”
  • Rights are by location: a second hotel is a second location with its own managers
  • Room attendants see their own shifts and “Who else is working”, and nobody’s rate
  • A manager on the late approves a swap or a day off from the phone

Holidays

Holiday asked for in the app, counted against the allowance, known before the rota is built

With a desk that never closes, a holiday request that lives in a text message is a gap waiting to happen. In InShift a receptionist opens “Day off”, picks “Holiday”, the dates and a note, and taps “Submit request”. The manager sees it on “Requests” with the rest, approves or rejects, and the approved days are listed under “Off” in the manager’s day view in the app, so next month’s desk is built around them. The allowance is set per person in “Vacation days per year”, and the app shows what is used and what is left.

  • Four request types: “Holiday”, “Sick leave”, “Personal” and “Unpaid”, each shown on “Requests” with its status
  • The manager decides in “Request rules”: “Manager approves”, or requests off entirely
  • Sick leave reported at six in the morning arrives the same way, and the manager offers the shift to the team as an open shift
  • A push for the decision, and the request history stays on the person’s screen
The app screen by screen

Moving a hotel onto InShift

An afternoon for a hotel of thirty, the team joining included.

  1. 1

    Sign up and the location

    Email or Google. The hotel is a location; a second property is a second location with its own team, shift types and managers.

  2. 2

    Departments, positions, shift types

    Reception, housekeeping, kitchen, maintenance. Shift types “Early 07:00–15:00”, “Late 15:00–23:00”, “Night 23:00–07:00”, “Housekeeping 09:00–15:00”, “Breakfast 06:00–14:00”, each with its days of the week.

  3. 3

    The team and the roles

    “Add multiple” pastes the names, each with a position, a department and “Vacation days per year”. The head housekeeper and the front office manager get a role with “Edit rota”. “Invite team” gives the QR code and the invite code.

  4. 4

    The first fortnight and publish

    Reception first, because it never changes, then housekeeping to the checkouts, then “Publish”. From then on it is “Copy last week”, the holidays and “Publish” again.

Frequently asked questions

How is the night shift counted when it starts on Friday and ends on Saturday?▾

As one shift on the Friday. A shift type can cross midnight, for example 23:00–07:00, and its hours add up as eight on the date it started. The hours inside the “Night hours” window on the “Premiums” tab are paid with the premium you set, and they show as their own column in “Payroll”.

Can the head housekeeper build the housekeeping rota without seeing payroll?▾

Yes. A role on the “Access rights” tab gives “Edit rota” for their location and leaves “View payroll” at “None”. Rights are by location rather than by department, so the head housekeeper can see the whole rota of the hotel, and edits it; what they cannot see is pay.

How do I size housekeeping to occupancy?▾

By hand, from the departures you already know: a room attendant per six to eight checkouts plus stayovers. InShift does not read your property management system; it makes the count easy to change, because a shift is added or removed in a cell, and the week header shows how many shifts each day has. A housekeeping shift type limited to certain days keeps the weekend team separate from the weekday one.

How many receptionists does 24 hour cover take?▾

The desk needs 168 hours a week, which is 4.2 people on a 40 hour contract before holidays and sickness. Five is the practical minimum for a single desk, six if the night porter is a separate position. The night alone is 56 hours a week: one full-time night porter and a second person who covers two nights.

Does it work for two hotels or a B&B with a restaurant?▾

Yes. Each property is a location with its own shift types, positions and managers, and the planner shows one location or all of them at once. A restaurant inside the hotel is a department of the same location, or a location of its own if it has a separate manager. A person who works in both is one person with two locations.

What does it cost for a hotel of thirty?▾

Free for one location and up to 10 people. Beyond that it is a subscription per active person on the “Employees” list, with locations, payroll and the team app included. The numbers are on the pricing page.

Get the whole hotel on one rota

Departments, shift types and the first fortnight take an afternoon, and reception, housekeeping and the night porter see the rota in the app the same day.

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