Using Smartsheet to book rooms/properties and export data for billing purposes

Derek Clark

Hello, this is my first post. I am looking for a solution that would allow my company to book rooms in properties that we own. The input for the booking form or sheet would be Employee Name, Company, Job #, Check-in Date , and expected Check-out date. This would allow us to manage what employees, companies, and job #'s are staying at which properties.

Another feature would be allowing for the reservation record to be able to be modified, e.g. the employee check in earlier or later and either did not stay as long as originally anticipated or stayed longer than anticipated.

There are very frequent instances where the employee's stay would span several job #'s, meaning that they could stay in the property for several weeks and they would have multiple job #'s that they would need to book under. Assuming we would have to enter a record for each job#?

For billing, I need to report or view that our AP department could enter a specific date rate, e.g. payroll period, and it would pull all data associated to records that stayed at properties during that time frame, e.g. Employee Name, Company, and Job #.

Thank you all in advance for any and all help. Hopefully this is not too complicated but I am newer to Smartsheet and learning lots.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Derek Clark

I hope you're well and safe!

One idea for a structure could be a dashboard/portal with a form on one side and the available rooms on the other. The form would be used to book the room(s).

Depending on what Smartsheet plan and add-ons you have (or would be okay to add), we could automatically update what's available to book, and it could then potentially be selectable in a dropdown list in the form instead.

I'd recommend having separate rows for different jobs, but it could also work to combine them into one, and the best structure depends on your specific needs.

Billing could be kept in the same sheet and then shown in a report for AP.

Make sense?

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Derek Clark

Andree, thank you for the input. My company is on Smartsheet Advanced so we have access to Calendar, Data Shuttle, DataMesh, Dynamic View, Pivot, and WorkApps. I am just very new to Smartsheet so I am in my infancy of solution development.

As for your idea, would people be booking the room/property directly or just submitting the need, e.g. I need a room/property For Andree from 04/01/24 through 04/15/24 and then the room would be assigned on the backend by the person managing the rooms/properties.

I can see if we would have access to all jobs to be able to make them selectable. As jobs are added throughout the year I though making that more free text would provide more flexibility.

Definitely open to ideas and I appreciate all of your input.