Moving from spreadsheets: set up your hotel by hand

Why	Move from spreadsheets into the system in one evening: recreate your property structure and prices by hand instead of waiting for a migration.
Who	Hotels that keep their records in Excel or Google Sheets — up to roughly 20–30 rooms.
What you’ll get	Spreadsheet rows become room types and physical rooms, a price sheet becomes a rate plan, and prices are filled in for the quarter ahead.
Limitations	There is no spreadsheet converter — the file will not load itself. Past bookings and guest balances do not carry over in a hand setup: that is a supported migration route.

Many small hotels run entirely on one spreadsheet: rows are rooms, columns are dates, bookings are marked in the cells, and prices sit on a neighboring sheet. With about twenty to thirty rooms, it is faster to recreate that structure in HotelsCalendar by hand in a single evening than to prepare a migration and wait for it. This article is the transfer map: what each part of your spreadsheet becomes, and in what order to set it up.

A spreadsheet row is a room

Your spreadsheet already speaks the system’s language: what you treat as a room category is a room type in the system, and every row is a physical room inside that type.

1. Open “Rooms” in the left menu and create room types — one for each type of room in your sheet: “Standard”, “Suite”, “Apartment”. You will end up with far fewer types than rows: they group identical rooms.
2. Inside each room type, add the physical rooms — one row per room.
3. Carry the labels over from the spreadsheet as they are: 104, 105, 106… At check-in a guest receives a specific room, not an abstract type.

Result: every row of the sheet is now a specific room, and identical rooms are grouped into types.

Learn more → Room inventory: room types, rooms, and housekeeping statuses.

The date grid is the Planner

The date columns in your spreadsheet are the columns of the Planner, and the rows are those same rooms from the first section. Only now the grid is alive: clicking a cell creates a booking, and bookings from your website and connected channels appear in it on their own.

1. Open the Planner from the left menu: dates across the top, rooms down the side.
2. Click a free cell — the booking form opens with the room and dates already filled in. Move future bookings from the spreadsheet the same way, if there are only a few of them: one booking, one cell.
3. Prices are not edited in the Planner: bookings live in the grid, while prices are set in the “Price Manager” — by editing a cell for a specific date or with a bulk update for a period.

After the move, the spreadsheet is only an archive: everything current lives in the Planner.

Learn more → The Planner: how it works, Change prices: one date or in bulk.

A price sheet is a rate plan

If prices in your spreadsheet are split across sheets — a base price, a price with breakfast, a “non-refundable” one, a seasonal one — each sheet becomes a separate rate plan. A rate plan bundles a price, the meal type, and the cancellation terms, attached to room types. Most small properties get by with two or three rate plans: a base one, one with meals, and a seasonal one.

1. Open “Rates” in the left menu and create your first rate plan — starting from the sheet you sell with most often.
2. Attach the rate plan to the room types you sell with it.
3. Set up the remaining sheets as separate rate plans: the meal type and the cancellation terms are defined in each rate plan individually.

Result: every price sheet is now a separate rate plan with its own price, meal type, and cancellation terms.

Learn more → Rate plans: how they work.

The evening setup order

For a small property the whole transfer fits into one evening. The order matters: each step builds on the previous one.

1. Room types.
2. Physical rooms inside the types.
3. The first rate plan, attached to the types.
4. Prices in the “Price Manager” — for a quarter ahead right away, not just the next two weeks: bookings arrive for dates a month or two out, and the prices must be in place by then.

Result: by the end of the evening your property has its structure, a rate plan, and prices. Rehearse the result: create a test booking in the Planner and cancel it — Test booking: rehearse before real guests.

None of this takes a specialist: the whole evening you are copying data that is already laid out in your spreadsheet.

When a migration is the better route

A hand setup moves the frame — room types, rooms, the rate plan, prices. It does not move history: past bookings, your guest base, and outstanding balances. The more history the spreadsheet holds, the more honestly this is called a migration. Treat a supported migration as your route if:

• the spreadsheet holds many bookings for future dates — each one would have to be recreated by hand;
• the spreadsheet keeps financial history — guest balances on past bookings;
• the property already sells through external channels — switching them over is best done in order, together with support.

In these cases your route is Switching from another PMS: what moves over. There is no self-service import from Excel in the interface: the transfer of bookings is done by support, together with you. And if you are unsure which route to take, write to support — you can look at your spreadsheet together and choose.

What to explore next

• Room inventory: room types, rooms, and housekeeping statuses — the detailed order for creating room types and physical rooms.
• First rates and prices: launch sequence — how a rate plan works and how to set prices for dates.
• Switching from another PMS: what moves over — if there is a lot of data: what support transfers and what you set up again yourself.
• The launch checklist: from account setup to your first check-in — the full launch route: the hand setup in this article covers its steps 2 and 3.