Hotel Cash Flow Template

Start with the Weekly Cash Flow sheet. Download the file, open it in Excel or Google Sheets, and enter your current bank balance in the starting cash cell. Then fill in your expected cash inflows for the next 13 weeks: projected weekly room revenue by channel, estimated F&B and ancillary income, and any group deposits you expect to receive. Use your last 4-8 weeks of PMS (property management system) reports as a baseline — most hotel managers complete the inflow side in about 25 minutes. Then fill in the outflow side using your accounts payable schedule, payroll run dates, and fixed cost calendar.

Set up the OTA & Channel Settlement Tracker with your current channel mix — what percentage of revenue comes from direct bookings, Booking.com, Expedia, corporate accounts, and other sources. Enter each channel's typical settlement timing. Once set up, this sheet feeds settlement timing into the Weekly Cash Flow sheet automatically and shows you when OTA remittances will actually arrive. Pay particular attention to periods after high-occupancy months: the cash from a full October doesn't arrive from OTAs until mid-to-late November, which can create a misleading picture if you're only looking at occupancy and ADR.

Review the projection every week. Update last week's actuals, roll the 13-week window forward, and check whether your ending cash balance stays above your minimum comfort level. For most hotels, that threshold is at least 30 days of operating expenses — labor, utilities, franchise fees, and debt service combined. Update the Occupancy & Revenue Planner quarterly as your forward booking pace becomes clearer. Operators who run this projection consistently say the single biggest benefit is catching the post-peak cash gap early enough to arrange a short-term credit line draw or delay a discretionary renovation before the shortfall hits.

Hotels face a cash flow problem that most other businesses don't: the timing gap between when guests check in and when you actually receive the money. Direct bookings and walk-ins settle within a few days. But OTA-sourced reservations — which account for 30-60% of room nights at most independent and franchise properties — net-settle 30-45 days after checkout. A fully booked October looks great on your PMS dashboard, but if 50% of that revenue flows through OTAs, the cash doesn't arrive until late November or December. Add a franchise royalty payment due on the 15th, a quarterly property tax bill, and a FF&E replacement that can't wait, and a profitable month can still produce a cash shortfall.

The cash dynamics that matter most in hotels are occupancy-driven but not occupancy-correlated in real time. Your labor costs — the largest cash outflow category at 30-40% of revenue for most full-service properties — run on a weekly payroll cycle regardless of how last week's occupancy looked. Housekeeping hours scale with rooms cleaned, but front desk, maintenance, and management labor are relatively fixed. Franchise fees, typically 5-10% of room revenue, are due monthly based on the prior month's performance, adding a one-month lag to a cost that's already occupancy-variable. Understanding these timing relationships is what separates hotels that manage cash proactively from those that are perpetually surprised by the gap between their RevPAR report and their bank balance.

The right approach is to build a 13-week cash flow projection from your forward booking pace and update it weekly. Your PMS shows you the reservation pickup for the next 90 days — use that as your occupancy input, apply your channel mix to calculate settlement timing, and you'll have a reasonably accurate picture of when cash will arrive. On the outflow side, most hotel expenses are highly predictable: payroll runs on a schedule, franchise fees are a percentage of last month's revenue, utilities follow seasonal patterns, and debt service is fixed. Hotels that run this projection weekly typically catch the post-peak OTA settlement gap and the January-February slow-season cash squeeze well in advance — enough lead time to draw on a line of credit at favorable terms rather than scrambling when the gap arrives.