The Hotel Industry Is Changing Fast. Here's How to Keep Pace Using Hotel Receipts from MightyForms

Life safely takes place outside again. The hospitality industry is gearing up for business and leisure travels to come back stronger than ever.  

Perfect timing to revisit old processes and implement the latest resources to keep your hotel ready for high demand.

The makeover must start with the most crucial and essential piece of exchange between guests and hotels: the hotel receipt.

As a resort manager, it’s critical to keep track of every bill to provide the best service for your guests. Make it a simple process by using a MightyForms Hotel Receipt Template.

Allow me to give you a tour, I’ll be your concierge!

Why Hotel Receipts Must be Provided

Whatever type and size of hospitality establishment you’re running, you’ll always need to provide a hotel receipt for your guests. Just a credit card slip is not enough since it doesn’t detail charges.  

Besides, more than a simple document stating that accommodation and services have been paid for, a hotel receipt acts as legal proof in case of any dispute.

Since even the most basic hotel receipt contains information about the hotel, the guest, and details of all lodging expenses, it benefits both parties involved.

For guests, a hotel receipt is an opportunity to double-check all itemized charges in case of a complaint or a query. Also, for those traveling for business purposes, a hotel receipt is needed for expense reports and reimbursement requests to employers.

For the establishment, a hotel receipt can be kept for legal and financial auditing purposes. It’s a much safer and smarter method for bookkeeping.

What Should Be Included in a Hotel Receipt

A hotel receipt states a very specific and peculiar kind of information. Therefore, using a generic invoice format is not advised.

You’ll need a tailor-made document to properly display detailed information about each stay. Besides, it has to be in a printable format and shareable via email as well.

Another major difference is that, unlike a generic invoice, a hotel receipt must be signed, so it must include a signature field.

Here’s the full list of what should be included in a hotel receipt:

• Hotel information: full address, phone number, website, email address
• Guest information: full name, address, phone number, and email address.
• Stay information: check-in and check-out dates, room number, number of guests per room
• Room rate per night and what’s included
• Itemized list of services or purchases (meals, transportation, print services, spa services, parking, etc.).
• Balance due (including total amount plus any taxes and fees)
• Payment method (credit card number, deposit info, etc.)
• Signature field

Keep in mind that this list covers the most common information stated in a hotel receipt, but you might need to add or delete a few items depending on your business.

That’s why we’ll show you ahead how to create a custom hotel receipt with MightyForms. Not only do you get to include all the information needed exactly how you want it to look, but hotel receipts by MightyForms can be powered with further features and functionalities to improve your front desk operations.  

Hotel Receipts by MightyForms – Step-by-Step with Template

There are a few hotel receipt templates for download or invoice generators available online. But not only are they very limited on customization, they also don’t go beyond the document itself.

MightyForms is a form builder designed for client intake and data management. This means you’ll get more than a professional-looking, automated, custom hotel receipt.

From the hotel receipt as your starting point, you’ll be able to run email marketing campaigns, improve your CRM strategy, conduct guest satisfaction surveys, and much more.

Step-by-step to Create a Hotel Receipt

MightyForms is a very intuitive form builder with no code required. You can create and edit fully responsive forms as easily as clicking on buttons or by dragging and dropping field options.

Let’s go over the steps to create a hotel receipt so you can implement it right away to your guests:

Step 1. Log in to MightyForms

Signup is easy, either create an account for your hotel or sign in with a Google or Facebook account:

Step 2. Create New Form

From the main dashboard, click on ‘Create New Form’. You can start from scratch, but let’s get a headstart here. MightyForms has a hotel receipt template readily available. Type “hotel receipt” into the search bar and hit enter. The hotel receipt template will appear as the first result:

Step 2.1. Select Hotel Receipt Template

Hover your cursor over the hotel receipt template. You can preview it first or start its customization. Click on “Use this template”.

Step 3. Edit Hotel Receipt Template

You’re now in the builder dashboard where you get to edit any part of the structure of your hotel receipt template. On the side menu on your left, you’ll see all field options available. You can either drag it and drop it to your hotel receipt form or click on the add sign (+) beside each field option.

Note you can resize or reposition any field. When you click on each field, a side menu on your right will appear so you can edit any detail. You can make any field required, visible or invisible, choose icons, include a description, etc.

Step 4. Enable Save & Resume Option

All forms by MightyForms come with the flexibility of saving progress to be filled out later whenever it’s needed. The Save & Resume option will come in handy to your front desk clerks, as they can start filling out the hotel receipt as charges are being made, instead of all of it at once upon checkout.

In order to enable the Save & Resume, just scroll down the hotel receipt template all the way and check this option at the very end:

Step 5. Edit Signature Fields

You’ll see there are two signature fields on this hotel receipt template: one for the hotel clerk filling it out, another one for the guest in order to accept and agree to the charges being made. You can edit this signature field to include the employee’s name and ID, for instance, so it’s documented who was responsible for each hotel receipt issued.

As for the guest’s signature, we strongly advise making it a required field in the case of the electronic format of the hotel receipt. Note that electronic signatures can be either typed in or drawn, and both are legally binding by the US by the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN) Act of 2000.

Step 6. Define Style of the Hotel Receipt

With the structure for your hotel receipt defined, let’s move over to embellish it. On the very far left side menu, click on the pencil icon representing the Design menu.

From the Design menu, you can choose a color theme from the existing options on your left or come up with your own color scheme, fonts, and background image on the side menu on the right.

PRO TIP:  at this stage, you can add your own logo and brand identity to this template.  

Step 7. Preview & Publish

You may now name this project. Type a name on the form name field at the very top left-hand corner. You can also preview it and test its responsiveness from any device. Finally, just click on the “Publish” button to make it active and ready to be used:

That’s it, your hotel receipt is ready to be filled out by your staff and signed by guests!

Advanced Features for Hotel Receipts

As I mentioned before, hotel receipts by MightyForms can go beyond their initial purpose.

Forget about static templates or unreliable invoice generators!

Especially if you’re running a small establishment, you can rely on extra help to ensure hotel receipt process compliance and accuracy. Not to mention tools to help you grow your business and keep your hotel booked all year!

Let me show how you can take advantage of all MightyForms features and functionalities in order to make the hotel receipt process more efficient:

Form Templates

You should focus on hospitality best practices and let MightyForms’s expertise help you collect and manage data for any purpose. Besides the hotel receipt template that we’ve covered in our tutorial above, there are optimized templates for other occasions too.

Easily implement a Guest Registration form template to expedite your booking. Are you hiring new staff? There’s a Job Application form template to help you recruit candidates. Is your hotel also a venue for events? Check out our Event Registration forms to help with your event planning. Explore all other form templates that can be of service.

Form Privacy

If a hotel receipt is a legally binding document, then it must be protected against frauds and scams. In order to avoid misuse by unauthorized people, hotel receipts by MightyForms can be protected and accessed only with a password.

Simply click on the “Share” tab of your form to set up a password that locks access to your hotel receipt. You can unlock it or change its password anytime.

Automatic Notifications

Whenever your front desk clerk issues a new hotel receipt, you can set up automatic notifications to be sent out to other team members. For instance, alert your cleaning staff that a guest has checked out so the room can be cleaned and arranged for the next guest. Or automatically send a PDF copy of the hotel receipt to your accounting department for faster balance sheet management.

On the very left side menu of your form dashboard, click on the “Notifications” icon to set up notifications via email or SMS. Simply define who will get a notification, what information will be given, even add a custom message for further instructions.

Success Message

As a hotel owner or manager, you want to delight your guests from the booking moment to the checkout experience so they’ll come back. Providing a clear and transparent hotel receipt for guests to easily understand charges is nice, but automatically sending it as a PDF copy for their files is even nicer.

You can set up an automatic custom Success Message as soon as a hotel receipt is submitted. Just click on the “Settings” icon on the far left side menu of your form dashboard. Add your “thank you for staying with us” message, make it dynamic with pictures or your hotel logo. Or you can even redirect guests to another website, like inviting guests to join your loyalty program.

Integrations

Integrations by MightyForms will empower your hotel receipts by syncing them to other platforms. Click on the “Integrations” icon on the far left side menu to see all automatic and seamless connectivity options. All of the hotel receipts submitted are safely stored in our database with end-to-end SSL encryption. But you can export them all to any data storage platform, like Google Drive or Dropbox for extra backup.

For further data management and analysis, send your hotel receipts to Google Sheets or Google Calendar. Automatically add guests to your email marketing mailing list on MailChimp. Nurture guests through Clio Grow’s Customer Relationship Management platform. Or automatically streamline your hotel receipts to any other platform through Zapier integration. 

Guest Satisfaction Survey

Say goodbye to the days that guest satisfaction surveys remain unanswered in each hotel room’s nightstand. MightyForms has the most effective tools to collect guests’ feedback. You can automatically transfer guests’ contact information on hotel receipts to a survey form using our Field-Keys feature to be sent via email soon after checkout.    

Select one of our Customer Satisfaction, Feedback, or Surveys & Questionnaires form templates or create your own in order to probe your guests about their stay experience. You can build your guest satisfaction survey using the Likert Scale or NPS Score approaches to find out what guests liked the most and the least about the hotel, or the likelihood of them recommending it to friends.

The valuable data collected from a guest satisfaction survey will support better business decision-making. From room rates, amenities, spa to room services, and so on, surveys provide an opportunity to learn from guests, improve your hotel premises and practices, train your staff, and outdo competitors.

Hotel Industry Outlook & Forecast

As travel and tourism normalize, the hospitality industry is ready to recover from the past year’s pandemic hiatus.  According to The American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), hotel occupancy is predicted to increase from 44% to 52% this year, then 61% in 2022, with full recovery by 2024.

However, a Forbes study is even more hopeful, forecasting a hotel revenue comeback by next year, due to “revenge travel” (a high travel demand caused by the pandemic restrictions). In fact, hotels all over the US are already seeing a summer reservation 110% higher than last year’s.

With that in mind, hotel owners and management teams must bring processes, procedures, and tools up to date asap. Automated custom hotel receipts by MightyForms are optimized to sustain high demand from guests. But don’t stop at hotel receipts, explore all the powerful features and functionalities MightyForms has to offer to streamline your daily hotel operations!