Data Files samples / Guest house or B and B

Gullhaven Guest House

Rooms, rates, guests, bookings, deposits, extras, bills and booking-site commission for a small guest house.

Download 343 KB15 tables, 15 queries, 10 reports, 5 print templates and 17,424 invented records, dated back from 2026-10-22.

Rutba Data Files with Gullhaven Guest House, the guest house or b and b sample, open at its print template Booking confirmation: a page laid out with the business's own name and address at the head and one of its records filled in, beside the list of the database's tables and how many records each holds — Gullhaven Guest House in Rutba Data Files, made with its invented records and open at its print template Booking confirmation.

Overview

Gullhaven Guest House is an invented bed and breakfast of ten rooms on the seafront of Saltby Bay, an invented seaside town in the United Kingdom. It has single, double, twin, family and superior sea-view rooms, each type with a rate for the low, mid and high season, a weeknight rate and a dearer one for Friday and Saturday nights, with breakfast or room only.

The sample holds fifteen months of stays and six months of bookings ahead. Guests book on the website or by e-mail, by phone, at the door, or through three invented booking sites that each take a commission. The rooms fill in July and August and at weekends, and stand half empty on winter weeknights. A booking direct asks for the first night as a deposit. Some guests cancel, early enough to have the deposit back or too late, and a few never arrive. Each night of a stay is charged to the room with the extras taken: breakfast on a room only rate, an evening meal, drinks, parking, a dog, a late check-out. The guest pays the bill on leaving.

A diary, the Room Nights table, holds one record for every room and every night, marked Booked, Free or Out of order. It is the paper booking chart of a guest house in a table: rooms free tonight, and the occupancy and average rate of every month, come from it. At the end of each month each booking site is sent a statement of the stays it sent and the commission owed.

In Rutba Data Files, choose Guest house or B and B on the start screen, then With sample records to look around, or Empty for the same design with nothing in it.

It suits, with small changes

A bed and breakfast or guest house
A small hotel or inn with rooms
A pub with letting rooms
Holiday cottages let by the night or week
A hostel with private rooms
A farm stay or glamping site
Serviced rooms let to contractors

Read on

Tutorial: the everyday tasks: 8 everyday tasks, step by step, each naming what to open.
Tables, fields and relationships: every field of 15 tables, and how they are related.
Queries, forms, reports and print templates: what each one shows, its criteria and calculated columns, and when to print it.

Things you should know

Everything in a sample's records is invented: the business, the people, their addresses, e-mail addresses on example domains that reach nobody, and phone numbers from the ranges kept for drama and fiction. Tax, company and bank numbers are placeholders of zeros.
The dates count back from the day the file was made, and some run on into the weeks after it, as real bookings and due dates do. Made from the Data Files start screen, a sample is dated from that day. Queries that compare with today (overdue, due this week) show more as a downloaded file gets older.
To start empty, choose the same business on the start screen and then Empty: the same tables, queries, forms, reports and print templates, with nothing in them but the Start Here guide.
Your records live in one file on your computer. Keep copies: File, Save As makes one, and a copy on another drive or in your own cloud storage keeps it safe if this computer is lost. Close the database before copying the file by hand.
Every change to the design (a new field, a renamed table) is a numbered step that Data Files keeps, so you can see what was changed and when.
The diary, Room Nights, is what the free-room and occupancy queries read. A booking entered in Bookings does not mark its nights by itself: set each night to Booked with its booking and rate, and back to Free if it is cancelled. The sample's diary runs six months ahead; add more nights as the year goes on (ten rooms, one record each a night).
Every price in the sample includes VAT at twenty percent, as prices shown to guests do: rates, extras and the lines on a bill. The bill shows the VAT within each line, rounded to the penny, and the VAT on the bill is those added up.
A bill is made when the guest leaves, so charges for a guest still in the house have an empty Bill. Room charges are posted night by night for nights already past; tonight's is posted tonight.
Deposit Paid is the deposit held now: it goes back to nought when a deposit is refunded. Direct bookings taken two days or more ahead are asked for the first night; booking-site guests and walk-ins pay on leaving.
Commission is worked out on the room charge alone, not on extras, at the rate held on the booking. Cancelled bookings and no-shows carry none in the sample. Booking sites' own terms differ; set the rate and the rules to match yours.
Cancellation and no-show charges carry no VAT in the sample. How they are taxed depends on your country and your terms: ask your accountant.
The passport number is kept only for guests whose nationality calls for it and is left empty for the rest, as the registration card is printed. Every name, address, passport number, car registration and booking reference in the sample is invented.
Print templates print one document for every record of their table. Print a single one from its form (the booking, bill or payment on screen), or choose the ones you want.

Starting with your own records

Start with Business, your own name, address, VAT number and bank details, which every document prints. Then the lookups: Seasons, Room Types, Rates for each type, season and plan, your Rooms, Booking Sources (your own website, the phone, the door and each site you sell through, with its commission rate) and Extras. Then make the diary: one Room Nights record for each room and night for the months ahead, all Free. Guests and Bookings come in as people book; Charges, Bills and Payments as they stay; Commission Statements at the end of each month.

Making it yours

Every change to the design is a numbered step in Data Files, so a change can be seen and undone.

Register every guest, not only the one who booked: add a Party table pointing at Bookings with each person's name and nationality, and list it on the registration card as its lines.
Sell packages: add a Packages table (two nights with dinner, a walking weekend) with a price, and point Bookings at it in place of the plan.
Keep the car park: add a Parking Spaces table and a Space field on Charges for parking, and a query of spaces taken each night.
Take payments in part: the Payments table already holds several payments for a booking; add a query that adds them up against each bill to show what is still owed by guests on account.
Track the booking sites' own payouts: where a site takes the guest's money and pays you less its commission, add a Payouts table pointing at Commission Statements.
Price by the length of stay: add a Nights From field to Rates for a cheaper rate on stays of three nights or more.
Let rooms by the week as holiday lets: change Rates to weekly prices and make a booking a run of Saturdays.

Questions people ask

How do I find a room for a caller?: Open the query Rooms free tonight and this weekend. For other dates, open the Room Nights table and filter it on Night and Status Free; the Tariff query gives the price.
Why is a room free in the diary when it shows a booking in Bookings?: The booking was entered without marking its nights in Room Nights, or it was cancelled and the nights were set back to Free. The diary is what the queries read, so keep the two in step.
How is occupancy worked out?: From Room Nights: the nights marked Booked as a share of all the room nights in the month, leaving out rooms out of order. The average rate is the room revenue divided by the nights sold.
How do I print a bill for an earlier stay?: Open the Bills form, find the bill by its number or the guest, and print the Guest bill template with that bill on screen.
What do I owe each booking site?: The query Commission by month lists every statement and whether it is paid. For stays not yet on a statement, the Commission field on each booking-site booking holds what will be owed.
Do I have to keep passport numbers?: That depends on the law where your guest house is. In the sample the field is filled only for guests whose nationality calls for it. Check what your own country asks, and keep no more than it asks.
How do I start using it for my own house?: Open it empty, enter your Business record, then Seasons, Room Types, Rates, Rooms, Booking Sources and Extras. Then make the Room Nights for each room for the months ahead, all Free, and take bookings from there.

Data Files is free

It comes with Rutba Office, with no account and no trial.

Download All the samples