night shift
What a hostel night shift handover should contain
The five lines a night handover needs so the morning person walks in knowing what happened, what is unresolved and what to do first. A template you can copy tonight.
By Sean Barrite. September 27, 2026. 1-minute read.
The night handover is the most skipped document in a hostel and the one the morning person needs most. It fails for the same reason most checklists fail: nobody says exactly what goes in it. Here is a five-line format that takes two minutes to write.
The five lines
- Occupancy and arrivals. Beds sold, no-shows, and who is still expected. If someone self-checked-in at 3 a.m., say which bed.
- Incidents. Noise complaints, lockouts, medical, damage, police. One line each, with the time and what was done.
- Unresolved. The thing you could not fix. The dorm 4 lock, the boiler noise, the guest who wants to talk to the manager. This is the line the morning person reads first.
- Cash. The closing float figure and any variance with the reason. If the number matches, say so; silence reads as "did not count."
- Tomorrow. Early check-outs, tours leaving, deliveries due, anything the opener needs before 08:00.
Where it should live
Not in a WhatsApp group, where it scrolls away under breakfast chat. Not in a notebook, where nobody knows who read it. Put it where the morning checklist is, so reading it is the first task of the opening shift and is timestamped like every other task.
In Skorops, the night report is the last task of the closing checklist and the first task of the opening one. Both are timestamped, so a missing handover is visible on the dashboard before the manager has finished their coffee.
Start with the free hostel opening and closing checklist, which already carries both tasks.