Nightly rate vs cost price
Every room has two separate nightly figures. They look similar but do very different jobs, so it's worth being clear on which is which.
Default nightly rate — what guests pay
The default nightly rate is the price your guests are charged. It is:
- used as the fallback for any date that doesn't have a more specific rate,
- the seed for the weekday/weekend split and the daily rate grid on the Pricing page, and
- the last-resort figure behind your public site's "from" price — that price is normally the cheapest night your rates actually resolve to, and only falls back to this field when nothing in the next six months is priced. See How the "from" price is worked out.
Change this and you change what guests see and pay.
Nightly cost price — your internal cost
The nightly cost price is your cost to provide the room for one night (cleaning, linen, owner split, utilities — however you account for it). It is:
- never shown to guests and never affects what they pay, and
- used only to work out profit in the Profit and loss tab of the Reports page (
Accommodation cost = nightly cost price × nights).
It's optional. Leave it blank and Stayant simply treats your accommodation cost as zero — which means the report's Profit won't account for any accommodation cost (only refunds and any charge or extra costs are taken off) until you fill in a real cost.
Where to set them
Both fields live on the same room card:
- Single-room property — the General tab.
- Multi-room property — each room's card on the Rooms tab.
Set the rate to control guest pricing; set the cost price to make your profit figures meaningful.
Why these are separate
Previously a single field did both jobs, which made the profit report misleading — accommodation profit always came out near zero because the "cost" was really the selling price. Splitting them means your guest pricing and your margin reporting are independent: edit one without affecting the other.
See also Per-room pricing, Revenue & occupancy report, and Override price & cost on a rate plan.