Relyo vs spreadsheets

Relyo vs Excel and Google Sheets for staff housing

Relyo is staff housing software for hotels and resorts: one shared record for HR, finance, operations and housing. A spreadsheet works for a few people in one or two buildings.

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Relyo

Relyo: staff housing software for hotels and resorts

Relyo runs staff accommodation in owned or leased buildings, with grades (housing entitlement levels) that set each person's room and allowance. HR, finance and accounting, operations and housing work from one record of rooms, occupants, repairs, bills and costs.

Spreadsheets

Excel and Google Sheets: tables for any job

Excel and Google Sheets are flexible, familiar and usually already in place, with real-time co-editing and offline use. Housing data is typed in or comes from forms, and your team builds and maintains every rule and check.

Relyo vs Excel and Google Sheets, row by row

Feature		Spreadsheets
Built for	Built for it: Staff housing for hotels and resorts. Rooms, people, repairs, bills and costs in one place Organised by period, each season starting from the last A separate system, built only for staff housing	Partly, with workarounds: Any table of data, for any team. Room lists, rent logs, cost models: whatever you design No built-in idea of a room, a stay or a grade Often run with WhatsApp or Viber groups and paper checklists
One shared record	Built for it: One record for HR, finance, operations and housing. Housing team, occupants, maintainers and landlords work in it No copies, tabs or chat threads to reconcile Repairs, inspections and bills in the same record	Partly, with workarounds: One live file, if everyone keeps to it. Google Sheets and Excel for Microsoft 365 support real-time co-editing Departments often keep their own copies, which drift apart Repairs, photos and bills often stay in chats and email
Kept up to date without retyping	Built for it: The people doing the work update the record. Occupants report repairs and do their own inspections Maintainers start and complete jobs from their phone Scanned bills fill 13 fields for your review	Partly, with workarounds: Someone retypes whatever does not arrive by form. Google Forms or Microsoft Forms can feed a sheet Bills and meter readings are usually typed in by hand Between updates, the sheet falls out of date
Room planning	Built for it: Smart Match, the room planner, proposes a room for everyone still waiting. Rules for grades, smoking, pets, optional same-gender rooms Respects people entitled to a room of their own Each proposal explained, accepted in one click	Partly, with workarounds: A room list you fill in by hand. Drop-downs limit entries to valid rooms Capacity, smoking or gender rules are formulas you write No built-in room proposals: you place each person
Grades and housing entitlements	Built for it: Each grade sets the room, utility allowance and rent cover. Applied the same way to every assignment Off, warn or block, per department if needed Rule changes re-check existing stays	Partly, with workarounds: A grade lookup table with check formulas you build. Someone writes and maintains a check per rule Formulas can break silently when rows or tabs change Data validation can warn or reject, rule by rule
Seasons and periods	Built for it: Each period starts from the last one. A wizard carries properties, amenity settings and people over Draft, active, then archived and still reportable End-of-period report compares with the last period	Partly, with workarounds: A new file or tab for each season. Last season's file is usually copied and cleared by hand Comparing seasons means joining files yourself
Inspections and damage	Built for it: Four checkpoints per stay, recorded on a phone. Move-in and move-out photos side by side Your team marks new damage, linked to the stay for reporting Never charged for damage that was already there	Partly, with workarounds: A checklist template, with photos kept elsewhere. Excel and Google Sheets can place images in cells Photos often sit in phones, chats or shared drives Tying new damage to a stay is manual
Utility bills and allowances	Built for it: Scan a bill, check the allowance, share the cost fairly. Bill scan reads 13 fields, from any provider, for your review Checked against each grade's utility allowance Shared by days stayed, and each occupant sees their share	Partly, with workarounds: Good at the arithmetic, once someone builds it. Bills are usually typed or pasted in Allowance and cost-sharing formulas are custom work Each new grade or building means new formulas
Cost per occupant, department and grade	Built for it: Cost per occupant covers rent for the buildings you lease, utilities including overage, damage and repairs. By property, grade and department Season report as PDF or Excel, plus a cost CSV Calculated by rules from the record, no formulas to maintain	Partly, with workarounds: Pivot tables slice cost any way, once data is joined. Rent, bills, damage and stays usually sit in separate tabs Joining them per stay takes lookups someone updates each month Built-in AI assistants can help with formulas and pivots
Repairs and maintenance	Built for it: Repair requests in one place, with a portal for maintainers. Occupants report from their phone and add photos Routing rules assign each request by specialty Day plan: critical first, then the nearest next stop	Partly, with workarounds: A repair log, often fed by a form. Status and assignee are columns the team updates Sheets can email by rule on some work accounts Reminders and escalation need Apps Script or Power Automate
Operational Signals and a daily email	Built for it: Operational Signals: 31 rule-based checks in one ranked list. People, housing, money, maintenance and compliance (inspections, contracts) One email each morning, only when something is new or critical Plus Relyo recommends: up to 3 AI suggestions a night	Partly, with workarounds: Some change alerts built in, other checks you build. Google Sheets emails you about edits, forms or rule matches Date reminders and cross-tab checks need scripts or flows No built-in check for an arrival without a room
Access, roles and change history	Built for it: Each person sees only their part of the record. Portals for occupants, maintainers and landlords Roles and per-department permissions Activity log of who changed what, before and after	Partly, with workarounds: Sharing is per file: view, comment or edit. Both vendors say range protection is not security Per-person views need separate files or an app such as AppSheet Version history shows who edited what

Built for it Partly, with workarounds Not designed for it

Competitor information checked against public sources on 19 October 2026. Product names and trademarks belong to their owners. We compare publicly available information in good faith; if something about your product is out of date, email us and we will correct it.

Choose spreadsheets if…

You house a few people in one or two buildings, and one person keeps the file
Occupants, maintainers and landlords do not need their own access
You want to start today, in a tool everyone already knows
You need offline editing or native mobile apps
You like building your own forms, scripts and automations, and can maintain them
You need one-off analysis or finance models, which belong in a spreadsheet anyway

Choose Relyo if…

Your one spreadsheet became several, plus chat groups, paper checklists and PDF bills
You want one current record, and the right people told when something changes
You house staff across several buildings and seasons, owned, leased or both
You want grade rules applied every time, and overage caught the month it happens
You want new damage tied to the stay, and nobody charged for damage already there
HR and finance need cost per occupant without rebuilding the workbook every month

Reasons to move staff housing out of Excel

Import your staff list from Excel

Import the occupant roster from CSV or Excel, up to 500 rows per file. For more columns, drop the file into Relyo AI and approve the import.

The import screen maps name, email and grade
Relyo AI maps more columns, even with Greek or French headers
It creates missing departments or grades once you approve
A 14-field completeness score shows what room planning still needs

Relyo tells the right people about changes

Routing rules assign new requests by specialty. Occupants are told their bill share, and Operational Signals lists what nobody has picked up.

Notifications in the app and by email, per person
31 checks, from arrivals without a room to unassigned tickets
One email each morning, only when something is new or critical
Each check clears itself once the problem is fixed

See Operational Signals

See who changed what, and when

Relyo logs each important change with who made it, before and after. The log shows actions on rooms, stays, bills and tickets, not edited cells.

Roles and per-department permissions decide who sees what
Occupants, maintainers and landlords see only their part
Filter the activity log and export it to CSV
Relyo AI changes need your approval and are logged too

See security

Frequently asked questions

Can we run staff accommodation in Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes, and for a few people in one or two buildings it works well. The hard part is keeping it current: repairs, photos, meter readings and bills arrive by chat, paper and email, and someone retypes them. In Relyo, occupants, maintainers and scanned bills update one shared record, and grade rules, bill shares and alerts are built in.

Google Sheets already lets us edit together. Is that not enough?

It helps the people at a desk. Occupants, maintainers and landlords would see the whole file or nothing, unless you split it into copies or build an app on top, so their updates often arrive by chat. Relyo gives each of them a portal on the same record, limited to their part.

What should a staff accommodation spreadsheet include?

A workable spreadsheet has tabs for properties, rooms and beds, staff with department, grade and dates, grade entitlements, utility bills, rent for leased buildings and repairs. The hard part is joining them per stay for cost per occupant and keeping them current all season. Relyo has no template, but it imports your staff tab from CSV or Excel.

Can we import our existing housing spreadsheet into Relyo?

Yes, for your staff list: the import screen reads CSV or Excel, up to 500 rows per file, and maps name, email and grade. For more columns, drop the file into Relyo AI, which reads Greek or French headers and imports after you approve. Properties and rooms are set up through a short wizard, with our help.

Will finance still be able to work in Excel?

Yes. Relyo exports the period cost CSV in English, Greek or French, the end-of-period report as PDF or Excel, per-occupant cost PDFs, an occupant CSV, a property Excel file and the activity log. There is no live sync, so data moves by file export.

We already have spreadsheets. Why pay for Relyo?

You already have the sheet, but the work around it is still done by hand. Relyo proposes rooms, checks every bill against the allowance, tracks repairs and shows cost per occupant, with no formulas to maintain. Selected partners start with a free pilot in one building, and pricing is agreed after the pilot.

Excel and Google Sheets now have AI assistants. What does Relyo AI add?

Those assistants are capable general helpers that work with whatever structure your sheets have. Relyo AI already knows rooms, stays, grades, bills and tickets, links each answer to the records it used and changes nothing until you approve. In Relyo, cost numbers, room matching and alerts are clear rules, not AI.

Does Relyo work on phones, and offline?

Relyo works in the browser on any phone, with nothing to install, and the occupant and maintainer portals are built for phones. There is no native app and no offline mode. If your teams often work without a connection, Excel and Google Sheets have the edge.

Is Relyo a PMS or an HR system?

No. Relyo is a separate system built only for staff housing, not a guest PMS or an HR system, and not an add-on to either. It does not connect to them and has no API: your staff list comes in from CSV or Excel.

Relyo vs AirtableA general-purpose no-code app platform with built-in AI, for building your own databases, forms, interfaces and automations.Relyo vs CloudbedsCloud hospitality platform with a guest PMS, channel manager, booking engine and payments for hotels, hotel groups, hostels and short-term rentals.Relyo vs StarRezHousing platform built mainly for universities and student housing, with staff housing as one segment and Cedar Point as a named staff housing customer.

Start with one building

Bring your spreadsheet to a demo, and we import your staff list and set up the first building with you.

Free pilot for selected partners: start with one building, set up with the founders.

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