Purchase request form and quote comparison sheet for hotels: what each must hold

A hotel purchase request form records what is needed, how much, by when, for which department and at what estimated cost, with an approval signature. A quote comparison sheet reduces competing offers to the same unit, delivery point and payment terms. A store requisition moves stock out of the storeroom. Each is signed by a different person.

A department head messages the supplier on a Friday, the towels arrive on Monday, and the invoice reaches the accountant three weeks later with no signature on it. Nothing in that chain is dishonest. It is simply unrecorded, and an unrecorded purchase cannot be checked, compared or defended. This article gives the fields of each form, who signs what at which spending level, and how to keep the set so an accountant can follow it, with or without software.

What three forms does hotel purchasing need, and what does each prove?#

Three documents cover the path from a need to a payment: the purchase request, the store requisition and the quote comparison. Each answers a different question, is raised by a different person and is signed by a different person.

The purchase request proves that someone asked for the item and someone with authority agreed to spend money on it, before the money was committed. The store requisition proves an internal movement, not a purchase: value leaves the storeroom and lands on a department's cost, which is why it must not be treated as a buying document. The quote comparison proves the price was tested while the choice was still open, instead of being justified after the invoice arrived.

A requisition met from stock needs no quotes; a purchase needs both a request and a comparison. Applying all three to every event wastes time and teaches staff to skip the system. Carry one reference number across all three documents and the invoice, so the file can be read backwards from the payment to the original need. A purchase order is a fourth, separate document: it is the commitment sent to the supplier, and it should quote the request number it came from.

These forms sit inside a wider flow, from order to storeroom, described in the article on the hotel purchasing and receiving procedure from order to storeroom.

What must a hotel purchase request form hold?#

A purchase request must let a person who was not in the conversation approve or reject it. That means specification, quantity, required-by date, department, estimated cost, budget line and a signature, in that order of importance.

A specification precise enough to quote comes first. "Cleaning chemical" cannot be compared between suppliers; "floor cleaner, pH neutral, 5 L, 4 per case" can. State the quantity in the unit the hotel buys in and the unit it consumes in, so the storeroom can check the delivery against the request without recalculating.

The required-by date needs a one-line reason. A date without a reason cannot be challenged, moved or renegotiated when the supplier is late. The estimated unit price and total should say where the estimate came from: last invoice, catalogue, or a verbal figure from the supplier. The source tells the approver how firm the number is.

Add the budget line or cost center, including the outlet in a hotel with more than one restaurant or bar, so the cost lands where the department expects it. A tick box for one-off or repeat matters too: a repeat order belongs on a contract with a price validity date, not on a fresh request every month. Leave space for the approver's decision, the date, and a short note of what was changed, because a request approved at a lower quantity is a decision worth recording.

What is the difference between a purchase request and a store requisition?#

A purchase request asks to spend money outside the hotel. A store requisition asks to take something the hotel already owns out of the storeroom. Mixing the two is the most common reason stock records and department costs stop agreeing.

A store requisition needs: date, department, item code, description, unit, quantity requested, quantity issued, unit cost at issue, and the signatures of the person collecting and the storekeeper. Quantity requested and quantity issued must be two separate columns, because the storekeeper is allowed to issue less than was asked for and the difference has to be visible.

The unit cost at issue comes from the storeroom's own record, not from today's supplier price; otherwise the same item costs a different amount every time it is issued. A requisition that cannot be met from stock becomes a purchase request, and the new request carries the requisition number so the trail is not broken.

Name the people who may sign for each department. A verbal request written up at the end of the shift is a reconstruction, not a record. Keep the issue point and the storage point under the same person or the same rule; if anyone can walk in and take stock, the requisition is decoration. How the storeroom itself should be run is covered in the article on running a hotel storeroom: layout, access, receipts and issues.

What must a quote comparison sheet show so the quotes are like for like?#

A comparison sheet must reduce every offer to the same unit, the same delivery point and the same payment term, then show the total cost of each option rather than the headline price. Pack sizes differ, and a cheaper case is often a smaller case, so normalize to price per kilogram, per liter or per piece before comparing anything.

Delivery terms change the price: delivered to the hotel door or collected, who pays freight, and whether a minimum order applies. Payment term is part of the price too. Thirty days and cash on delivery are different offers, and the sheet should show both so the accountant sees what was actually compared.

State the date each price holds until and what happens after it, especially where supplier prices move monthly, a situation covered in more depth in hotel purchasing when prices rise every month. Record what a supplier could not offer: a quote that misses the required-by date is not comparable, and a blank cell hides that instead of showing it. Finally, write one line on why the winner won. A comparison sheet with no reason in it is a price list with extra columns.

One row per supplier, no merged cells, no blank rows.

Who signs what, and at what spending level?#

Set approval levels in writing before the first purchase. The lower the value, the closer to the department the decision sits; the higher the value, the more people must see it before the order goes out.

A workable pattern has three tiers: the department head alone up to a small limit, the department head with purchasing or the financial controller up to a middle limit, and the general manager or owner above it. For example, and purely as an illustration, a hotel might set the first tier at the price of a few cases of supplies, the second at the cost of a month's linen, and the third above that. The figures must come from your own budget, not from an article.

The approver must see the quote comparison, not only the request. Approving a need without seeing the price is not an approval of the spend. Separate the three roles where the hotel is large enough: the person who chooses the supplier, the person who receives the goods, and the person who releases the payment. Where one person holds two of them, the owner or the accountant reviews the file monthly.

Give emergency purchases a defined route: verbal approval allowed, written up the same day, with the reason recorded. An exception that is never written down becomes the normal way of buying. Contracts and capital items follow a different route from supplies; a one-year cleaning contract is not a purchase request and should not be approved as one. Review the limits once a year, because a limit set when the hotel had half the rooms quietly stops working. Who owns which decision is set out in the article on hotel purchasing manager duties.

How do you keep these forms so an accountant can follow them?#

File the request, the comparison, the delivery note, the invoice and the payment under one reference number, in date order, so the file reads as a story from need to payment. Use one numbering series with no gaps. A cancelled request keeps its number and is marked cancelled, because a missing number is the first thing an auditor asks about.

Without software, a bound notebook plus a folder per month works: the notebook holds the request and the approval, the folder holds the quotes, the delivery note and the invoice, both indexed by the same number. In a spreadsheet, use one tab per form type with a shared reference column, and a rule that nothing is deleted, only marked void with a reason.

What the accountant needs is narrow and specific: the invoice matched to a request and a comparison, evidence that the goods arrived, and an approval signature dated before the invoice. Ask your accountant how long to keep the records and follow that answer; retention periods depend on your own situation and are not set by this article.

Test the file by handover: if the purchasing person left tomorrow, could a stranger find any purchase from last March in under five minutes? If not, the system is a personal habit, not a record.

What to do next#

Take the three field lists in this article, cut them down to what your hotel actually uses, and run one real purchase through all three forms this week, from the request to the filed invoice. The forms only work as a set: the request proves the need, the comparison proves the price, the requisition proves the movement, and the shared reference number is what turns three pieces of paper into a record an accountant can follow.