Hotel cutoff date calculator
Every deadline on a room block hangs off one date: the first night. Enter it and get the cutoff, your own names deadline, the review dates and the attrition measurement, with a calendar file to download. Free, no email.
Your event
4 nights.
Your contract
Defaults are the common ones. Read the real numbers off the signed contract — a cutoff you misremember by a week is a cutoff you miss.
Your deadlines
Every date that hangs off the first night, earliest first.
Start chasing names
NamesThursday, October 29, 202642 days out
Reconcile pickup against the block night by night, then send a dated reminder to every department lead who still owes names, with your own deadline spelled out — not the hotel’s.
Your own names deadline
NamesTuesday, November 3, 202637 days out
The date you tell your leads. It sits ahead of the hotel’s so you have room to chase stragglers, confirm the rooms you are holding unnamed, and clean the file up before it goes.
Hotel cutoff — rooming list due
Hotel deadlineTuesday, November 10, 202630 days out
Submit a clean, final rooming list before this date, not on it. After it, every room you have not named releases to the hotel’s general inventory and may cost more or be gone. Releasing rooms here does not, by itself, settle your attrition commitment.
Attrition measured — at arrival
MoneyThursday, December 10, 2026on the day
Your contract counts the room nights actually consumed, so late bookings still count toward the floor. The window between the cutoff and arrival is the last one where a shortfall is still fixable.
First night of the block
EventThursday, December 10, 2026the first night
Guests arrive. Everything above had to happen before this.
Check-out
EventMonday, December 14, 20264 nights later
Reconcile the master account against your own records before you settle it, and claim any comp room nights the block earned.
The file is built in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The cutoff and any review dates are contract terms — these defaults are common, not standard, and only your signed contract is authoritative. The names deadlines are yours to set. Attrition is usually assessed on what the block actually performed, at or after arrival, but some contracts count at the cutoff.
One event, or forty
Doing this once is arithmetic. Doing it for every hotel on every event is the job.
Blocks reads the cutoff, the attrition date and the deposit schedule straight off each signed contract rather than asking you to type them, and tracks them per block — so a six-hotel event has six sets of dates and one list. Deadlines surface on your Today page and in your inbox before anything slips, with the shortfall next to them while there is still time to release rooms or push names in.
The same deadlines subscribe to your own calendar. Subscribe from Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, or download the .ics — Google refreshes within about fifteen minutes, Outlook can take a day.
Where these offsets come from
Every default is a number the industry actually uses, not a round one we picked. None of them override your contract.
- Cutoff, 30 days before arrival
- The common landing point. Hotels will often agree to 21 to 30 days out; in peak season, or for a citywide where your unused rooms resell easily, you may see 45. Peak nights carry earlier, stricter cutoffs than the shoulder nights flanking them, so check whether yours is one date or several.
- Start chasing names, 42 days before arrival
- Six weeks. If the cutoff is 30 days out and your department leads take two weeks to return names, the chase has to start well before your own deadline — otherwise the deadline arrives and the names have not.
- Your own names deadline, a week before the cutoff
- A week or two ahead, so you have room to chase stragglers, confirm the rooms you are deliberately holding unnamed, and clean the file up. Submit before the date, not on it.
- Review dates at 120, 90 and 60 days
- Off by default, because a rolling release schedule is negotiated rather than standard. Where you have one, each review date is a chance to hand back rooms above your current pickup, penalty-free, and shrink the block you are measured against. It is one of the most useful terms to negotiate and one of the most overlooked.
- Attrition, measured at arrival
- Attrition is typically assessed on the room nights actually consumed, at or after arrival — not at the cutoff. That matters, because a guest who books after the cutoff still counts toward your floor. Some contracts do tie part of the commitment to the cutoff, which is why the calculator asks rather than assuming.
- Deposit, no default at all
- Deposit schedules are whatever the contract says, so this one is off until you turn it on and the number is yours. Late payment usually carries its own penalty, kept separate from everything else on the list.
Cutoff dates, answered
When the deadline falls, what happens after it, and why it is not your attrition date.
When is the hotel cutoff date for a room block?
What happens after the cutoff date passes?
How far before the cutoff should you set your own deadline?
Is the cutoff date the same as the attrition deadline?
Does the calendar file work with Google Calendar and Outlook?
Have more questions? Check our glossary of terms or get in touch.
Go deeper
How Blocks handles the jobs this work depends on — plus the terms and guides behind them.
Deadline tracking
Blocks reads the cutoff dates, attrition tiers, and rooming-list due dates out of every signed contract, shows what needs action next, and pushes each deadline to your calendar.
Learn more →Rooming lists
Department leads submit their guests in their own portal, Blocks assembles a single hotel-ready rooming list — up to five guests to a room, loyalty numbers included — and keeps it current when a room moves hotels or a roommate changes.
Learn more →Attrition tracking
Blocks tracks contracted and picked-up room nights by date and hotel, calculates the shortfall against your contract terms, and shows it while there is still time to act.
Learn more →Key terms
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