# Best Practices

## Recommended setup

<table data-card-size="large" data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Join Reservations with Guests and Transactions</strong></td><td>Reservations alone only give you booking metadata. Join on Guest ID to add contact details, and on Reservation ID to add payment data — this gives you the complete picture for any guest stay analysis.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Use one API key per property</strong></td><td>If you manage multiple properties, generate a dedicated API key for each one in Cloudbeds. Then use the Append transformation in Coupler.io to merge data across properties into a single destination table.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Start with Reservations as your anchor entity</strong></td><td>Reservations link to almost every other entity (guests, rooms, transactions, packages). Build your data model around this entity and join others to it rather than treating each entity as standalone.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Data refresh and scheduling

<table data-card-size="large" data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Refresh Transactions and Reservations more frequently</strong></td><td>These change throughout the day as payments are processed and bookings are updated. Rooms and Hotels data changes rarely — you can refresh those less often to stay within Cloudbeds API rate limits.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Avoid running multiple property data flows at the same time</strong></td><td>If you're pulling from several properties using separate API keys, stagger your scheduled runs by at least a few minutes to avoid hitting Cloudbeds' rate limits across simultaneous requests.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Performance optimization

<table data-card-size="large" data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Use Aggregate for revenue summaries</strong></td><td>Instead of sending raw transaction rows to a spreadsheet and summing there, use Coupler.io's Aggregate transformation to pre-summarize revenue by date, room type, or booking source before it reaches the destination.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Pull static entities separately</strong></td><td>Hotels, Rooms, and Packages change infrequently. Set these up as separate data flows with low refresh rates so they don't count against your API quota when refreshing high-frequency data like Reservations.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## Common pitfalls

{% hint style="danger" %}
Don't mix properties in a single API key. Cloudbeds API keys are property-scoped — using one key for multiple properties won't return combined data; it will only return data for the property the key belongs to. Use Append to combine, not a shared key.
{% endhint %}

{% columns %}
{% column %}
**Do**

* Filter Transactions by type (charge, payment, refund) when calculating net revenue
* Account for the property's local time zone when working with date fields
* Use reservation status as a filter to exclude cancelled bookings from revenue reports
  {% endcolumn %}

{% column %}
**Don't**

* Assume raw Transaction totals match Cloudbeds built-in reports without checking filter logic
* Run all entities on the same high-frequency schedule — prioritize by how often data actually changes
* Forget to update the API key in Coupler.io if you regenerate it in Cloudbeds
  {% endcolumn %}
  {% endcolumns %}