Night-By-Night (NbN) Bed Nights

Bed Nights is a measure which calculates the total number of nights a client stayed in a shelter during a designated period. See the Bed Nights by Project Report article for instructions on how to run the report. Bed nights, or nights of stay, is one of the outcome measures frequently used by projects to monitor the use of their beds.

Night-by-Night Emergency Shelters (ES-NbN)

Bed Nights for NbN counts the individual nights of stay (Shelter Stays) that have been recorded which fall on or between the client's project start and project exit dates, then filters out any nights that took place outside the report period. If a project start date has not been recorded, the client will be excluded from the report entirely.

For NbN projects, the number of bed nights does not necessarily correspond directly to the number of days between project enrollment and project exit, since a client may come and go from the NbN project during that time.

Example

A client checks in to the NbN shelter for the first time on February 2. They stay for 4 nights in a row and check out of the shelter on the morning of February 6. Their project enrollment Start Date is February 2.

Over the next few months, the client stays several more times. They stay for 7 more nights in February, 6 nights in March, and finally for 3 nights in April. The client last left the shelter on the morning of April 7. April 7 is their project Exit Date.

The client was enrolled in the project from February 2 - April 7. This period is 64 days. However, the client only stayed in the shelter for 20 nights during that period. Therefore, their Bed Nights during that period will be 20 nights.

Reports

There are two NbN reports which can help with ensuring bed nights are being recorded and measured correctly.

First is the Night-by-Night (NbN) Shelter Clients without Entries Report. This report helps users identify clients who: have stayed at Night-by-Night shelters and need to have an Entry/Exit created; or have an Entry/Exit recorded in a Night-by-Night shelter and need to have a Shelter Stay recorded or have their Entry/Exit deleted.

Next is the Night-by-Night (NbN) Shelter Clients with Exit Errors Report. This report helps users identify clients who need to be exited from a Night-by-Night (NBN) shelter and to confirm that those who have been exited were done so correctly.