INE Monthly Survey vs EazyAL: The Same Report, Two Very Different Experiences

If you run an Alojamento Local or hotel in Portugal, you know the drill: by the 10th of every month, INE expects your IPHH survey (Inquérito à Permanência de Hóspedes na Hotelaria e Outros Alojamentos) — guest counts, overnight stays broken down by country, and revenue figures. It's mandatory, and skipping it can mean fines.

The question isn't whether you file. It's how much of your life filing takes. We went through the official INE WebInq form, tab by tab, and compared it with the same report done through EazyAL. Here's what actually changes for you.

Getting oriented: zero context vs instant answers

Open the INE form and you're dropped into four tabs (Início, Quadro 1, Quadro 2, Notas) with no indication of what's done, what's missing, or when it's due. Every field carries an internal database code in orange — BC105, BC110, V1, VPP — identifiers that mean something to INE's backend and nothing to you. Read-only totals and editable fields both render as grey boxes, so you can't even tell where you're allowed to type.

EazyAL IPHH opens with a status dashboard that answers the four questions the INE form never does: which month you're filing (Reporte de Jun 2026), the deadline with a live countdown ("até 10 Jul — faltam 5 dias"), whether you're in test or real submission mode, and a "Pronto" badge when everything checks out. Green means done, orange means pending. You know where you stand in two seconds.

Outcome for you: no re-reading, no guessing, no opening the form three times just to check if you already submitted.

The country table: the biggest time sink, eliminated

Quadro 1 is where INE's form hurts most. You type guest and overnight numbers country by country, adding each nationality through a tiny magnifying-glass icon and a separate "Adicionar" button, working from two-letter codes. Delete checkboxes sit next to each row with no confirmation — one misclick and a row of data silently disappears. For a property with guests from 10–15 countries, this alone is 20–40 minutes of manual tallying and typing, every month, from your own booking records.

EazyAL Software builds that entire table for you. Because it already holds your booking and guest data (the same data it uses for your SIBA bulletins), the country breakdown is imported automatically and shown collapsed under "Dados de hóspedes importados" — there to inspect if you want, invisible if you don't.

Outcome for you: the most tedious part of the survey goes from half an hour of counting to zero minutes. And the numbers come from actual records, not from whatever you managed to tally by hand.

Submitting: a missing button vs five labeled steps

Here's the most alarming thing we found in the official form: the banner says "finished filling in? Choose the 'Responder' option to submit" — and there is no visible Responder button on the screen. Only "Alterar resposta" and "Sair". The single most important action in the whole workflow is hidden or broken.

EazyAL Alojamento Software replaces that with an explicit, ordered action list: save draft, check for errors, preview the report, download the file, submit to INE — with a plain-language sentence telling you which order to follow. It also shows its math ("Receita total = Alojamento + Restauração") and flags mismatches before submission, instead of letting INE bounce your response after the fact.

Outcome for you: no failed submissions discovered days later, no wondering whether clicking "Sair" saved anything.

Help, language, and history

The INE form's guidance lives in the Notas tab — a wall of dense legal-statistical Portuguese you have to cross-reference paragraph by paragraph against the questions. There's no English version anywhere, which is a real problem given how many AL operators in Portugal are foreign. And there's no record of past submissions.

EazyAL puts explanations next to the fields they concern, includes a working English/Portuguese switcher in the top bar, and keeps a Histórico tab with every draft, validation, and submission attempt — your audit trail if INE ever questions a filing.

The bottom line

The INE survey isn't optional — but spending an hour on it every month is. EazyAL already handles your SIBA guest bulletins and tourist tax; the INE monthly report comes from the same data, checked and formatted, ready to submit before the 10th.

Try EazyAL free and turn next month's INE deadline into a two-minute task.