It depends how the hotel posts the stays / nights to IHG Rewards. I know of an IC where I booked paid nights followed by points followed by free weekend night (AMB rate).

I gave them all my reservation numbers upfront and also did one checkout at the end getting one folio. It posted as follows:

1) Paid nights as qualifying stay of x-nights with points as should be
2) Reward nights as non-qualifying stay of x-nights with no points as should be
3) Paid nights as qualifying stay of x-nights with points as should be

So I got 3 stays posted and not 1 even though I would have been fine with 1 stay. If there is a mix of paid and reward nights it can be a hit and miss. If they post it as one stay it may go into the system as non-qualifying overall which also isn't right, so the IHG Rewards posting responsible person at the property told me that they split it up to not have retro claim issues later for the paid nights. YMMV.