Auditing
of bill statements in Hotel's Front office department.
The audit is a daily review of in house guest
transactions in the guest folio. The routine helps guarantee the accuracy,
reliability and thoroughness of front office accounting.
This audit is generally performed during
the late evening hours. The most
convenient time to perform the audit is during the late evening and early
morning hours, as most of the point of sales are closed during this time.
This helps the front office personal to work with minimal interruption.
The audit is simplified by Front office
accounting software's as there is a little chance of any error.
For example:
In the bill a night
auditor will check:
1. Reconcile all posting: The transactions of room rent, POS's,
discounts, telephone charges, etc in
guest folio have the correct amount or not.
2. Checking
the authenticity of transactions: The postings mentioned in the guest bill must
pertains to the same guest , for this there has to be the supporting voucher
enclosed.
3. Calculation
error- The auditor will check the calculations of total amount, discounts and
taxes applicable. Whereas, automated system has released the burden of
calculations from the auditor.
4. Check
on payment- Also he will audit the payment done by the guest and will
inform the front office to collect payment from the high balance guest.
Here are some of the major
functions of night audit
- Ensures
roll over from one business day to the next day
- Reconciles
all front office cash counters/accounts
- Verifies
posted entries to guest/non-guest accounts
- Resolves
room status and rate discrepancies
- Most
importantly, generates several MIS reports called night audit reports
How to do night audit in a
hotel?
Night
audit is a mandatory process for hotels of all sizes, categories and services.
The most convenient time to perform night audit is between the late evening and
early morning ? just after the business day closes. This is the time when most
revenue centers and POS outlets at a hotel are closed, making it the ideal
time to perform night audit. This helps the front office personnel, also called
night auditor to initiate and finish the night audit process with minimal
interruption.
For the night auditor, some of the steps in the night audit process are
?
Total outstanding charge posting
Hotel night auditor needs to ensure that all guest
transaction happened in a day are correctly captured, charged and posted to
guest accounts.
Reconcile room status
The night auditor must evaluate and analyze a particular
day?s occupancy report and the housekeeping room status report
to find out the correct occupancy status of a hotel.
Verify room rates
It is mandatory to compare guest registration records
with room reports to ensure rack rate and actual rates are the same.
Verify no-shows of the day
By verifying no-shows of the day in the front office
console, the night auditor ensures that the no-show bills are duly charged, and
the rooms are marked as ?available? for future dates.
Balance all departmental accounts
This process of balancing all revenue center accounts is
called ?Trial Balance? that helps in accurately posting the day?s room and tax
charges.
The night audit process can be done manually ? by pen and
paper, or by using a hotel property management system (Hotel PMS). While doing
the same by pen and paper is a time-consuming and tedious process that leads to
multiple errors, a Hotel PMS efficiently automates the whole process. Take
Hotelogix cloud-based Hotel PMS for example that helps you with an efficient
night audit so that you can establish 100% accuracy of the process while
cutting down heavily on manual intervention that may lead to errors.
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