Accounting Function
The night audit itself is an audit of the guest ledger. The guest ledger (or front office ledger or transient ledger) is the collection of all accounts receivable for currently registered guests. It can also be defined as the collection of all guest folios. A folio (billing receipt) is the account of an individual guest who is currently registered. The guest ledger is distinct from the city ledger, which is the collection of accounts receivable for non-registered guests (such as credit card companies). The purpose of the night auditor is, but is not limited to, ensuring the accuracy of all financial information, and gathering all needed paperwork to complete the audit. This will include pulling any or all checked-out guests' registration cards, and making sure all guests are checked-out in the system that should be checked-out.
One task of the night auditor is posting the day's room rate and room tax to each guest folio at the close of business (which usually occurs from midnight to 2 AM).
Second, the night auditor must ensure the accuracy of the charges to the guest folios, ensuring that the sum of revenues due to accounts receivable from the various departments (i.e. Food & Beverage, Rooms, gift shop) found on the department control sheets equals the sum of the charges made to the guest folios.
The folios for guests who are scheduled to leave the next morning may be printed and delivered to the guests' rooms.
Most hotels currently use computerized property management systems (PMS) to help perform the night audit. This has significantly reduced the amount of time required to perform the audit, as well as the arithmetic skill required of the auditor. An audit for a 1,000-room hotel can be completed in an hour with a PMS, whereas it would have taken an eight-hour shift using previous generation technology (the NCR 4200 mechanical system).
Another duty of night auditors is to run daily management reports off the PMS. These include occupancy reports, calculations of average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (Revpar).
Read more about this topic: Night Auditor
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