Why It Is Important:

Guarantee Accuracy In Your Accounts by Ensuring All Transactions are Recorded and Reconciled By Performing the Night Audit

The Night Audit process is necessary for any hotel or guest lodging that runs a 24/7 business environment. Guest’s check-in and check-out at all hours and pay their bills through various means of settlements. At the end of the day, the hotel needs to ensure that guest folios and their transactions are recorded and reconciled accurately.

Generally, hotel night audits are performed after midnight, when most POS outlets are closed. Closing the day’s financial activities validates the work of the previous day’s shift and provides information for the next day’s shift. This routine helps guarantee the accuracy and reliability of your accounting.

In your Frontdesk Anywhere account, you won’t be forced to perform the Night Audit every single day, but logically you cannot proceed with the auditing for forthcoming days unless you have finished auditing for your previous days. You only need to perform an audit for one day at a time and only once during each day.

Fortunately, for those unfortunate enough to be stuck on the graveyard shift, Frontdesk Anywhere makes the required formalities of Night Auditors a breeze, cutting down on tedious manual work and giving a clear picture on the day’s transactions.

How It Works:

Performing the Night Audit

In your Frontdesk Anywhere account navigate to the Night Audit tab. From there you will find any guest folios that need attention are automatically generated for Unresolved Arrivals and Unresolved Departures. Underneath the Arrivals and Departures sections will be the guest's folio number (hyperlinked for ease of access), their status (reserved, cancelled etc), their date of arrival/departure, full name, and balance owed (if any). From this list of Unresolved Arrivals and Unresolved Departures, the staff member running the Night Audit must ensure the accuracy of the charges to the guest folios, checking the sum of revenues due from various departments POS outlets and guest rooms. All reservation discrepancies should be checked and acted on where necessary. For example, the current days pending check-outs get listed for extension of stay, or for checking out.

After this, the Night Auditor simply clicks ‘Run Night Audit For Next Date’. Once the date rollover occurs, the active working day changes to the next day while the current day’s account is locked. Once the day is locked, checkins, checkouts, cancellations and room changes can no longer be processed. This ensures the revenue in your reporting will stay consistent. The Night Audit process ends with the reports for the day that summarize the transactions and the resulting collections for the day. The folios for guests who are scheduled to depart the next morning may be printed and delivered to the guests' rooms.

For smaller hotels or inns that may not have staff working the graveyard shift, the Night Audit can be set to run automatically at a time of their choosing.

If you need any assistance on using the Night Audit get in touch via our free support line at 415-800-5940 Ext 3 or contact support@frontdeskanywhere.com