How to do Night Audit at a Hotel with a Hotelogix Cloud Hotel PMS

Front office audit, or more commonly, night audit in a hotel, is a significant part of a hotel’s accounting process. This process records, reviews, and collates all financial activities of the hotel that have taken place in one day and posts them on appropriate account heads. In this blog, we will explain how to do night audit at a hotel with a cloud-based hotel property management system like Hotelogix.

Let’s know more about the hotel night audit process

Hotels operate 24/7, with guest check-in and check-out happening throughout the day. With every check-out, hoteliers must track transactions done through cash or cards. At the end of the business day, hotels must record and reconcile guest folios and their transactions correctly. The night audit process aims to collate revenue against various revenue heads. Specifically, the night audit process evaluates and closes daily cash flow into and out of the hotel’s account. Also referred to as the end-of-day process, it ensures the rollover from one business day to the next day.

Here are a few critical functions of night audit

1. Ensures rollover from one business day to the next day.
2. Reconciles all front office cash counters/accounts.
3. Verifies posted entries to guest/non-guest accounts.
4. Resolves room status and rate discrepancies.
5. Most importantly, generates several MIS reports called night audit reports.

Steps in the hotel night audit process

Night audit is mandatory 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. It helps the front office personnel, also called the night auditor, initiate and finish the night audit process with minimal interruption.

Total outstanding charge posting

The hotel night auditor should ensure that all guest transactions that 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

Comparing guest registration records with room reports is mandatory to ensure rack rates 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

Balancing all revenue center accounts is called ‘Trial Balance,’ which helps accurately post 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. While doing it manually will be time-consuming and error-prone, a Hotel PMS automates the whole process. For example, the Hotelogix cloud allows you to run the night audit process with 100% accuracy efficiently with just one click.

Night audit process with Hotelogix cloud Hotel PMS

Hotelogix PMS users can perform night audits with just a few clicks. It works in 2 ways –

1. 1. Click the Frontdesk drop-down button on the top left corner and then click ‘Perform Night Audit.’ The system will finish the process in no time.
   2. If you have missed the night audit for the last business day, the Hotel PMS will prompt you to do so with a pop-up box. You need to click ‘Perform Night Audit,’ and the system will do it.

Moreover, with Hotelogix PMS in place, you can automate the whole process. You can run an auto night audit without logging into your Hotelogix account. Hotelogix PMS will do the automatic check-in and no-shows to the reservations based on the setup in the Admin Console.

Now let’s look at some critical reports known as Night Audit Reports.

The Hotelogix PMS generates insightful reports on hotel business via the night audit process. Known as Night Audit Reports, they help you review your hotel’s operational effectiveness so that you can keep costs under control to make profits.

Night audit room details report

This report captures the total number of rooms and their total guests under each category, such as occupied rooms, available rooms, day-use rooms, etc., for the day. It helps you to understand a particular day’s occupied rooms, available rooms, check-ins, check-outs, no-shows, cancellations, complimentary rooms, day-use rooms, etc.

To access this report: Go to Report Console >> Night Audit Reports >> Night Audit Room Details

Night audit counter report

This report captures the revenue details of each counter for the day. It also shows each counter with further information on revenue received and withdrawn by the counter for the selected day. By selecting the ‘View Counter Details’ checkbox, you can track all the changes occurring in each counter before the night audit.

To access this report: Go to Report Console >> Night Audit Reports >> Night Audit Counter Report

Night audit revenue report

This report captures income generated from rooms and all other POS outlets for the day. It also indicates booking revenue generated via walk-ins, corporates, travel agents, websites, etc. The report also shows room inclusion details (if available) along with the source of revenue collected.

To access this report: Go to Report Console >> Night Audit Reports >> Night Audit Revenue Report

Night audit tax report

This report shows the total amount collected from room and POS taxes for the day.

To access this report: Go to Report Console >>Night Audit Reports >> Night Audit Tax Report

MTD & YTD report

These two essential hotel reports for management show the month-wise and year-wise data for a selected day for which the night audit has been performed. They help you understand the percentage of rooms occupied, the percentage of rooms occupied minus complementary and house use, the average daily rate, and the total revenue of your hotel, including POS, other charges, etc.

To access this report: Go to Report Console >> Night Audit Reports >> MTD & YTD Report

Rooms on book report

This report helps you with a snapshot of room revenue, room nights, and ARR for a specific search date. It also provides you with information on rooms per day, occupancy percentage for the past ten days, and its forecast for the next 30 days.

To view this report, go to Report Console >> Night Audit Reports >> Rooms On Book Report

Hotel trial balance report

It offers insights into your hotel’s financial status for a specific date. It includes all transactions posted and a breakdown of business within each of the three ledgers – guest, accounts receivable, and deposits.

You can generate this report by following this step – go to Report Console >> Night Audit Reports >> Hotel Trial Balance Report

When performed with an intelligent Hotel PMS like Hotelogix, the night audit process offers massive insights into your hotel’s operational and financial aspects. It would help if you considered leveraging a cloud-based hotel property management system to perform daily night audits at your hotel to reduce your workload while ensuring the accuracy of the process critical to your day-to-day operations.