ThinkReservations has powerful reports to help with your accounting. These reports can be found in ThinkReservations by clicking on Reports > Accounting.
Summary
The Accounting Summary Report supports a journal entry into your accounting system by presenting a balanced entry of debits and credits for each account for the period specified. The amounts represent the net change for the period to be recorded in your accounting software.
Best Uses:
- To review daily, weekly, or monthly business.
- To create a journal entry in your accounting records to record the results of your business activity.
Accounts
The Accounts Report provides the transaction level detail by account, showing all debits and credits supporting the amounts on the Summary Report. For each account on this report, the difference between the total debits and total credits is equal to the amount reported in the Summary report. The report displays the date, description of the activity, a link to the Confirmation ID, and the amount.
Best Use:
- To research the activity in an account as reported in the Summary report.
Journal
The Journal Report displays the journal entry (debits and credits) for each transaction within the dates specified. A journal entry is the lowest level of detail of how an individual transaction (sale, payment, etc.) affects the account activity reported in the Accounts report. The report includes the date, description, a link to the Confirmation ID, account, debit, and credit.
Best Use:
- To view the accounting entry for a single transaction to understand the impact on the accounts as reported in the Accounts and Summary reports.
Night Audit (Requires the Night Audit feature to be enabled)
This report walks you through a structured audit process to ensure that your past activity recorded in ThinkReservations is accurate. Once completed, Night Audit will lock the dates that you audited in ThinkReservations, which will prevent changing or deleting a transaction that was audited or adding a transaction to an audited date. When the night audit has locked dates, they cannot be unlocked.
Best Uses:
- Increase the integrity of your financial reports when you run Night Audit in conjunction with preparing accounting entries in your accounting system. ThinkReservations will support in detail the balances and activity reported in your accounting system.
- Increase control over your records and your security. Prevent unauthorized predated transactions which may be used to cover nefarious behavior.
Guest Ledger (Requires the Night Audit feature to be enabled)
The Guest Ledger report presents the balances of guest reservations/folios that are in the Guest Ledger account as of a specified date. The Guest Ledger account represents the status of guest reservations/folios for in-house guests. It also includes balances outstanding on reservations/folios for guests who have departed. The date selected must have been subjected to the Night Audit. The report displays Guest Name, Confirmation ID, Folio Number, and Guest Ledger Amount.
Best Use:
- To reconcile the Guest Ledger detail in ThinkReservations to the Guest Ledger account balance in your accounting system.
Ledger Comparison (Requires the Night Audit feature to be enabled)
The Ledger Comparison report shows the balances in all four ledgers in ThinkReservations for the specified date compared to the immediately preceding date and the difference. The four ledgers are Advance Deposit Ledger, Gift Certificate Ledger, Guest Ledger, and Accounts Receivable Ledger. The date selected must have been subjected to the Night Audit. Note: The Accounts Receivable Ledger will display zero balances unless the Accounts feature is enabled.
Best Use:
- To understand the impact of the day's business on these four important ledgers at a high level.
A/R Aging Summary (Requires the Night Audit and Accounts features to be enabled)
The A/R Aging Summary report and the Accounts feature are designed specifically for properties that have set up customers on payment terms and that are billed for guest reservations sometime after the guest stays (for example, at the end of the month). Typically the customer may be a corporation or educational institution that frequently books rooms at the property. The feature provides the ability to assign specific reservations/bills to the customer's account, apply payments to the account, and report outstanding balances on the accounts. The A/R Aging Summary report displays the outstanding balance of each Account set up in the Accounts feature, broken down into increments of 0-29 days, 30-59 days, 60-89 days, 90-119 days, and 120+ days.
Best Use:
- To monitor the aging of customer Accounts Receivable.
- To reconcile Accounts Receivable detail in ThinkReservations to the balance of the Accounts Receivable account in your accounting system.
How to Make the Best Use of Your Accounting Reports
Our Accounting reports are designed to save you time when making entries into your accounting system for the revenue and related activity contained in ThinkReservations. The reports will also lead to increased integrity of the information in your accounting system as transactions are consistently categorized correctly and, if you run the night audit, audited dates are closed to change. You don't have to run the night audit to realize improvement and to save time. You do need to spend a little bit of time setting up your ThinkReservations account so it will work for you.
Please note that our Accounting and Revenue reports report revenue and related activity on the accrual basis of accounting. If you are using the cash basis of accounting for revenue, the Accounting reports will be of limited value for updating your accounting records. Please refer to our support document on Cash or Accrual Accounting to understand the differences. We highly recommend that you consult with your accounting professional before making any changes to your basis of recording revenue.
Where do you start?
- Think about what accounts you are using in your accounting system to record revenue from the rental of rooms and sales of non-room items, and which accounts you are recording the related sales and occupancy tax liabilities. Consult with your accounting professional if necessary.
- Navigate to Settings>>Chart of Accounts. This is where you will set up the same revenue and tax liability accounts in ThinkReservations so that your activity in ThinkReservations is categorized correctly for you. Once you set up the accounts, you will assign an account to each Room, Item, Tax Type, and custom Payment Type. Refer to our Chart of Accounts support documentation to guide you through this process.
- Run the Accounting Summary report for the past month. You should see that all activity has been categorized into accounts that will match your accounting system. If you see that you see an "Uncategorized" label, you have missed assigning an account to a room, item, tax type, or payment type. You can find out what you missed by running the Accounts report for the same time period and looking at the detail in the "Uncategorized" section.
- Once you have an Accounting Summary report with no "Uncategorized" activity, you are ready to prepare your journal entry in your accounting system to record the period's revenue and related transactions. We recommend that you consult with your accounting professional at this point to ensure your journal entries will have the desired effect on your accounting records.
Now that you are set up, here are a few other considerations:
- How often do you want to update your accounting records - daily, weekly, monthly, or other? This is completely your decision, based on your needs and the recommendation of your accounting professional. Whatever you decide, you can set the date range on the Summary report to match the period you want to record.
- Use the Accounts report to see what activity makes up the total you see in an account on the Summary report. There you will have links to the reservations which contain the activity if you need to go back to the transactions (eg: the sale of a coffee mug).
- To further increase the integrity between ThinkReservations and your accounting records, you may want to consider enabling Night Audit for your ThinkReservations account. By coordinating the period that you audit with the period you are recording in your books, you will be assured that the activity in ThinkReservations supporting your entry to the books will not change. When you enable Night Audit, you will also have access to the Guest Ledger report which provides support for your Guest Ledger account. If you are interested in adding Night Audit functionality to your ThinkReservations account, please contact support@thinkreservations.com. There is no additional charge for Night Audit.
Related:
► Chart of Accounts