ThinkReservations offers night audit functionality as a no-charge add-on for those properties that want increased data integrity between their accounting system and ThinkReservations. Night audit will be most effective for properties that have experience with night audit, or those that have developed disciplined processes within their organization to perform timely and accurate updates to reservations and other revenue-generating activities. If you are interested in adding night audit, please contact support.
The night audit process finalizes the results of a day's business (or other selected time period). What this means for you:
- Transactions dated up to the last date of night audit can no longer be edited or deleted.
- You can add an item, room night, or payment to an existing reservation or bill, but the transaction must be dated after the last night audit.
- You can coordinate your night audit date with the update of your accounting records, adding integrity between ThinkReservations and your accounting system.
For the date(s) selected, Night Audit takes you through the steps to help you review or "audit" reservations to ensure they are correct before locking those dates.
Here are the steps:
Step 1 reports reservations that should have checked out on the date(s) selected. Verify that these guests have departed. If they have not, you want to extend their stay in ThinkReservations before running night audit.
Step 2 displays any reservations that departed on the date(s) selected and have a balance owing to you or the guest. It may be appropriate for a reservation to show a balance due if it is to be settled in the future. If the balance due is incorrect, take the proper steps to rectify it before running night audit.
Step 3 displays payments taken for the date(s) selected. This step provides you the opportunity to reconcile credit card payments to your payment processor batch reports and compare your other payment types to your cash/check receipt records before running a night audit.
Step 4 provides a link to the Accounting Summary to review before finalizing the night audit. Review the report for reasonableness and particularly for any Uncategorized Revenue, Uncategorized Payments, or Uncategorized Taxes. Before finalizing the night audit, assign an account from the Chart of Accounts to the item, payment type, or tax type that caused the uncategorized entry.
Step 5 - clicking on the "Finalize Audit" button will execute the Night Audit for the date(s) selected, locking those dates to new transactions and to changes to existing transactions.
Getting Ready for your first Night Audit
Before running your first night audit in ThinkReservations, we will assist you in reviewing and preparing your transaction history for the night audit. Together we will ensure your data is complete and any unpaid balances on reservations and bills represent a true collectible balance. Our Tech Team will perform data integrity tests on your stored history to ensure that all necessary data elements are present and in the correct format. ThinkReservations will run your initial night audit to finalize your history up to a date you specify.
Step 1
Reviewing history
Review your most recent history by looking at each of the following reports:
Canceled Reservations report
Reservations by Payment Status report
Cancelled Point of Sales report
Point of Sales by Payment Status report.
We recommend that you review the reports for these date ranges:
The current calendar year to date
The previous calendar year, if you haven't closed your accounting records in the prior year.
Any reservations and bills with outstanding balances should be examined to determine if the balance is accurate and legitimate. If the balance is in error, take the necessary steps to correct the error. Common problems include:
Canceled reservations with a retained deposit, but no cancellation fee added to the bill.
Refunds and payments were not entered into ThinkReservations.
Charges for items sold were not added to the reservation or bill.
A refund is due to a customer.
A refund is made to a customer, but a reservation or bill is not canceled.
After you complete this step, balances owing on reservations and point of sale bills should represent only valid, outstanding balances that will be settled at a future date.
Step 2
Check or set up Accounts
Ensure that each of your Items, payment types, and tax types are assigned an account. You may need to create a new account in the Chart of Accounts.
Navigate to Settings > Items and look under the column "Revenue Account." Each item should have a revenue account assigned to it, except Gift Certificates, which is system coded to Gift Certificate Liability.
Navigate to Settings > Payment Types and look under the column "Account." Each payment type should have an account assigned to it.
Navigate to Settings > Taxes and look under the column "Account." Each tax type should have an account assigned to it.
For each item, payment type, and tax type, click on it to assign an account.
Next, create new accounts as necessary:
Click Chart of Accounts under "Business Configuration" in Settings.
All of your existing accounts are listed.
Click the New button at the top right.
Enter a name for the new account. You likely will want to create revenue accounts with names that match existing revenue accounts in your accounting software.
Type of account:
Revenue Account - use for Items
Asset Account - use for Payment Types (name the asset account the same as the payment type)
Liability Account - use for Tax Types
Repeat the process for each account you wish to create.
The step-by-step instructions for completing a night audit can be found in our support article "Night Audit - Step-by-Step Instructions".
Please reach out to support if you have any questions!