After this pandemic, things are going to change for guests as well as for hotels. Now onwards, guests will expect cleanliness and most importantly - a touch-free stay. Download this guide and know how you can deliver contactless guest experience effortlessly.
eZee FrontDesk Hotel PMS perfectly suits the needs of various types of properties and used in hotels, motels, resorts, clubs, B & B's, small hotel franchisees, clubs, condos, hostels, apartments and more. eZee FrontDesk hotel software is a modern hotel solution which has a whole range of integrated modules to cover every aspect of property management. This hotel management software is globally accepted due to state-of-art technology and easy to use nature. Like all on-premise systems, eZee FrontDesk runs smoothly offline. The major modules of eZee hotel software constitute of easy check-in and check-out, 2 click guest reservation, group management, housekeeping, night audit, travel agent management, guest history, ledger accounts, billing with a lot more.Why search for expensive hotel ERP solutions? You can avail countless benefits and manage A to Z of hotel operations with our seamlessly integrated all-in-one hotel management system.
eZee's online booking engine is the best online reservation solution that takes hotel occupancy rates to new level, by allowing the hotel or any property to receive online bookings from hotel's website and various other sources.
eZee's online hotel channel manager aids hoteliers to efficiently manage property's room price and inventory distribution on various connected channels/ booking portals (OTAs & GDS), hotel's website and Facebook page.
Our best in industry restaurant point-of-sale simplifies the management of the restaurants, bars, cafes and other point of sale at the hotel. It even allows posting of restaurant related charges directly to the guest folio in real time.
eZee FrontDesk can be classified as best hotel management software (HMS), hotel reservation software, hotel front desk software, resort booking software, hotel accounting softwares, top hotel PMS software, resort software, property management system, hospitality management System, motel software, lodging software, hostel software and condo software.
In the yesteryears, when I was a reservations assistant for a hotel, our chief accountant followed a different kind of schedule. Every day around midnight, he went to the front office and then to the restaurant and return with a pile of KOTs, bills and cash. He then sat for hours to match them, note the discrepancies, resolve them, record the transactions on excel and then close the day.
When I moved to a bigger hotel, a different guy only did the graveyard shift. He would come into the front office around midnight, scrutinising all the check-ins, no-shows, payment receipts, cash drawers and file some reports afterwards. In due course, I learned that the process is called hotel night audit and the person performing the task was the (k)night auditor.
Auditors are skilled in detailing and analysing raw data; then populating that into efficient and effective reports. Now, what if the auditor does not show up at work? In major cases, not everyone can afford to have a full-time auditor; what then?
The importance of the night audit cannot be undermined. A night audit to a hotel is what sleep is to humans. Just like how we cannot function without sleep, a hotel cannot operate without performing a night audit daily. It helps in summarising the cash flow occurred at the hotel front desk in one business day.
Typically, a night auditor goes through the guest ledger, verifies check-ins and no-shows, updates pending check-ins, tallies payment received by cash and POS, settles unsettled folios, checks adjustments and taxes, flags monetary discrepancy if any, prepares relevant reports, closes cash drawers and updates housekeeping status for the next shift. In certain hotels, he or she is also responsible for post-mid-night check-ins.
The night audit helps with precise statistical data to generate reports like revenue, occupancy and guest spends. These reports assist management to further devise pricing, discounts, and revenue strategy.
The night audit, when correctly done; ensures operational effectiveness. As a hotelier, you can monitor your expenses, occupancy, booking vs no-show ratio, rooms under maintenance and room availability. Daily monitoring helps you eliminate redundant costs, thereby keeping financial health in check.
In a pre-technology era, it took numerous man-hours, calculations and recalculations, a scavenger hunt for missing KOTs and bills to be able to successfully complete the audit. For hotels which cannot afford to have a full-time night manager; PMS softwares are a blessing disguise, helping them streamline their process for effective operations.
A night audit is performed after the permissible check-in period is over in smaller hotels and just after midnight or before the next shift takes over in hotels that accept the guests 24X7. By late night or midnight, majority guests have already checked-in, the crowd moves away from the common areas, the housekeeping and other operational departments of the hotel are closed for the day; giving the auditor required time and peace to complete the process.
At several places, however; the managers prefer to perform the night audit early in the morning before the beginning of the shift. Having said that, performing a manual audit is not encouraged as it increases the chances of discrepancies.
Night auditors are specialised in both front office and accounting operations and hence demand higher salaries. For smaller and mid-sized hotels, hiring a full-time auditor is not feasible. Besides, a manual night audit is a taxing task that involves a person putting in numerous man-hours going through every entry in the ledger, every room service bill, every check-in and no-show details; without guaranteeing error-free reports.
New age technology is helping minimise human errors and efforts on hotel operations so that the hoteliers can focus on guest satisfaction. Be it making reservations, room allotment, receiving payments, updating city ledger accounts or the room rates and occupancy; everything is performed by and is recorded by the hotel software.
In a perfect world, your night auditor would show up every day at a precise time, perform the process without any error and leave the reports on your desk when you reach. But in reality, that does not happen. For any unavoidable circumstances, if he does not show up for a week, you would be sitting in a pool of papers and numerous excels trying to make sense of the data.
Technology comes to your rescue here by performing the night audit at the time you specified. This ensures all the folios are settled, no-shows marked, discrepancies flagged for action. You can even set a reminder for the night audit process.
A night audit is a conglomerate of different micro-processes. All these processes are as per the industry standards and remain pretty much the same for all the types of accommodations. In this section, however, we shall focus on the mandatory and key processes of the night audit.
Next step is to check if the front office has left instructions with regards to guest overstay, payments receivables, discounts if any. Once you have all the details, proceed about posting room charges and taxes to respective folios.
After the room charges are posted, proceed to post all the pending transactions which were recorded during the day. (i.e. parking fees, room service or mini-bar charges, laundry, telephone or internet charges, etc.). This process is called a trial balance.
Once all the charges are posted, the next step is to reconcile all the bookings for the day. It allows you to update the exact room position for the next business day. After reconciliation, you must prepare a detailed report about room availability, maintenance block, guest arrival and departure. This helps the housekeeping staff to go about their operations for the day.
The final process for a successful night audit in a hotel is to populate data gathered into relevant report formats for inter and intradepartmental use. These reports will help you strengthen your strategies around hotel operations.
Once you settle pending reservations, the system redirects you to the next page where you take care of unconfirmed bookings. If the guest does not confirm their arrival within a given timeline, you can release the reservation to make the room available for other guests.
This step determines the status of the room guests as to if they will stayover, have arrived or will checkout. Once you verify their status, you can proceed to either amend the stay or process their check-out.
You will be able to check a guest out only after all the folios are settled and balance due is zero. This step prevents the guest from leaving the hotel without payment. If the balance payment is zero, you will be able to check the guest out just with a click.
This was a comprehensive guide to ace the night audit process in a hotel. Using the right technology saves time, gives error-free operational and financial reports which boost the productivity of hotel staff.
I got many benefits from this software including time-saving, data keeping of our hotel. It has a lot of search options & so many features. Good reporting system for daily and yearly reports. Helps us to keep up with monthly taxes. Easy access and easy to understand. Can be learned by somebody new to a system very quickly All the features are excellent and the price is a great asset. Ezee Live support will always be the best and great team ever. They are available 24x7. I highly recommend them.
User activity and user roll is a key feature of Ezee. This software is easy to use. Great and really really really good tech will assist if have any problem with this system. The team seems to be able to adapt to many different situations. They are very good. It is very easy to use and they provide great 24-hour support. They fix any system issue by taking remote control. It has made things simpler and eased the extra burden mainly for the front office staff and enabling them to attend guest more efficiently.
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