Benefits of Automating the Night Audit
Key Considerations for Manual Night Audits
Automating the Night Audit
We strongly recommend to automate the night audit.
Why?
The night audit performs the following actions:
- Post charges for the past business day, for all reservation folios where the reservation status is either in-house or confirmed.
- Change reservation status to no-show for all reservations where the guest was due to arrive before today and is still not in-house.
That means that financial transactions regarding revenues and consumption of prepayments are recorded automatically.
Depending on the settings for handling no-shows, payments for no-show fees might be triggered as well.
Benefits of Automating the Night Audit
- Consistency and Accuracy: Automation ensures that the night audit is performed consistently at the same time each day, reducing the risk of human error and maintaining accurate financial records.
- Time Efficiency: Automating the night audit saves time and allows hotel staff to focus on other critical tasks, reducing the need for overnight staff to perform manual audits.
- Improved Guest Experience: Automated processes ensure that guest folios are up-to-date, leading to more accurate billing and a smoother check-out experience.
- Minimizing Revenue Loss: Automation helps prevent revenue loss by ensuring that no-show fees are correctly processed and that reservations are accurately marked as no-show or canceled, reducing the chance of missed charges or incorrect billing.
Apaleo's night audit functionality is available under Settings => Automation. The night audit can be easily configured by setting the time when the night audit should be done and voilá!
Key Considerations for Manual Night Audits
- Potential Risks: Manual night audits are more susceptible to human error, such as forgetting to mark a reservation as a no-show, which could lead to inaccurate financial records.
- Flexibility: While automation is recommended, manual night audits may offer more flexibility in handling exceptions or unusual cases that require special attention.
- Fallback for Automation Failures: It's important to have a manual process in place as a fallback in case the automated night audit fails or encounters issues. Staff should be trained on how to perform the audit manually if needed.
In case you decide to manually run your night audit, you will find it on the hotel property's dashboard:
Note:
In cases where the above no-show automation is not used, properties might end up having reservations that were missed to mark as no-show.
Or, for the reservations that are marked as a no-show or canceled the next morning after the night audit, the properties might consider manually refunding the previously posted charges.