Night audit checklist for a small hotel

Open the in-house folio list and check every folio for its room charge and its tax line before you look at anything else. Then hunt for the usual misses. Restaurant bills signed to room, minibar items, laundry, late checkout and airport transfers all travel on paper that skips the front desk.

Walk to the restaurant and the bar and ask for signed order ticket copies and bar chits that never reached the front desk. A slip left in a drawer is revenue the audit cannot see, and by morning nobody remembers whose table it came from.

Post each one now under the right department code, so the day’s revenue report shows food, beverage and spa sales on the day they happened. After checkout, the charge becomes an email chase. Post it before the date rolls.

List every reservation due today that has not arrived, read the booking notes against the cancellation terms, and let the duty manager decide before any room is released. Flexible rate guests may just be late.

True no-shows get charged as the rate plan says, the booking is marked no-show, and the reason goes in the notes so the morning shift skips a repeat call.

Early departures need the same care. A guest who left a night early still owes what the rate terms say, and the room must not stay marked occupied in the system.

The system and the corridor often disagree. When they differ, the corridor wins. One room shows vacant clean while housekeeping has it out of order, and another shows occupied though the guest checked out at noon.

Ask housekeeping for the evening status sheet with its DND flags and skipper list, then compare it with the front desk screen room by room. Fix each mismatch, then write your initials and the time beside every correction so the morning manager can see who changed what.

Look at tomorrow’s arrivals too. Block any room with a leaking tap, a dead air conditioner or a broken lock, since a sold room nobody can use costs a walk and a refund. Then a bad review follows.

Count the cash drawer against posted receipts, then do the same for each card terminal batch and every QR settlement, and settle the terminal before the audit closes.

Differences get written down, never hidden. Record the amount, the shift and the likely cause, because a pattern across several nights tells you more than one bad count. A small shortage that repeats points to a habit, such as giving change from the wrong drawer or skipping the float count at shift handover. Bank transfers and payment links need a reference, and each one is matched to a folio or an advance payment record before you sign off. Unmatched deposits go to the accountant.

Save the daily report first. It should show occupancy, arrivals, departures, revenue by department, payments by mode and outstanding balances, filed as a PDF with the date in the file name.

Roll the business date only after every check passes, because once the date moves, a correction means reversing entries in two different days. Check twice, roll once.

Leave a handover note listing open mismatches, guests with disputes and rooms on hold, so the morning manager can act on it within five minutes of arriving.