What Is Night Auditing? Role and Responsibilities

Night auditing is a key process in hospitality, ensuring daily financial integrity and operational readiness. It reconciles all previous day’s financial transactions, preparing systems for new business and maintaining accurate records.

Understanding Night Auditing

Night auditing is a daily reconciliation process verifying financial transaction accuracy. Its primary objective is balancing guest accounts and departmental revenues, ensuring all charges and payments are correctly posted. This daily audit prepares the hotel’s property management system (PMS) for the upcoming business day, allowing for accurate financial reporting and operational continuity.

Accurate completion of the night audit is crucial for financial reporting, directly impacting daily revenue reports. Discrepancies must be resolved promptly to prevent cumulative errors affecting financial statements. This review helps safeguard hotel assets and provides reliable data for management decisions.

Core Duties of a Night Auditor

A night auditor performs diverse responsibilities, combining accounting, front desk, and security functions. They balance departmental accounts like food, beverage, and room charges against generated revenue. This ensures transactions are accurately reflected in financial records.

Night auditors also generate end-of-day reports summarizing daily financial activities and hotel performance. These reports include daily revenue, cashier reconciliation, and occupancy statistics. They manage late guest arrivals and departures, processing overnight check-ins and check-outs.

Beyond financial tasks, night auditors oversee property security, responding to guest inquiries and emergencies. They handle minor guest issues, secure common areas, and prepare the front desk for the morning shift. This role requires attention to detail and the ability to manage various operational aspects simultaneously.

The Night Audit Workflow

The night audit workflow follows a structured sequence to process daily transactions and prepare the system for the next day. The process begins with collecting and verifying revenue-generating transactions from departments, including restaurant sales, bar tabs, and spa services. These charges are then posted to guest accounts within the property management system.

After posting charges, the night auditor runs preliminary reports to identify discrepancies between departmental totals and amounts posted to guest folios. Identified imbalances, such as unposted charges or incorrect payments, are investigated and corrected. This step is crucial for maintaining financial accuracy and preventing errors from rolling over.

Once accounts are balanced and discrepancies resolved, the night auditor processes final end-of-day reports, which include daily gross revenue, room occupancy, and cash receipts. The final step involves “rolling over” the property management system to the new business day. This action closes the previous day’s accounting period and opens the new one, allowing for new transactions to be recorded accurately.