Night auditor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A night auditor is a hotel employee who typically handles both the duties of the front desk agent and some of the duties of the accounting department. This is necessitated by the fact that most fiscal days close at or around midnight, and the normal workday of the employees in the accounting department does not extend to cover this time of day.
In larger hotels, night auditors may work alongside other nighttime employees, such as security officers, telephone attendants, room service attendants, and bellhops. In smaller hotels and motels, the night auditor may work alone, and may even only be "on-call", meaning that once he or she completes running the daily reports, the auditor retires to an area away from the desk while remaining available to attend to unexpected requests from guests.
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[edit] Qualifications
In the United States, applicants to the position of night auditor are usually required to be high school graduates who are able to communicate effectively in English. Formal training in accounting or bookkeeping is not necessary. The successful night audit candidate will be detail-oriented, have a good grasp of basic arithmetic, and have a customer service focus.
[edit] Compensation
In the United States, night auditors are usually hourly employees. The salary ranges from $9 to $20 per hour. A night auditor typically makes $0.50 more per hour than a front desk agent with similar experience. This pay differential is due to the shift worked (11PM-7AM) and the additional responsibilities if there is no manager on site during the shift.
[edit] Accounting Function
The night audit itself is an audit of the guest ledger. The guest ledger (or front office ledger or transient ledger) is the collection of all accounts receivable for currently registered guests. It can also be defined as the collection of all guest folios. A folio is the account of an inidiviual guest who is currently registered. The guest ledger is distinct from the city ledger, which a the collection of accounts receivable for non-registered guests (such as credit card companies).
One task of the night auditor is posting the day's room rate and room tax to each guest folio at the close of business (which usually occurs from midnight to 2AM).
Second, the night auditor must ensure the accuracy of the charges to the guest folios. This is done by ensuring that the sum of revenues due to accounts receivable from the various departments (ie. Food & Beverage, Rooms, gift shop) found on the department control sheets equals the sum of the charges made to the guest folios.
The closing balance of the guest folios is calculated using the night audit formula:
TODAY'S CLOSING GUEST LEDGER BALANCE = TODAY'S OPENING GUEST LEDGER BALANCE + TODAY'S CHARGES (ie. room rates, Food & Beverage, etc.) - TODAY'S CREDITS (ie. payments from guests in cash, or transfers to the city ledger)
The folios for guests who are scheduled to leave the next morning may be printed and delivered to the guests' rooms.
Most hotels currently use computerized property management systems (PMS) to help perform the night audit. This has significantly reduced the amount of time required to perform the audit, as well as the arithmetic skill required of the auditor. An audit for a 1,000 room hotel can be completed in an hour with a PMS, whereas it would have taken an eight hour shift using previous generation of technology (the NCR 4200 mechanical system).
Another duty of night auditors is to run daily management reports off of the PMS. These include occupancy reports and calculations of average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (Revpar).
[edit] Front Desk Function
In addition to the accounting function, night auditors may also be required to perform the typical front desk functions during the graveyard shift. These functions include check-in, check-out, reservations, responding to guest complaints, coordinating housekeeping requests, and handling any emergencies that may arise.
Due to the nighttime shift, the clientele that the night auditor must deal with may be different than that of a typical front desk agent. At some properties, night auditors are known for frequent interactions with prostitutes, who tend to visit hotels at late hours for rendezvous with guests and the graveyard shift staff. [1]
