Hotel room revenue: reconcile stays, deposits, and the night audit

A hotel's night audit connects the stay record with the charges that belong to the business day. It does more than total card receipts. A guest can pay before arrival, stay across month-end, move rooms, or leave with a company account still unpaid. Reconcile the stay, charge, deposit, and settlement records separately before accepting the day's revenue.

Oracle's OPERA Cloud documentation describes end-of-day processing as a sequence that advances the business date, posts room and package charges, and balances financial ledgers. The exact sequence depends on the property's configuration. Keep the configured business-day boundary with the accounting procedure so reports from different systems cover the same period.

Compare expected arrivals and departures with actual check-ins, extensions, no-shows, and room moves. Identify occupied rooms without a room charge, duplicate charges after a move, and complimentary or house-use rooms. A correct occupancy total can still contain the wrong rate or billing destination for individual stays.

Retain the approved rate, package details, tax setup, and any authorized adjustment on the folio. Separate room revenue from meals, parking, other services, and collected taxes. A package sold for one price needs the property's approved allocation and posting rules; assigning the entire amount to rooms can distort both departmental revenue and performance measures.

Cloudbeds' accounting documentation distinguishes deposit transfers, guest-related transactions, and receivables activity. Its deposit workflow is designed to keep advances separate from revenue until the relevant service is provided. The accounting reviewer should confirm how the property's policy and system configuration implement that separation.

Reconcile opening deposits, new receipts, amounts applied to stays, refunds, and other approved changes. A reservation canceled after a deposit was collected needs a documented outcome under the booking terms. Do not leave the amount indefinitely in a future-reservation list or automatically treat it as room revenue without reviewing what happened.

Consider a hypothetical guest ledger with a $4,000 opening balance. The day adds $3,000 of room charges and $300 of separately recorded taxes. Deposits of $1,200 are applied and other guest payments total $2,500. With no additional movements, the closing guest balance is $3,600: $4,000 plus $3,300 less $1,200 and $2,500.

The deposit ledger has its own bridge. If it starts at $5,000, receives $2,000 of new advances, applies the same $1,200 to stays, and refunds $300, it closes at $5,500. The deposit application appears in both connected ledgers but is not a new receipt of cash. The illustrative tax amount is an assumed posting, not a tax rate recommendation.

If a guest balance transfers to approved company receivables, show the linked transfer between ledgers. That transfer can reduce the guest ledger without settling the hotel's claim. Calling it a payment would make collections look better than the bank and receivables records support.

A later rate adjustment, refund, or missed posting should identify the original folio and business date as well as the date the correction was entered. Cloudbeds documents separate transaction and service-date concepts and preserves posted records through subsequent adjustments. Use that distinction when explaining differences between a saved daily report and a later revised view.

Save the completed audit reports and the exception approvals needed for the close. Re-running a report after corrections may not reproduce what management reviewed the first time. Keep the original result, the correction, and the revised balance connected instead of replacing the old report without explanation.

Review stays that cross the reporting date, advance deposits for later stays, unsettled card payments, and company balances transferred near month-end. Use the approved service and revenue policy to assign charges to periods. A reservation's total booking value and the cash collected during the month are each different from room revenue earned in that month.

Give accounting a concise list of unresolved folios, deposits, adjustments, and settlement differences with owners and next actions. Once those records reconcile, managers can interpret occupancy and room-rate measures alongside reliable revenue. A completed night-audit status is useful, but it does not replace an explanation for the balances left behind.