One in the morning, and the printer is running
The night porter doubles as night auditor. After the bar closes, he runs the end of day in the PMS and prints the reports: arrivals not checked in, departures not checked out, room revenue, outlet totals, payments by type, the ledger. He takes the card terminal's end of day slip and the EPOS Z-read, and starts ticking.
The card terminal total does not match the PMS payments total. He goes back through the transactions and finds a card payment taken on the terminal but posted to the wrong folio. That takes forty minutes. Then he types the day's occupancy, room revenue and average rate into the owner's spreadsheet, emails it, and files the paper. A fire alarm test and two guests locked out interrupt him along the way.
Why night audit is so manual
The PMS rolls the date and produces reports, but the matching between systems (PMS against EPOS, PMS against card terminal, PMS against the OTA virtual cards) is left to a person. Owners want their own summary in a format the PMS does not produce.
- Card terminals, EPOS and PMS each produce their own totals, in their own format.
- Differences have many causes: wrong folio, split payments, voids, tips, timing across midnight.
- The owner's daily report is a spreadsheet built by hand from several PMS reports.
- Night staff often combine audit with security, the door and guest requests.
- Paper reports are filed and rarely looked at again.
What the manual audit costs
Hours of night staff time on arithmetic, at the time of night when mistakes are most likely. Differences that are found late or not found at all, which become write-offs weeks later. An owner who gets figures that may have been typed wrong. And night staff pulled away from the guests and the building, which is what they are there for.
When the regular night auditor is off, the relief often does not know the routine as well, and the morning team inherits a half-finished audit.
The paper itself is a problem. Boxes of printed audit packs pile up in the back office, and when the accountant asks about a difference from three months ago, someone spends an afternoon looking for the right night's bundle and hoping the ticks on it make sense.
How we build an automated night audit check
- After the PMS end of day, the check pulls totals and transactions from your PMS through its API or scheduled report exports.
- It pulls the same day's transactions from your EPOS and your card payment provider.
- It matches payments to folios and outlet totals to room postings, and lists only the items that do not match, with the likely reason for each.
- It checks for the usual loose ends: arrivals not checked in, departures still in house, rooms occupied with no rate, folios over a credit limit you set.
- The auditor works through the exceptions list and marks each one resolved or handed over.
- The owner's daily report, in the layout you want (occupancy, average rate, revenue per available room, outlet sales, payments), is produced from the checked figures and emailed or shown on a dashboard.
| Check | Manual today | With the automated check |
|---|---|---|
| Card terminal vs PMS payments | Tick through slips | Mismatches listed with folio and time |
| EPOS vs room postings | Compare two printouts | Missing postings listed |
| Departures still in house | Scan the report | Listed at the top |
| Owner's daily figures | Typed into a spreadsheet | Sent automatically from checked data |
A night shift with the exceptions list
After end of day, the night auditor opens the exceptions list. Tonight there are three items: a card payment on the wrong folio, a room charge that did not post from the bar, and a departure still showing in house who actually left at lunchtime. He fixes all three and closes the list. The owner's report goes out on its own before six.
The paper stack is gone. When the relief night auditor is on, the routine is the same list. The morning team starts with a clean day rather than a note saying 'terminal didn't balance, will look tomorrow'.
Signs your night audit needs help
- Night audit involves printing and ticking several reports.
- Card terminal and PMS totals regularly fail to match.
- The owner's daily figures are typed by hand into a spreadsheet.
- Night staff struggle to finish the audit and look after guests.
- Differences are left for the morning team to sort out.