Guides / Hotel night audit
What is night audit in a hotel, and how do you run one?
Updated By the EkamOS team
The short answer
Night audit is the daily close of a hotel’s books. Run late at night, it posts the night’s room charge to every occupied room, checks that the day’s charges and payments are on the right guest folios, deals with no-shows, balances the cash and saves a report. The hotel then moves to the next business day.
Why hotels close the day at night
A hotel sells rooms by the night, so every night each stay has to be charged. Someone must post that charge to the folio of every occupied room, and confirm that everything else charged and paid during the day landed on the right account. Doing it once a day at a fixed time gives a clean cut-off: everything before it belongs to today’s business day, everything after it to tomorrow’s.
The work is done late because the desk is quiet then. The Wikipedia article on the night auditor says the day’s room rate and room tax are usually posted between midnight and 2 a.m. Night audit is part of CBSE’s Class XII front office syllabus, and its marking scheme lists what the audit is for: checking front office accounts, verifying room charge postings, working out the day’s revenue and occupancy, and moving unpaid bills to the city ledger.
How to run a night audit, step by step
The order changes from hotel to hotel and with the software you use. This sequence draws on the steps in CSJM University’s night audit course notes, arranged for a small hotel with one person on the desk.
- Finish the day’s arrivals and departures. Check in late arrivals, and check out or extend every guest who was due to leave today. A guest still shown as departing today makes tomorrow’s figures wrong.
- Post outstanding charges. Make sure restaurant bills, laundry, minibar and other charges from the day are on the right guest folios. Correct wrong postings before the day closes.
- Match room status with housekeeping. Compare the desk’s list of occupied rooms with housekeeping’s room report. A room the desk shows as vacant but housekeeping found in use needs checking tonight.
- Check room rates. Compare the rate on each in-house stay with the rate agreed at booking or check-in.
- Mark no-shows. Bookings that never arrived are marked as no-shows under your booking policy, so the rooms go back on sale.
- Post tonight’s room charges. Post the night’s room charge, and the tax on it, to the folio of every occupied room.
- Balance the payments. Total the day’s payments by mode (cash, card, UPI) and match them with the cash drawer, the card machine and your UPI or bank records.
- Review high balances. List guests whose unpaid balance has gone over the limit you allow, so the morning shift can ask for a payment. CBSE calls this the high balance report.
- Save the reports and close the day. Save or print the day’s reports, then move the system to the next business day.
What the night audit report shows
A night audit report usually carries figures like these. Three of them are worked out from room revenue and room counts.
| Figure | What it tells you | How it is worked out |
|---|---|---|
| Occupancy | How full the hotel was | Rooms occupied ÷ rooms available × 100 (as in the CBSE marking scheme) |
| Average daily rate (ADR) | The average price of a room that was sold | Room revenue ÷ rooms sold (Wikipedia: average daily rate) |
| Revenue per available room (RevPAR) | Room revenue spread over every room, sold or not | Room revenue ÷ rooms available (Wikipedia: RevPAR) |
| Revenue | What the hotel charged today | Total of the charges posted in the business day |
| Payments | What the hotel collected today | Total of the payments received, by mode |
| Arrivals, departures and no-shows | How the day’s bookings turned out | Counts of each for the business day |
An example: a 20-room hotel sells 15 rooms tonight for ₹45,000 in room revenue. Occupancy is 15 ÷ 20 × 100 = 75%. The average daily rate is ₹45,000 ÷ 15 = ₹3,000. Revenue per available room is ₹45,000 ÷ 20 = ₹2,250.
When the night audit does not balance
Most differences come from a few common slips. Fix them before closing the day, not after.
- A charge on the wrong folio. Move it to the right one with a transfer, and note why, rather than deleting it.
- A payment missing or entered twice. Check the drawer, the card machine’s settlement and the UPI app against each payment entered today.
- A card or UPI payment entered as cash. The cash drawer comes out over and the card or UPI total short by the same amount.
- A room shown occupied that is empty, or the other way round. Settle it with housekeeping before posting room charges, or a room is charged twice or not at all.
EkamOS
How EkamOS helps with night audit
EkamOS is hotel management software for independent hotels in India. For night audit, it does the following today.
- The night audit screen lists the room charges to post, no-shows, pending check-outs and open balances for the business day.
- Running it posts the night’s room charges, marks no-shows and saves a report with occupancy, average daily rate, revenue per available room, revenue and payments, which you can download as a PDF.
- Only the owner can reopen a closed day.
- Charges and payments go on the guest’s folio during the day, and orders from a café on the same property can be charged to the room, so they are already on the folio when the audit runs.
- Housekeeping tasks by room, with status, sit beside the front desk board, so the desk knows which rooms are ready.
Night audit questions
What time is night audit done in a hotel?
Usually after midnight, when the desk is quiet; the Wikipedia article on the night auditor puts the posting of room rates between midnight and 2 a.m. More important than the exact hour is running it at the same time every day, so that every business day has the same cut-off.
Who does night audit in a small hotel?
Whoever is on the desk overnight, often called the night auditor. In a small hotel this is usually the same person who handles late check-ins, so the job mixes guest service with accounting. The owner or manager reads the report in the morning.
What is a business day in a hotel?
The period between two night audits. A charge made at 1 a.m., before the audit has run, still belongs to the previous business day, which is why a hotel’s business date and the calendar date can differ for a few hours every night.
What happens to a no-show at night audit?
The booking is marked as a no-show and the room is released for sale. Whether the guest is charged depends on your booking policy and any advance you took; the audit applies the policy, it does not decide it.
Can a night audit be undone?
It depends on the software. Because the day’s figures may already have been reported, the safer practice is to post corrections on the current business day with a note. In EkamOS, only the owner can reopen a closed day.
Sources
The pages this guide relies on, opened when it was written or last updated.
- Advanced Front Office Operations (754), Class XII sample paper marking scheme, CBSE
- Front Office Operations (753, 754), Class XII curriculum, CBSE
- Night Audit (course notes), CSJM University, Kanpur
- Night auditor, Wikipedia
- Average daily rate, Wikipedia
- RevPAR, Wikipedia
Related guides
- Guest folio: The running bill for a hotel stay: what goes on it, the types of folio, and how it is settled at check-out.
- Choosing a hotel PMS: A checklist for choosing hotel management software in India: the front desk, the registers, GST invoices, rates, night audit and what to ask on a demo.
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