Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

End-of-Day Reconciliations
Most night auditors find that it is easiest to balance their accounts when they first
prepare a daily trial balance. This method, which varies in complexity by hotel, uses
a series of procedures to identify areas where accounts may be out of balance. Night
auditors can then concentrate their time on finding and reconciling problem areas
instead of spending unnecessary time examining in-balance accounts.
FRONT OFFICE SEMANTICS
Trial balance:
First effort to determine whether a set of debits was posted with a corresponding and
equal set of credit postings.
In addition to balancing the guest and city ledgers, night auditors may reconcile
a variety of different accounts used by their hotel. In a small property, the number of
revenue-generating departments may be small. In addition to room charges, tele-
phone charges may be one of the few additional revenue sources to be balanced. In
larger properties, there may be many revenue-generating departments. Essentially,
the night auditor ensures that all appropriate charges generated by the hotel have
been posted to the proper accounts and that these postings balance to each revenue-
producing department’s internally generated X reports and Z reports.