Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

Purpose of Night Audit Reports
Night audit reports help hoteliers in many ways. If the reports include forecasts of
room sales, managers use them in preparing employee work schedules. For example, if a
forecast calls for a sold-out hotel in two weeks, the executive housekeeper can sched-
ule staff accordingly. If there will be low occupancy, the executive housekeeper may
reduce staff or assign special cleaning tasks to staff. In either case, awareness of fore-
casted business volume allows managers to manage staff better and cost-effectively.
Some reports are created with the hope that they are never used. Emergency
reports are produced to assist staff if there is a disaster such as a fire, power outage,
or bomb scare. In such an event, staff would require immediate access to up-to-date
property information, including occupied rooms, folio balances, and accounts receiv-
able. For example, in case of fire, an accurate and recently created in-house guest
report detailing the numbers of occupied rooms would alert firefighters about loca-
tions to be checked to ensure that all guests have been evacuated. Similarly, if a power
outage caused the PMS to malfunction, an in-house guest list could help ensure that