Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

Objective 2
Objective 4
Discuss the purpose of
common night audit 
reports, note sources of
report data, and explain
common types of night
audit reports.
583

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maintained because sales and occupancy taxes are assessed based on the property’s
revenues. Hotel managers want to know what the hotel’s records reveal about the
property’s past financial and operational performance and what current data sug-
gest about future performance.
Types of Data
The FOM and night auditor must know about two basic types of data that must be
maintained and how to do so. Technically, any items of information or fact collected
by the hotel could qualify as data. FOMs, however, find it useful to designate data as
either historical or managerial.
•
Historical data. Data classified as historical represent events that occurred in the
past; for example, last night’s ADR, last month’s room sales, and the number
of times that room 101 sold last year.
•
Managerial data. Data classified as managerial reflect information about future
events; for example, reservations for future dates, room revenue forecasts, and
other information that helps predict what will occur in the future.
Night auditors must determine what to do with historical or managerial data as
they do their audits. Generally, the FOM and night auditor can decide to reset or
archive the information.
Data Resetting
Sometimes data generated by a hotel should be collected and reported on a daily basis
and then be reset to zero for the beginning of the next day. For example, the general
manager and others want to know about daily revenues. So revenues are recorded for
Monday and when the Monday night audit is run (early Tuesday morning), Monday
revenues are be tallied and recorded. The daily revenue figure is then reset to zero to
begin recording Tuesday revenues. Similarly, each day’s revenue is reported and
recorded independently. Data generated from these daily records can be used by
managers in achieving the property’s goals.
Resetting data is important, because many of a hotel’s revenue-generating systems
are based on a 24-hour billing system. For example, if a hotel charges for telephone
calls, the call accounting system records the telephone calls made each day. Then the
guest charges associated with these calls are posted to the appropriate folios. The next
day the process begins anew: the telephone calls “balance yet to be posted” is reset to
zero. If this were not done, the night auditor would have to sift through considerable
data to separate today’s calls (that have yet to be posted) from yesterday’s calls (that
were already posted). Generally, data generated from revenue-producing departments
are reset to zero daily. In addition, some non-revenue-generating information such as
reservations made per day, comp rooms issued per day, and other operational data may
be reset to zero daily.
Data Archiving
In the past, hotels maintained paper records of their reservations and other financial
transactions. These records, when aged, were boxed and stored. If records were needed,
the appropriate box was located, and the documents sought were reviewed. Today,
the amount of information a hotel maintains about future reservations (managerial