Night auditors maintain the hotel operations ticking with minimal night shift teams, or even alone. The job is high in responsibility and requires multiple talents: manning the Front Desk, dealing with urgent guest situations, accounting for the daily revenues, and… not forgetting the handover to the morning shift.
So what night auditors dream of (or daydream?), that would make their job easier?
A Front Desk with no surprises or guesswork
In many hotels, the night auditor is also the night manager, in charge of checking in guests and handling their overnight requests. This means the night auditor needs to easily pull up the information from reservations, payments, maybe guests’ special requests.
This can be a challenge in a Front Desk that still heavily relies on paper printouts and emails, filed away by the day shift and not necessarily up to date.
“If only there was one online location, where all the information is easily searchable and accessible by all the shifts…”
Night pack audit with no repetitive manual tasks
The night auditor is in charge of the financial closing, and more generally counterchecking the hotel’s financial activities of the day.
The night auditor has to ensure the accuracy of all the financial information: for that, he needs to gather all relevant paperwork to complete the audit. This entails reviewing the “night pack”: guest ledger (or front office ledger) with the accounts receivable for occupancy and rates, cash & card transactions, information from various departments (e.g. food and beverage, rooms, gift shop)…
Depending on the setup, it can mean pulling information from the PMS (Property Management System), POS (Point of Sales) system, balancing the cash drawer and log receipts, collecting all paper guest folios and any checked-out guests’ registration cards.
Manual reconciliation can be tedious, time consuming and prone to errors. In case of discrepancies, the night auditor has to file a report for management to follow-up the following day.
“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool to pull it all together, and automatically cross check and only review the discrepancies?..”
Communicating with the back-office & management
Accurate posting of transactions starts at the front office (later processed by the back-office accounting department). Best practice and indeed group policy dictates that hotel management go through the night audit reports daily. That is how they keep on top of the hotel occupancy and finances.
So the night auditor has to rely on reports, emails and paperwork to communicate with the accounting department or daytime management, whom he doesn’t see in person. When everyone is busy, things slip through the cracks and don’t get properly followed-up, leading to potential compliance issues.
“If only there was a common dashboard where night auditors, accountants and relevant managers could collaborate easily...”
Enter the Night Audit tool by DocMX
DocMX allows to monitor various systems, as well as email and scanned paperwork in one location. Everyone can easily & securely access all the reservations and finance information.
When it comes to daily income transactions, the smart algorithms reconcile basic operations. This way, only the night auditor only needs to review the exceptions; customised workflows then route the information to the right people.
No more wasting time collecting and chasing paperwork, or wondering where is a piece of information. Everyone knows exactly what’s one their plate and by when it needs to get done.
Digital night pack… every night auditor’s dream come true!
DocMX is used by many happy night auditors in top hotel groups like Hilton, Marriott, or IHG. Contact us for a free demo now!
info@docmx.io
