What is the night audit? A plain-English guide for small hotels

The night audit is the routine that closes a hotel’s day. At a small hotel it means checking that everyone due to arrive has arrived or been dealt with, that every charge and payment is posted, that no-shows are charged under your terms, that the day’s rooms sold, revenue and occupancy are written down, and that tomorrow’s arrivals are ready. Done every night, it takes about 20 minutes.

The name comes from large hotels, where a night auditor works through the small hours. A 24-room hotel does not need anyone up all night. It needs the same job done, once a day, the same way.

Why does it matter?

Because the day’s numbers only exist if someone records them. Your property system will hold the bookings, but it will not tell you that room 7 checked out without paying for dinner, that the card for tonight’s no-show was declined, or that two rooms are still showing as occupied after the guests left at lunchtime.

And because the numbers you write down tonight are the history you price from next year. Every pricing decision about next October leans on what this October looked like: how full, at what rate, how many no-shows, how much was booked late. If you skip the audit, that history has holes in it.

What does a 20-minute night audit look like?

Do it at the same point every day: late evening, once the last expected guest has arrived, or first thing in the morning before departures start. Work through the list in order.

Arrivals and departures (5 minutes)

1. Check every arrival. Each guest due today is checked in, has cancelled, or is a no-show. Nobody is left as “expected”.
2. Check every departure. Each guest due out today is checked out with a zero balance, or has extended. Any balance left is either paid or noted with a reason.
3. Check room status. Every room shows the right state: occupied, vacant clean, vacant dirty, out of order. Housekeeping starts from this list tomorrow.

Money (8 minutes)

4. Post the day’s charges. Room charges for every occupied room, plus restaurant, bar and extras that have not gone through yet.
5. Post and reconcile payments. Card terminal totals against the payments in your property system, cash against the till. If they do not agree, find the difference now, while you remember the day.
6. Charge the no-shows. Under the terms the guest booked on. For agent bookings, mark the no-show in the agent’s extranet as well, so commission is handled correctly.
7. Check deposits due. Any booking whose deposit should have arrived and has not.

Numbers (4 minutes)

8. Write down the day. The numbers in the next section, in the same place, every night.

Tomorrow (3 minutes)

9. Read tomorrow’s arrivals. Late arrivals, special requests, rooms that must be ready early, guests with a balance to collect.
10. Glance at the next few nights. Anything that picked up fast today, or anything still empty that should not be, goes on tomorrow’s list.

Which numbers should you write down every night?

• Rooms sold. Occupied rooms that paid for the night. Complimentary rooms recorded separately.
• Room revenue. Room income only, including or excluding VAT, the same way every night.
• ADR. Room revenue ÷ rooms sold.
• Occupancy. Rooms sold ÷ rooms available.
• RevPAR. Room revenue ÷ rooms available. The RevPAR calculator does it if you would rather not.
• No-shows, and whether each was charged.
• Walk-ins, and the rate they paid.
• Cancellations today, and for which nights.
• Rooms on the books for the next 30 days. One number. Compared week on week, it is your pickup.

A notebook works. A spreadsheet works better, because it adds up. What matters is that it is the same nine numbers every night.

A worked example: an autumn Tuesday at our 24-room hotel

Our example hotel has 24 rooms on the Welsh coast and sells around £110 a night midweek in autumn. These numbers are illustrative.

On a Tuesday in October, 17 rooms were expected. Sixteen guests arrived or were already staying. One did not turn up. A couple walked in at the end of the evening and took a room at £95.

The audit:

• Arrivals: 16 in, one no-show. The no-show booked on terms that allow one night to be charged, so the card is charged £110. The booking came through an agent, so it is marked as a no-show there too.
• Departures: five rooms out, one with £18 of bar charges unpaid. The guest is emailed with a payment link and it goes on tomorrow’s list.
• Payments: the card terminal shows £12 more than the property system. A dinner was paid on the terminal and never posted. Posted.
• The numbers:

	Tuesday
Rooms sold	17 (16 + 1 walk-in)
Room revenue	£1,855 (16 × £110 + £95)
ADR	£109.12
Occupancy	70.8%
RevPAR	£77.29
No-shows	1, charged £110
Walk-ins	1, at £95

Prices here include VAT. A VAT-registered hotel recording net of VAT would write £1,545.83, an ADR of £90.93 and a RevPAR of £64.41. Either way, keep to one basis.

The no-show charge is recorded on its own line, not as a room sold, so it does not flatter the night’s occupancy.

What skipping costs. Suppose the audit is skipped twice a month and each time one no-show charge or one unpaid balance is missed, at £110. That is £2,640 a year, before counting the unposted dinners. It is also the occupancy history for next October, which you cannot rebuild later.

What goes wrong when it is skipped?

• No-shows go uncharged. By the time someone notices, the guest disputes it or the card has expired.
• Balances leave with the guest. An unpaid bar bill is easy to collect the same evening and hard to collect a week later.
• Room status drifts. Housekeeping cleans rooms that are empty and misses ones that are not, and a room shows as unsellable when it could be sold.
• Errors compound. A difference of £12 is easy to explain on the night. A difference of £340 at the end of the month is not.
• History disappears. You cannot price next year’s busy nights from numbers you never recorded.

What should you watch out for?

• Changing how you count. Decide once whether complimentary rooms, staff rooms and day-use count as rooms sold, and keep to it.
• Mixing room and other revenue. ADR is room revenue only. Breakfast and dinner go in their own columns.
• Doing it at random times. The day has to close at the same point every day, or two days overlap.
• Leaving a difference “for later”. Later rarely comes.

What next?

Tonight, before you finish, write down the nine numbers above for today, then do the same tomorrow. After two weeks you will have the start of a history worth having. Our guide on how to price hotel rooms shows how to use it. If you want those numbers alongside what the hotels around you charge for the same nights, you can try RatePulse for 14 days.