Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Chapter 8 – Processing Guest Charge Payments

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Chapter 8 Focus Points  Common booking practices performed  Forms used to process guest charges and payments  Account ledgers  Procedures for processing guest charges and payments  Procedures for transferring guest and city ledgers to accounts receivable  Importance of standard operating procedures for posting and the night audit

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Common Bookkeeping Practices “Posting Process”  Standard procedures need to handle financial transactions  Explanations of bookkeeping practices in training programs assists desk clerks in understanding the importance of correctly entering financial data

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Common Bookkeeping Practices (cont’d.)  Assets – monetary value  Liabilities – financial or contractual obligations Bookkeeping “power” to increase or decrease assets and liabilities Refer to Table p. 224 Relate examples to guest ledger. Guest charges of $100 are posted as a debit to the folio; guest payment of $100 are posted as a credit to the folio

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Forms used for posting  Folio – p. 228  Transfers  Paid-out Slips

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Account Ledgers  Accounts receivable – amounts guests owe the hotel  Folio well or bucket – device that holds folios  Guest ledger – a collection of folios of current guests of the hotel  Table 8-2 -Transactions affecting the guest ledger – p.226  City ledger – a collection of folios of unregistered hotel guests who maintain accounts with the hotel  Table Transactions affecting the city ledger – p. 227

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Posting guest charges and payments through PMS  Figure p. 228 – Interface with Point of Sale Point-Of-Sale - allows the front office computer to interface with the computers in the various departments in the hotel Interface – defined as computers passing along information to each other or electronic transfer

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Posting guest charges and payments through PMS (cont’d.)  Refer to Figure 8-4 – photo of point-of-sale terminal in use p. 229  room and tax  transfers and adjustments  paid-out  phone  display folio  reports  Figure 8-5 – reports created with the posting module – p. 232

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Transferring guest and city ledgers to accounts receivable  Accounts receivable  Review concept of accounts receivable – monies owed to the hotel Types of accounts receivable  bank cards  commercial cards  private label  intersell cards  bill-to-accounts

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved  Note: relationship of guest ledger and city ledger as temporary holding facilities for guests’ accounts receivable

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved The importance of standard operating procedures for posting and the night audit  The night audit is dependent upon standard posting procedures  Errors due to transposing dollar figures ex: $27.98 as $27.89  Errors due to posting charges to an incorrect folio – ex: 432 as 423  Errors due to posting charges to an incorrect departmental account – ex: Restaurant 1 instead of Restaurant 2 Necessity of developing and administering a training program to ensure accurate posting procedures

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Case Study 802  Work in groups to develop a policy on adjusting guest accounts.