What the night audit actually does
It closes the day: posts room and tax, marks no-shows, freezes the figures and moves the date on.
The night audit is the hotel's day close. It is not a report — it changes things.
In one run it:
- Posts room and tax for every occupied room for that night. This is where most of a hotel's revenue is created.
- Marks no-shows — arrivals that never turned up — against their reason, so the arrival figures are true.
- Settles the day's figures: occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, revenue by head, the revenue journal.
- Moves the operating date on by one.
After it runs, that day is closed. Corrections belong to the day you are on, as adjustments, not as quiet edits to a day that has been reported.
Running it once a day, every day is the discipline the whole system rests on. Skip it and the operating date stops, room charges stop posting, and a week later somebody has to unpick seven days of a hotel that has been trading on the wrong date.