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 8-1 - 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 8-3 - 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 8-3 - 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.
Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley &
Sons, Inc. All rights reserved
