4a. Reading the Daily Balance Report
HOW TO READ THE DAILY BALANCE REPORT
Quick Answer: The Daily Balance Report generated by Roll Over is an End-of-Day Report collecting all the revenue & payments you have done on GuestPoint since the last roll over. Invoices you send to the Debtor Accounts are also collected. All Revenue & Payments are further separated into 3 ledgers of GuestPoint: Room Ledger, Deposits Ledger, and Debtor Ledger.
These ledgers are for users versed in Accounting or those using an Accounting integration.
Understanding how the ledgers work is not required for daily operations on GuestPoint.
The Daily Balance Report generated by Roll Over is an End-of-Day Report collecting all the revenue & payments you have done on GuestPoint since the last roll over.
Invoices you send to the Debtor Accounts are also collected.
All Revenue & Payments are further separated into 3 ledgers of GuestPoint: Room Ledger, Deposits Ledger, and Debtor Ledger.
Below is a snapshot of each section of a Daily Balance Report/Roll Over Report.
All Revenue & Payments are further separated into 3 ledgers of GuestPoint: Room Ledger, Deposits Ledger, and Debtor Ledger.
Below is a snapshot of each section of a Daily Balance Report/Roll Over Report.
There are 4 sections in total, please see further below in this article for explanation on each section.
Section 4 - Summary contains our 3 ledgers. It is an optional advanced section and not required to understand the basics of a Daily Balance Report.
The 4th Section regarding our Ledgers is an advanced topic and not required to understand the Daily Balance Report on a basic level.
The ledgers are more for those who are versed in Accounting or are using an Accounting integration.
The ledgers are more for those who are versed in Accounting or are using an Accounting integration.
More advanced information about the Ledgers are available further below this article and in other linked articles.
ADVANCED LEDGER INFORMATION ARTICLES
Article 4a General Introduction to all 3 Ledgers
Article 4b Room Ledger
Article 4c Deposit Ledger
Article 4d Debtor Ledger
SECTION 1 - REVENUE
The first section of a Daily Balance Report is the revenue generated by the system or by manual postings of revenue.
Revenue are items like room charges. It can come from nightly rates posted by a Roll Over, manual postings of room charges, and the first nightly rate that is posted automatically upon Checking In a booking.
SECTION 2 - PAYMENTS
The second section following Revenue section is the Payments section. Any payments you do on the system within a singular rollover period is all tallied in this section.
Generally most people use this section to reconcile Cash & EFTPOS takings along with their received Bank Transfers.
Here you would match your physical correspondence (cash float, EFTPOS settlement, bank statement for Bank Transfers) and reconcile that to your figures recorded electronically on GuestPoint.
If there are any discrepancies, you would investigate it and/or note down the discrepancy before the roll over is done.
THREE COLUMNS: PAYMENT GATEWAY, OTHER, TOTAL
There are three columns in the Payments Section if you are using GuestPoint Pay:
1. Payment Gateway
2. Other
3. Total
Else if you are not using GuestPoint Pay, there is only one Total column.
If you are using GuestPoint Pay, this section is a good indicator of when a payment has not been processed as a GuestPoint Pay payment because there will be figures sitting in the Other column instead of the Payment Gateway column.
Should you have figures sitting in the Other column for the Card Payment Accounts used for GuestPoint Pay, you should investigate these prior to completing a roll over.
SECTION 3 - INVOICES SENT TO DEBTORS
Any invoices you Send to a Debtor from a Room Account of a Reservation will be shown here with the invoice total and the invoice number.
This section would also show any invoices that were reversed or deleted with a negative value.
SECTION 4 - 3 LEDGER BALANCES: ROOM LEDGER, DEPOSITS LEDGER, AND DEBTOR LEDGER
The last section of a Daily Balance Report is the Summary section containing 3 columns representing the balances of our 3 ledgers: Room Ledger, Deposit Ledger, and Debtor Ledger.
Understanding how our 3 ledgers work is not required for general operations on GuestPoint.
Section 4 and the following ledger articles (Articles 4b, 4c, 4d) are only relevant for those versed in Accounting or using Accounting Integrations.
Every revenue & payment action done on GuestPoint allocates itself into three appropriate ledgers as a running balance.
These ledger balances help with accrual accounting and basically help you keep track of how much money you are owed or are in credit.
From Left to Right:
Ledger 1 - Room Ledger - Room & Non-Res Account column
Ledger 1 - Room Ledger - Room & Non-Res Account column
Ledger 2 - Deposits Ledger - Deposits column
Ledger 3 - Debtor Ledger - Debtor column
Ledger 3 - Debtor Ledger - Debtor column
ADVANCED - HOW EACH LEDGER WORKS AND INTERACTS WITH EACH OTHER
It can be difficult to wrap your head around how our 3 ledgers work by themselves and interact with each other.
Please review below information before proceeding to more advanced articles on all 3 ledgers (Articles 4b, 4c, and 4d).
You need to be mindful of a few fundamental rules with the ledgers.
1. The ledgers are balances and not extra revenue or payment. It is simply the revenue & payments automatically allocating itself to three appropriate ledgers.
2. As these are balances, the goal of the ledger is to balance itself to 0.
3. The balance itself is based on a two-way account keeping method where revenue is balanced out by payments, and ledger movements balance each other out.
A basic way to memorise what each ledger primarily deals with is attaching a time-context to each ledger.
Room Ledger - Present booking currently staying
Deposit Ledger - Future Booking that is yet to Check In but has a deposit payment
Room Ledger - Present booking currently staying
Deposit Ledger - Future Booking that is yet to Check In but has a deposit payment
Debtor Ledger - Past Booking that has stayed and Checked Out with their room charges being invoiced to Debtor Accounts
Ledger 1 - Room Ledger - CURRENT BOOKING STAYING - A mix of revenue & payments for any bookings that are Checked In, Checked Out, or from a Non-Residential Account.
Whether the Room Ledger balance is positive or negative determines how you interpret the effect of the Room Ledger.
A positive Room Ledger balance would indicate you are expecting payment for all the revenue you have generated.
You could have charges waiting to be invoiced to Debtors, or your property may primarily be a Pay on Departure style property.
You could have charges waiting to be invoiced to Debtors, or your property may primarily be a Pay on Departure style property.
A negative Room Ledger balance would indicate you are expecting revenue for all the payment you have collected.
This type of balance is common due to most taking payments prior to Arrival or on Arrival.
Ledger 2 - Deposit Ledger - FUTURE BOOKING TO ARRIVE - Payments you have collected in advance for bookings that have a Reserved status and are yet to Check In.
Ledger 2 - Deposit Ledger - FUTURE BOOKING TO ARRIVE - Payments you have collected in advance for bookings that have a Reserved status and are yet to Check In.
This ledger represents how much money (payments) you have collected as a pre-payment deposit.
It is always a negative balance.
Ledger 3 - Debtor Ledger - PAST BOOKING THAT HAS STAYED - Revenue you have transferred to a Debtor Account from a booking that has Checked Out already.
This ledger represents how much money (payments) you are owed.
It is always a positive balance 99% of the time.
In general, anything that doesn't belong in the Deposit Ledger or Debtor Ledger will sit in the Room Ledger as it is considered the main ledger.
Please proceed to appropriate articles below for advanced information on the 3 ledgers.
Article 4b Room Ledger
Article 4c Deposit Ledger
Article 4d Debtor Ledger
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