Accounting Reports
ThinkReservations has powerful reports to help with your accounting. These reports can be found in ThinkReservations by clicking on Reports > Accounting.
Summary
The Accounting Summary displays transaction totals categorized by account for the date range selected and presented in journal entry format. The report can be used to create a journal entry into your accounting system. The amounts represent the net change for the period to be recorded in your accounting software.
Best Uses:
To review daily, weekly, or monthly business.
To create a journal entry in your accounting records to record the results of your business activity.
Accounts
The Accounts Report provides the transaction level detail by account, showing all debits and credits supporting the amounts on the Summary Report. For each account on this report, the difference between the total debits and total credits equals the amount reported in the Summary report. The report displays the date, description, a link to the Confirmation ID, and the amount.
Best Use:
To research the activity in an account as reported in the Summary report.
Journal
The Journal Report displays journal entries (debits and credits) for transactions for the selected date range. A journal entry is the lowest level of detail of how an individual transaction (sale, payment, etc.) affects the account activity reported in the Accounts report. The report includes the date, description, Confirmation ID with link, account, debit, and credit.
Best Use:
To view the accounting entry for a single transaction to understand the impact on the accounts as reported in the Accounts and Summary reports.
Night Audit (Requires the Night Audit feature to be enabled)
This report walks you through a structured audit process to ensure that your past activity recorded in ThinkReservations is accurate. Once completed, Night Audit will lock the dates you audited in ThinkReservations, preventing changes to and deletions of audited transactions, or adding a transaction to an audited date. When the night audit has locked dates, they cannot be unlocked.
Best Uses:
Increase the integrity of your financial reports when you run Night Audit in conjunction with preparing accounting entries in your accounting system. ThinkReservations will support in detail the balances and activity reported in your accounting system.
Increase control over your records and your security. Prevent unauthorized predated transactions which may be used to cover nefarious behavior.
Guest Ledger
(Requires the Night Audit feature to be enabled)
The Guest Ledger report presents the balances of guest reservations/folios that are in the Guest Ledger account as of a specified date. The Guest Ledger account represents the status of guest reservations/folios for in-house guests. It also includes balances outstanding on reservations/folios for guests who have departed. The date selected must have been subjected to the Night Audit. The report displays Guest Name, Confirmation ID, Folio Number, and Guest Ledger Amount.
Best Use:
To reconcile the Guest Ledger detail in ThinkReservations to the Guest Ledger account balance in your accounting system.
Ledger Comparison
(Requires the Night Audit feature to be enabled)
The Ledger Comparison report shows the balances in all four ledgers in ThinkReservations for the specified date compared to the immediately preceding date and the difference. The four ledgers are the Advance Deposit Ledger, Gift Certificate Ledger, Guest Ledger, and Accounts Receivable Ledger. The date selected must have been subjected to the Night Audit. Note: The Accounts Receivable Ledger will display zero balances unless the Accounts feature is enabled.
Best Use:
To understand the impact of the day's business on these four important ledgers at a high level.
A/R Aging Summary
(Requires the Night Audit and Accounts features to be enabled)
The A/R Aging Summary report and the Accounts feature are designed specifically for properties that have set up customers on payment terms and are billed for guest reservations sometime after the guest stays (for example, at the end of the month). Typically the customer may be a corporation or educational institution that frequently books rooms at the property. With this feature, you can assign specific reservations/bills to the customer's account, apply payments, and report outstanding balances on the accounts. The A/R Aging Summary report displays the outstanding balance of each Account set up in the Accounts feature, broken down into increments of 0-29 days, 30-59 days, 60-89 days, 90-119 days, and 120+ days.
Best Uses:
To monitor the aging of customer Accounts Receivable.
To reconcile Accounts Receivable detail in ThinkReservations to the balance of the Accounts Receivable account in your accounting system.
Features
Night Audit Feature
Night Audit is an optional feature in ThinkReservations. However, we highly recommend you enable the Night Audit feature to ensure the highest level of integrity between ThikReservations and your accounting system. The Night Audit report walks you through steps to review your activity to confirm it is correct. The final step of the process runs the audit and locks the dates audited so they cannot be changed.
Night Audit in ThinkReservations can be run daily, weekly, monthly, or any other period you wish. We recommend that you run the night audit in conjunction with making your entries into your accounting system. For example, if you make your accounting entries monthly, you could run the night audit for the entire month at a time, then make your accounting entries knowing that the information in ThinkReservations will not change and will support your entries. More details can be found in our support articles on Night Audit and Night Audit Explained. Guest Ledger and Ledger Comparison reports are available with this feature.
Accounts Feature
The Accounts feature is also optional and designed specifically for properties that regularly accommodate guests of corporate or educational institutions and the guest room charges are billed to the institutions with payment terms. The Accounts feature requires that Night Audit be enabled on the account to work properly.
The feature allows the ability to assign specific reservations/bills to the customer's account, apply payments, and report outstanding balances. The Accounts Receivable Aging Summary report is available with this feature.
More details can be found in our support Article on Accounts Receivable Feature.
Setting Up ThinkReservations to Work for You
Our accounting reports are designed to save time when preparing entries into your accounting system for revenue and related activity in ThinkReservations. The reports will also help improve the integrity of the information in your accounting system as transactions are consistently categorized correctly and, if you run the night audit, audited dates are closed to change. You don't have to run the night audit to realize improvement and to save time. You do need to spend a little time setting up your ThinkReservations account so it will work for you.
Our Accounting and Revenue reports report revenue and related activity on the accrual basis of accounting. If you are using the cash basis of accounting for revenue, consult with your accountant for recommendations on updating your accounting records. Please refer to our support document on Cash or Accrual Accounting to understand the differences between cash and accrual accounting. We highly recommend that you consult with your accounting professional before making any changes to your basis of recording revenue.
Where do you start?
Look at the accounts you use in your accounting system to record revenue from the rental of rooms and sales of non-room items, and in which accounts you are recording the related sales and occupancy tax liabilities. Consult with your accounting professional if necessary. As much as possible, use the same name for the revenue and tax liability accounts in ThinkReservations that you are using in your accounting system.
In ThinkReservations, navigate to Settings>>Chart of Accounts. This is where you will set up the revenue and tax liability accounts so that your activity in ThinkReservations is categorized correctly for you. If you have any custom payment types, you should add accounts to categorize those transactions. Once you set up the accounts, you will assign an account to each Room, Item, Tax Type, and custom Payment Type. Refer to our Chart of Accounts support documentation to guide you through this process.
Run the Accounting Summary report for the past month. You should see that all activity has been categorized into accounts that will match your accounting system. If you see an "Uncategorized" label, you have missed assigning an account to a room, item, tax, or payment type. You can find out what you missed by running the Accounts report for the same period and looking at the details in the "Uncategorized" account(s).
Once you have an Accounting Summary report with no "Uncategorized" activity, you are ready to prepare your journal entry in your accounting system to record the period's revenue and related transactions. We recommend that you consult with your accounting professional to ensure your journal entries will have the desired effect on your accounting records.
Now that you are set up, here are a few other considerations:
How often do you want to update your accounting records? - daily, weekly, monthly, or other? This is completely your decision, based on your needs and the recommendation of your accounting professional. Whatever you decide, you can set the date range on the Summary report to match the period you want to record.
Use the Accounts report to see what activity makes up the total in an account on the Summary report. There, you will have links to the source reservations containing the activity if you need to view the transactions.
If you need to dig a little deeper, the Journal report displays the journal entry created by each transaction.
To further increase the integrity between ThinkReservations and your accounting records, consider enabling Night Audit for your ThinkReservations account. By first auditing the period you are recording in your books, you are assured that the activity in ThinkReservations supporting your entry to the books will not change. When you enable Night Audit, you have access to the Guest Ledger report to reconcile to your Guest Ledger account. Contact ThinkReservations Support if you are interested in the Night Audit functionality for your ThinkReservations account and check out our document titled Night Audit Explained.
Examples
Accounting Entry Example without Night Audit
Generate the Summary report for the period you will be making the accounting entry. We are making accounting entries daily, for February 16, 2024, in this example.
Create the Journal Entry for the activity on 2/16/2024 in your accounting system from the Summary report.
Post the Journal Entry to your General Ledger.
Accounting Entry Example with Night Audit
The first step is to run the Night Audit so you can audit your activity for the period. In this example, we will audit and make an accounting entry for 5/4/2020. Please look at Night Audit - Step-by-Step Instructions for more detailed instructions.
Enter the date range to audit - May 4, 2020, to May 4, 2020.
Click on Generate to produce the audit steps for the date range.
Step 1: Verify that the reservations that should have checked out on 5/4/20 did depart on 5/4/20.
Step 2: This step will list any reservations that departed on 5/4/2020 and have a balance remaining.
Step 3: Reconcile payments for the period.
Step 4: Click on the link to review the Accounting Summary report for the period before finalizing the audit.
Step 5: Finalize the audit.
Generate the Accounting Summary report for 5/4/2020.
Create the journal entry for the activity on 5/4/2020 in your accounting system from the Summary report.
Post the Journal Entry to your General Ledger.
Need Help?
If you need assistance we are happy to help you. Contact our Support Team at support@thinkreservations.com and one of our Account Managers will respond. If you are in urgent need of help, call Support at 877-736-4195.