Prerequisites: You must be using the Night Audit feature. ThinkReservations must enable your account for the Accounts feature.
The Accounts feature allows you to create House Accounts for customers you approved for special payment terms. The customers may be corporations, educational institutions, VIP individuals, etc. You can charge balances on specific bills and reservations to a customer's House Account, apply payments received from the customer to the account, and generate an Accounts Receivable aging report to monitor balances. You bill the customer periodically based on the payment terms (say monthly) for the outstanding balance of bills and reservations charged to their account.
Traditionally, House Accounts are considered a "back of the house" responsibility, not a front desk ("front of the house") responsibility. Once the front desk enters the Direct Bill payment to close the open balance of the reservation, the responsibility for collecting the outstanding balance is transferred to the back office accounting department in the specified house account. The Direct Bill payment is applied to the house account when the night audit is run for the date of the Direct Bill payment. The Payment reports in ThinkReservations include only those payments traditionally entered by the front desk. Payments entered on house accounts are included in the Accounting reports, but are not included in the Payments reports.
Create a House Account
To add a new house account:
Click on the ThinkReservations icon at the top left of the black menu bar.
Click on Accounts to open the Accounts list.
Click on the black "New" button at the top right of the page.
Add the account details as desired. The only required field is the Company Name.
Click on Save at the bottom of the page.
Charge a Guest's Stay to a House Account
We recommend that you do this only once per reservation at check-out to avoid confusion about the charges to the house account. (Consider each charge to the house account as a separate invoice.) When the guest checks out:
Open the reservation.
Under Payments, click on the "$" icon (Add) to add a payment.
Amount = total amount due.
Payment Type = Direct Bill.
Bill To = Company Name (from the drop-down menu).
Payment Date = today's date.
Click on Take Payment.
Here is the reservation after the Direct Bill payment is applied.
View a House Account's Activity:
Click on the ThinkReservations icon at the top left of the black menu bar.
Click on Accounts to open the Accounts list.
Select the house account you wish to view.
The top part of the account display will include the company name, address, and contact information. Outlined in a box is an aging of the account balance and the total balance due. Direct Bill charges are posted to the house account after the night audit has been run for the date of the Direct Bill.
Apply a Payment to a House Account
Open the house account and proceed to the New Payment section.
Select the payment type from the Type drop-down menu. Credit Cards cannot be processed through this payment portal.
Enter the amount of the payment.
Apply the payment to the open Direct Bill charges:
To automatically apply the payment to the oldest charges first, click on Auto Apply.
To apply the payment to specific charges, enter the amount to be applied to each charge in the box to the right of the charge. The total of the payments applied to the individual charges must equal the total payment.
Review the applied payment for accuracy and click on Apply to post the payment to the house account.
Note the payment was applied to the account. The payment date is not displayed on the account Posting details but is recorded in the system as the date the payment was entered. The payment will appear in the Accounting reports. It will not be reported in the Payments reports.
Accounts Receivable Aging Report
The outstanding balances on House Accounts can be viewed by running the A/R Aging Report in the Accounting section of the Reports list. The report can be run for any date and displays the balances by account aged in 30-day increments to 120 days, then older. Here is the report for 11/30/2022 after the Direct Bill was entered, and for 7/17/2024 after the payment was entered.
If you have any questions regarding the Accounts feature or want to enable the feature for your property, please contact Support at support@thinkreservations.com and one of our Account Managers will be happy to assist you.