What is Front Office Accounting System ?
Front office accounting system refers to the software and processes used to manage financial transactions in the front office of a hotel or other lodging establishment. This system is responsible for tracking and recording guest charges, such as room rates, food and beverage purchases, and other incidentals.
A front office accounting system typically includes modules for:
- Room billing: tracking guest charges for room rates, taxes, and other fees.
- Payment processing: handling guest payments, including credit card transactions, cash, and other forms of payment.
- Credit management: managing the credit status of guests, including credit limit and credit card authorization.
- Folio management: maintaining records of guest charges, including room rates, taxes, and other incidentals.
- Reports and analysis: generating reports on financial performance, such as revenue, occupancy, and average daily rate.
This system is usually integrated with other hotel systems, such as the property management system (PMS) and the point of sale (POS) system, to ensure accurate and efficient management of financial transactions.
Additionally, front office accounting systems are usually designed to be user-friendly and easy to use, allowing front office staff to quickly and easily manage guest billing and payments.
NON-AUTOMATED:
Guest folios in a non-automated or manual system contain a series of columns for listing individual debit (charge) and credit (payment) entries accumulated during occupancy. At the end of the business day, each column is totaled and the ending balance is carried forward as the opening folios balance of the following day.
SEMI AUTOMATED:
Guest transactions are printed sequentially on a machine posted folio. The information recorded for each transaction included the date, department or reference number amount of the transaction, and new balance of the account. The folio’s outstanding balance is the amount the guest owes the hotel or the amount the hotel owes the guest in the event of a credit balance at settlement. The column labeled previous balance pickup provides an audit trail within the posting machines frame work that helps prove the current outstanding balance is correct. If the semi automated posting is done by mechanical equipment, it does not retain individual folio balances. This means that each accounts previous balance must be re-entered each time an account posting is made to the folio. This process enables the machine to produce a new current total on the folio card, but it is very error prone and often and often leads to in correct folios balances and subsequent night audit mistakes. Electronic posting equipment often does retain folio balances.
FULLY AUTOMATED:
Point of sale transactions may be automatically posted to an electronic folio when a printed copy of a folio is needed, debits (charges) and credits (payments) may appear in a single column with payments distinguished by parentheses or a minus sign. Printed folio copies may also be proceeded in the traditional multiple-column account format. It is unnecessary to manually maintain an account’s previous balance in a fully automated system, since computer based systems maintain current balances for all folios.
