The business date
A hotel does not trade on the calendar. A room-service bill at 00:30 belongs to the evening that ran it, not to the next day, so hotels keep a business date that stays on "today" until the night audit closes it. That is why the audit is usually run in the small hours, or first thing in the morning at a small property.
What gets checked
- Room nights — every occupied room carries exactly one charge for tonight.
- Arrivals — guests due today who never arrived are marked as no-shows and their rooms released.
- Money — payments by method against what the drawer and the bank should hold; open balances.
- Reports — occupancy, ADR and revenue for the day that just ended.
- The date — the business date moves to tomorrow.
Skip it and the damage is quiet: a room night never charged, a report that lands on the wrong day, a no-show still holding a room.
Example
At 2 am the audit finds 18 rooms occupied. Seventeen already carry tonight's charge; room 204, checked in at 11:50 pm, does not, so the audit posts ₹2,600 to its folio. One arrival never came and is marked a no-show. The business date moves from the 14th to the 15th.
How Nivasik handles it
- Night audit closes the business day, with an optional automatic close at a time the property sets.
- It posts every room night once — a room cannot be charged twice for the same night — and can mark arrivals who never came as no-shows.
- A posted charge can be voided with a reason, never deleted.
- Check-out also posts any nights still due, so a property that has not run the audit still bills the room — and a list shows any nights nobody billed, with "bill it" or "write it off with a reason".
- Everything runs on the business date, so a 00:30 bill belongs to the night that took it. A shop's day follows the calendar with a 04:00 cut-off.