Setting up the Account plan

The basic setup of account in Nitesoft looks like this. The basic plan have to be reviewed and revenue and payment accounts needs to be added.


Nitesoft works a little bit differently than most hotel systems because we allow a reservation to be checked-out without settling the bill and we have support for accounting the VAT of prepaid reservations at the time of payment. We want hotels to have the flexibility to be able to make payments or invoices at any time of the reservation timeline, i.e. from the time of booking until the time the reservation is completely settled some time after check-out. Since payments and revenues may not happen at the same day the reservations ends up at either the Accounts Receivable account or the Prepaid/Deposit Ledger account until the bill is completely settled.

Please read through accounting examples before setting up the account plan.


Examples are found here:

Setup without adjustment accounts

Setup with adjustment accounts


When the Account plan is entered in Nitesoft you can review it in full in Account Summary page. Note that the Account plan needs to be correctly setup before you start to enter any reservations in the system.

Account plan is setup is done like this.


Checklist before you go live

  • Double check that all revenue accounts and corresponding VAT is added correctly. You can change accounts afterwards but any product that has already been booked before the change will remain on the old account so it may take a long time to get rid of the incorrect account.

  • You should have different account numbers for Invoices and Sales Ledger (Open tabs), if you don't it will be much more difficult to follow up on unpaid reservations.

  • It is important to regularly keep track of Sales Ledger, Deposit Ledger and Invoices report. Make sure you understand why reservations end up on these accounts and that the reservations and amounts that end up there is what you expect. 

  • If you have any reservations in Nitesoft before the date you go live (e.g. inhouse guests or if you have migrated old bookings) you need to check the balances on the switch day when you go live for Sales Report, Deposit Ledger and Invoices Report and make it match your existing accounting.


Checklist after you go live

  • After the first month make sure that the amount in Invoice Report, Deposit Ledger and Sales Ledger corresponds to the amount you have accounted on the corresponding accounts.


Which Reports to use

Balance Report -This is a daily report. It is generated each night and will be a voucher containing all events that happened in the day.

Account Subtotals -Here you can search on the values from the balance reports over a time interval you select. It is for example useful when checking that everything has been correctly accounted for a month.

Payments -This Report will list all payments for selected date interval. For example for a day. 

Sales Ledger -This Report will list all reservations that have an unhandled balance, it is the specification of the Sales Ledger account. For example in-house guests that have not paid yet, reservations that have  not been invoiced yet or cancellations that should be refunded. This Report is useful for checking each month that invoices have been sent and all bills have been settled.

Deposit Ledger - This Report will list all reservations that are pre-paid. It is a specification of Deposit Ledger Account. 

Invoice Report - This Report will list all invoices. If you search on “invoice and payment date” the remaining amount column is a specification of Invoice account. Read more about invoice management here.


FAQ

  • Why is the housing revenue in Period Report not the same as the housing revenue in Accounting?

            -Period Report is calculating the amount based on Stay dates only, Accounting is based on the day something happens in the system. For example if you change rate for a reservation that stayed yesterday it will change the value on yesterday in Period Report but it will be changed on today’s date in Accounting. Read more here.

  • Why should I use adjustment accounts?

            -When setting up the account plan in Nitesoft you need to decide if you are going to use adjustment accounts. If you use adjustment accounts for prepayments Nitesoft will account VAT for prepaid reservations automatically so you don’t have to think about it. You will be able to see what type of revenue that has been prepaid, for instance how much is room revenue, breakfasts or other products.  If you don’t use it prepayments will be accounted only against deposit ledger account until the reservation stays.