HE: Getting Started with Night Audit Entry

What is Night Audit Entry?

Night Audit Entry is a critical part of our Labor Management Tools because it tells the system what actually happened at the hotel yesterday from an operational data standpoint (ex: room cleans, rooms sold, etc.). Night Audit Entry is a tool for your hotel to enter operational data in our system. The data coming through Night Audit Entry is widely used for your labor reports and analysis in Hotel Effectiveness, from building the plan hours for each position (that are then compared to the actual hours from the time clock punches) to generating 5-Minute Daily Labor Check-In™, and much more. These calculations give you a good idea as to how your hotel performed each day as compared to your labor standards.

We also generate daily revenue email alerts based on the information entered. If the night audit information isn't on time (by 6am local time), then the system cannot build the Plan Hours and your Daily Labor Check-Ins will not be very useful. Also, your Revenue Alerts will show Missing Data, making them much less useful also.

Consistent Night Audit Entry is one of the keys to accurate labor reporting for your property. It only takes a few minutes to complete Night Audit Entry.

Who does Night Audit Entry?

Night Audit Entry can be done by your night auditor or any hotel manager with access to the tool. Your hotel will need to decide who is responsible for consistent Night Audit Entry. To make it easier for you and your team, we have created a default night auditor user profile specific to each individual hotel. The auditor login can only access the Night Audit Entry tool, and the password can be changed by any manager with permission to do so.

What is the Night Auditor Login?

The Night Auditor login only has access to enter the Night Auditor information and cannot see reports, Daily Labor Check-in or any other department information. Please use this shared login for all auditors so that you do not need to request and maintain individual credentials every time you hire a new auditor. 
 

Action

Before your Night Auditors can log in for the first time, please log in with your account and access Night Auditor Entry. Select "Manage Auditor User" to update the password to something permanent and ensure the night auditors are aware of the password. We recommend writing it down so you don't forget it.

How do I enter the data?

Entering this information takes no more than 3-4 minutes. Our 'Night Audit Instructions' are available in Hotel Effectiveness on the main Night Audit Entry page by selecting 'View Night Audit Entry Instructions.' We highly recommend that you print this, write the Auditor's username (if different from the system auditor account) and permanent password on it, and post it next to the auditors' workstation. This can also be used to train your auditors how to perform this task. If you have a nightly checklist, this simple task should be added to it.

Below are the steps to enter data into Night Audit Entry:

1. Log into Hotel Effectiveness (https://my.hoteleffectiveness.com/).
2. Select "Night Audit Entry" on the left main menu.
3. Select "Enter New Data."
4. Select a hotel if you are a manager with access to multiple hotels; your night auditor only sees one hotel.
5. Select the date that you are closing out.
   • The system will default to yesterday's date. 
6. Select "Next Step."
7. Enter the number of "Rooms Sold" and the "Rooms Revenue."
   • This data comes from your PMS report the day you just closed out. Once you enter this information, you will notice the occupancy percentage and the average daily rate update. You can use this information to check against your PMS report.
   • If your hotel has RevSync, this data may be automatically filling with data from your 3rd Party Revenue Provider.
8. Select "Save and Go To Next Step."
9. Enter the number of rooms that each room attendant cleaned, if applicable.
   • The first column will display any employee with the Room Attendant position assigned in their profile.
   • This is an optional step and may have already been completed by your housekeeping managers.
10. Select "Save and Go To Next Step."
11. Enter the data for any Additional Data that must be manually entered.
    • This is where your hotel has chosen other information that it wants to collect. These come from your PMS reports or your restaurant POS system.
    • Additional data may be used to build the plan hours for certain positions or support other reports that your company uses to track and monitor hotel performance.
    • If your hotel has RevSync and the business drivers are mapped, this data may be automatically filling with data from your 3rd Party Revenue Provider.
12. Select "Save and Exit."
13. You'll get a confirmation message that the data was successfully entered.

Action

Print the Instructions page and write in your Auditor Username and Password.

When do I start entering Night Audit Data?

As soon as possible. Night Audit Entry can be done as soon as your auditor closes the books for the day. We recommend to get it done as early as possible so the numbers are up to date in 5-Minute Daily Labor Check-In which is the first thing that hotel managers will be doing every morning. Follow the guidance from your management company regarding the cut-off time for Night Audit Entry which may vary from region to region.

 

Action

Enter in last night's data using the Auditor's dedicated login. This will be a good first step to show you how simple the process is and will also allow you organize your internal data sources/reports that need to be referenced so the auditor can enter for each piece of data correctly.

How do I know if it was entered by my Auditor?

Most managers can sign up for the 'Missing Night Audit Entry' email alert in My Email Alerts. It highlights any of the last 10 days that are missing Rooms/Revenue or Housekeeping Data. It is only sent when there is a data problem (data is missing). It will continue to send until the problem is resolved and the data updated.

How do I edit the data if my Auditor forgot to enter it?

This happens from time to time and is very easy to do. Simply open Hotel Effectiveness with your login, click 'Night Audit Entry' from the home page, click 'Edit Existing Data', select the missing date and go back through the Step by Step wizard to enter any missing information. Once this is saved, the Plan Hours are recalculated at the top of the hour and updated throughout the Labor Management Tools.

Is historical data important?

We recommend that you load the system with at least last year and year to date this year for daily Rooms Sold and Revenue data. There are two reasons. The first is that our Revenue Alerts have a lot of Year over Year comparisons, so those are much more useful if they have historical data. The second is that our Scheduling tool uses the revenue history for its forecasting and trending.

The more data that's collected, the better the trends and system forecasts. Instead of entering all of your historical data day by day, we have the ability to import the daily data into our system directly so you just need to complete one file. 

What is RevSync?

We offer a data integration service called RevSync to simplify your Night Audit Entry process. RevSync automates the data feed to Hotel Effectiveness from your property management system (PMS), 3rd party business intelligence (BI) vendor, or other systems.

Once we receive the files, our system will pre-populate the numbers in the Night Audit Entry screens. As a rule of thumb, you should always review the data even if it's coming from an automated feed. RevSync hotels still need to enter housekeeping cleans in Night Audit Entry, as well as any data not included in the PMS or BI auto-transmit files.