Guest Ledger and City Ledger

Folks who ran hotels in 'pre-computer' days frequently ask about a Guest Ledger report, when daily, manually entered, ledgers were used to track what happened each day for each booking.

In accounting terms, the traditional 'Guest Ledger' is an 'accrual' process for managing each booking's accounting. It serves no useful purpose in a computerized system, except to state what you might eventually make from in house guests. Which will either come true or not, based upon Payments actually issued to future nights that might occur.  

Instead of using this time-consuming process from pre-computer days, our customers use the Transactions and Advanced Deposits reports for posting all financial events to their G/L - and then 'trust' the Night Audit process to make sure that all rules are being followed properly.  The totals (or sub-totals) for each CHARGE and PAYMENT category are entered into the G/L manually (or via an import via file process) as often as needed. Many customers do this daily/weekly/monthly - we even have customers who do it quarterly.  

As oftern as your G/L needs proper income amounts, enter the numbers from the Transactions report and update the Advanced Deposits liability account.

The best report for 'In House' guests and the rates and dates of their stay is found by choosing Reports | Daily Reports | In House.  

To view the 'current ledger' for each in-house guest, view the report called "In-House Guest Ledger".

What is commonly called a 'city ledger' is the A/R (Accounts Receivables) system for Direct Bills, found for your hotel at Front Desk | A/R Accounts.