rezStream Cloud Accounting

All the financial and accounting information you need from your PMS in one place.

The rezStream Cloud Accounting section centralizes and streamlines all of the financial activity within rezStream Cloud and provides you with tools to close your books and transfer the appropriate information to whatever accounting system you choose.

Contents

• An Overview of Accounts and Account Types
• Financial Audit
• Ledger
• Journal Entry

An Overview of Accounts and Account Types

Revenue Accounts (Income)

In rezStream Cloud, revenue (or income) is tracked at multiple levels. This can be visualized as follows:

Revenue Accounts

-- Rate Plans (Unit Types)

---- Units

-- POS Categories

---- POS Items

-- Resources

-- Cancellation Fees

Revenue across all types and categories can be correlated to a set of Revenue Accounts you configure and control. This allows you to control how revenue/income is fed into your accounting system. You might want to do that using Revenue Accounts or maybe a more fine-grained approach of grouping revenue by Rate Plan/POS Category or even by Unit/POS Item depending on your needs.

Fee Accounts (Income)

Fees are treated the same way as Revenue Accounts within rezStream Cloud accounting. Each Fee will be reported as a separate account.

Tax Accounts (Liability)

Taxes collected in rezStream Cloud will correlate to Tax Liability accounts in your accounting system. Each Tax will be reported as a separate account.

Payment Accounts (Asset)

Payments collected in rezStream Cloud will correlate to Asset accounts in your accounting system. It's best to think of these accounts as "Undeposited Payment" accounts. In other words, you've collected the money from your guest, but you've not yet deposited that money into your bank account. After you post the totals in your accounting system, you will likely move the money from these "undeposited" accounts into your actual bank accounts when you deposit that money. 

Currently, the rezStream accounting system will create an account for each type of payment you collect (i.e Cash, Check, Credit Card (type), etc.).

 

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In addition to these accounts, a set of standard or built-in accounts is used within the Accounting section to facilitate double-entry accounting.

Guest Ledger (Asset)

The Guest Ledger account is an accounting ledger for the lodging industry that includes all the financial activity happening at your property during a given period. So, if you have nobody in-house and no point-of-sale (POS) activity within a period the Guest Ledger will have no activity and must be empty for the period. 

When you have active guests or POS invoices, the transactions on those invoices will interact with the Guest Ledger account.

So, the Guest Ledger account is an asset account only for active and in-house invoices.

Here are the types of ledger entries that will happen with the Guest Ledger:

• Revenue and taxes accrued during the guest's stay will debit (increase ⬆️) the Guest Ledger and credit (increase ⬆️) the appropriate Revenue and Tax accounts. 
• Payments received during a guest's stay will credit (decrease ⬇️) the Guest Ledger and debit (increase ⬆️) the appropriate payment Asset account. 
• Advanced Deposit payments received prior to a guest's stay will credit (decrease ⬇️) the Guest Ledger and debit (decrease ⬇️) the Advanced Deposits Liability account. 
• If a guest leaves without paying all or part of their bill (which means the remaining balance on their invoice is a debit balance on the Guest Ledger), that remaining balance will credit (decrease ⬇️ and offset) the Guest Ledger account and debit (increase ⬆️) the Guest Receivable account (see below), in effect bringing the balance of the Guest Ledger for that invoice to zero. Since that guest is no longer in-house, any remaining balances must be moved off of the Guest Ledger.
• Likewise, in the odd case that a guest leaves with a credit on their invoice (and a credit balance on the Guest Ledger), that remaining balance will debit (increase ⬆️ and offset) the Guest Ledger and credit (increase ⬆️) the Guest Payable account (see below).
• POS (point-of-sale) invoices are considered "active" on the day they were created. Therefore any activity on a POS invoice will impact the Guest Ledger for that day. If that day ends and a POS invoice has a balance, that balance will move to either the Guest Receivable or Guest Payable accounts at the end of the day.

Guest Receivable (Asset) 

The Guest Receivable account contains money owed to you from guests who departed without paying their invoice balance. Similar to an Accounts Receivable account in your accounting system, this is an Asset account that only includes receivables from your guests.

Guest Payable (Liability)

The Guest Payable account contains money you owe to your guests who departed with a balance owed to them. Again, similar to the Accounts Payable account in your accounting system, this is a Liability account that only includes payables to your guests.

Advanced Deposit (Liability)

The Advanced Deposit account contains any payments you receive for reservations prior to their arrival date.

When you receive a payment, it will debit (increase ⬆️) the appropriate payment asset account and credit (increase ⬆️) your Advance Deposit liability account. 

On the arrival date of the reservation, the payment will debit (decrease ⬇️) the Advance Deposit account and credit (decrease ⬇️) the Guest Ledger. 

Gift Certificates Outstanding (Liability)

A Gift Certificate is also considered a liability until is redeemed and so the Gift Certificates Outstanding account contains the value of those unredeemed Gift Certificates. 

When you sell a gift certificate, it will debit (increase ⬆️) the Guest Ledger account and credit (increase ⬆️) your Gift Certificates Oustanding liability account.

When the gift certificate is redeemed, the redemption will debit (decrease ⬇️) the Gift Certificates Oustanding account and (decrease ⬇️) the Guest Ledger. 

NOTE: If you took a payment at the time of sale, that payment would debit (increase ⬆️) the appropriate payment asset account and credit (decrease ⬇️) the Guest Ledger account.

 

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Financial Audit

The Financial Audit section provides a single-screen view of all the financial activity within a given date range. At the top of this page, the Financial Activity by Invoice lists every invoice with activity during the period and identifies the financial activity that took place on that invoice within the period.

The Financial Audit can be used for "night audit" type scenarios, although you are not required to do this nightly. It can be done on whatever schedule works for you. This gives you a single view into all the activity for a given period and an opportunity to address any issues or oversights. 

Ledger Links

On the right-hand side of the Financial Audit table, you'll find a link to View Ledger Entries for an Invoice:

Upon clicking/tapping this link, an Accounting Ledger view will pop up and display the ledger entries impacting this invoice for this period. This ledger view will show both the debit and credit side of each transaction on the invoice so that you can quickly identify and validate the numbers presented on the main Financial Audit table.

More on the Account Ledger view below. 

Summary Sections

The totals at the bottom of this table can be correlated to the various summary sections below. Note that there are links within each summary section and when clicking those links, again, the Accounting Ledger will pop up and display the entries that impact and add up to the total displayed.

In this case, the Accounting Ledger will filter down to the debit or credit side of the transaction for the account that you chose. Therefore, you can quickly see all the debits and credits that impacted this account for the period and the total.

The summary sections include:

• Revenue
  • The total pre-tax revenue grouped by Revenue Account. 
  • Expanding a Revenue Account shows the total amount of individual items (Units, POS Items, Resources, etc.) that occurred for that period.
  • Revenue correlates to an Income or Revenue type of account in your accounting software.

• Fees
  • The total amount of pre-tax revenue grouped by Fee name. 
  • Fees correlate to an Income or Revenue type of account in your accounting software.

• Taxes
  • The total amount of tax grouped by Tax name.
  • The Taxes section will also show:
    • Applicable Revenue indicates the total amount of revenue to which the given tax applies; whether it was tax exempt or not.
    • Taxable Revenue indicates the total amount of revenue to which the given tax applies and the tax was applied normally (in other words, it wasn't exempted for any reason).
    • Retail Tax indicates the total amount of tax that would have been collected if nothing was exempted.
    • Exempted Revenue indicates the total amount of revenue to which the given tax applies but the taxes were exempted.
    • Exempted Tax indicates the amount of tax that was exempted.
    • Tax Collected indicates the total amount of tax you collected. This is the difference between Retail Tax and Exempted Tax. 
  • Taxes correlate to a Liability or Other Current Liability type of account in your accounting software.

• Payments, Deposits, and Redemptions
  • The total amount of payments and advance deposits grouped by payment type and the total amount of Gift Certificates redeemed during the period
  • The payments and redemptions are broken into 2 buckets:
    • Advanced Deposits are payments made for a reservation and collected before the reservation arrival date.
    • Payments are payments made on or after the reservation arrival date or payments made against POS invoices.
  • Payments and Deposits correlate to an Asset or Other Current Asset type of account in your accounting software. 
    • NOTE: Gift Certificate redemptions will reduce your Gift Certificate liabilities (as noted below).
• Gift Certificates
  • A listing of any Gift Certificates that were sold during the period.
  • The Gift Certificates section also provides some useful details about the overall state of gift certificates within the system:
    • All Outstanding Gift Certificates indicates the current amount of valid outstanding gift certificates in the system as of now (regardless of the currently selected period).
    • All Expired Gift Certificates indicates the current amount of expired gift certificates in the system as of now (regardless of currently selected period).
  • Gift Certificate sales correlate to a Liability or Other Current Liability type of account in your accounting software.

• Net Account Changes
  • Indicates the amount of change in various built-in Asset and Liability accounts based on activity during the period.
    • The overall change in Advanced Deposits account.
      • Any Advanced Deposits collected during the period will increase your liability.
      • Any Advanced Deposits applied/used during the period will decrease your liability.
        • Advanced Deposits are considered applied or used on the arrival date of the reservation.
    • The overall change in Outstanding Gift Certificate account.
      • Any Gift Certificates sold during the period will increase your liability.
      • Any Gift Certificates redeemed during the period will decrease your liability. 
    • The overall change in the Guest Ledger account.
      • Any Revenue, Fees, and Taxes during the period will increase the value of this asset account.
      • Any Advanced Deposits used, Payments collected, Gift Certificates redeemed, or discounts/refunds applied will decrease the value of this asset account.
    • The overall change in the Guest Receivable account.
      • When a guest departs without paying their balance, that balance transfers out of the Guest Ledger and into the Guest Receivable account, thereby decreasing the Guest Ledger and increasing the Guest Receivables.
      • When a guest makes a payment (or receives a discount or compensating negative charge) against that invoice after departure, that transaction will decrease Guest Receivables.
    • The overall change in the Guest Payable account.
      • When a guest departs with a credit balance, that balance transfers out of the Guest Ledger and into the Guest Payable account, thereby moving that money out of the Guest Ledger and increasing the Guest Payables.
      • When a guest receives a refund (or a compensating positive charge) against that invoice after departure, that transaction will decrease Guest Payables.

 

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Ledger

The Accounting Ledger view shows all of the ledger entries for a given period across all invoices. It also provides a variety of ways to filter the ledger and drill into specifics. 

Filter

The Filter field can be used to quickly filter the list of ledger entries and it will search for matches in the following fields:

• Name (of the person)
• Invoice Number
• Reservation (name or number)
• Description
  
• Account

Account

The Account dropdown allows you to choose any Account that has activity on the current report and see only the debits/credits that impact that account for the period. This is useful to view the change in value for any account during the period and identifying all the transactions that impact that value.

The Filter and Account filters can be used together or separately.

 

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Journal Entry

Finally, the Journal Entry view provides a journal entry for the period that you can post directly into your accounting software. The Journal Entry is derived from the ledger entries and financial data displayed on the Financial Audit and Ledger views. So, by reviewing and ensuring the accuracy of those views, you can be comfortable and confident that the journal entry provided here is accurate and safe to post to your accounting system.

The Journal Entry will list each account with any activity during the period. The total amount of debits and the total amount of credits for each account will be listed and, again, when clicking/tapping on each account, a pop-up Ledger view will present all the entries that make up those totals. 

Also included here are the Class and Location columns. These only apply to Revenue, Fee, and Tax accounts (or invoice line item charges within rezStream Cloud). They are used to help classify some this data for reporting purposes in your accounting system. 

• The Class is simply the type of charges. The possible types of charges are Unit, POS, Resource, and Cancel Fees. This makes it possible to report on different types of income in your accounting system.
• The Location is derived from the Property or Unit Group from rezStream Cloud. If you have multiple properties generating revenue this can make it possible to report the income in your accounting system by Property. 

 

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