How to Complete your Daily Reconciliation

This article contains the following sections:

• Overview
• Assumptions
• Summary
• Daily Reconciliation Process
• What To Do If There Is A Variance
• How to Correct the Variance

Overview

This article covers our recommended end-of-day (EOD) reconciliation procedures using the Zaui reports. This is only a recommendation and not the only method to reconcile your EOD totals. 

The reports used to complete the EOD procedure can be found under Reports > Company Financials. For a list of all the reports found in this section and their purpose, review Company Financial Reports.

Assumptions

1. The EOD reconciliation procedure described below works on the assumption that the acurral method of accounting is being used. This means that revenue for bookings is recognized on the date of travel (the activity date) rather than the date the booking was made (the sale date).
2. This reconciliation procedure assumes that all bookings with travel components reported on the Daily Sales Summary for the report date are fully reconciled (no outstanding balance).
3. This procedure assumes that reconciliation is being conducted on a daily basis. 

Summary

We will rely heavily on the following three reports to reconcile each day:

1. Daily Balance Report will calculate your total transactions for the day minus your total revenue for the day (taking into account anything unearned or pre-paid) and indicate whether you are balanced or not.
2. Daily Cash Sheet (CS) will summarize your daily cash intake on a per-employee basis.
3. Daily Sales Summary (DSS) will show all sales per activity date, as well as earned and unearned revenue.

Daily Reconciliation Process

1. Run the Daily Balance Report for the date you wish to reconcile. The report performs the following calculations:

What To Do If There Is A Variance

If you have a negative variance, you have collected less cash than you should have for the bookings you have fulfilled on this date. 

1. If you are reconciling a date in the past, it is possible that payments or adjustments have been made since the activity was completed. The first place to check would be the section at the bottom of the Daily Balance Report under "Bookings with travel components on [date] with payments in future".
   
2. If there are no bookings listed here, you can run the Daily Sales Summary, or Accounts Receivable Report to ensure that all bookings are fully paid. Both reports are located under Reports > Company Financials. 

If you have a positive variance, you have collected more cash on this date than you should have for the bookings that occurred. There are two possible explanations for this:

1. This date may be reporting transactions that were applied to a past booking that previously had an outstanding balance. To determine this, you will need to run your Daily Cash Sheet Report, and check through each credit card, cash, or debit transaction to ensure all activities on the booking are for the current or a future date. 
2. If you have to reconcile a date in the past, it is possible that a discount and refund could have been applied since the date the booking took place. In this case, the booking is reported at the discounted rate, but the discount is reflected on the Cash Sheet on another date (this will inevitably cause a negative variance on this date as well). To determine if this is the case, run the Daily Sales Summary and check each discounted booking under the Activity Details section to ensure the discount was transacted prior to, or on the activity date.  

How to Correct the Variance

Once you have determined which booking components have created the variance, you may wish to make corrections in order to balance the report. As previously mentioned, the reconciliation procedure assumes that all bookings with travel components are fully reconciled and paid for on the report date. 

Corrections can be made in Database Maintenace found under the settings tab. Look for 'Transaction Maintenance'. Use the UPDATE Single Transaction Dates or UPDATE All Trans with Dates function. Enter the booking number, then select the transaction you wish to update, and click COMMIT.

Important:

-These changes impact your Zaui system ONLY and will not be reflected on your bank statements. -Your daily cash sheet will no longer reflect the total payments received for the given report date. -Consider whether it is more important for your Daily Balance Report to balance or for your Cash Sheet to reflect the total income for that date.

In general, best practice is to require payment in full by the travel date and to limit making edits or processing transactions on bookings after the guest has completed their travel. 

To limit the number of days after a booking completes that it is still editable to all users, update the setting located under Settings>Company info: "Lock all reservations after booking has completed (days)". Only administrators will be able to make edits to bookings outside of this timeframe.