The city ledger is an accounts receivable held at the front office. As noted in chapter 2, the city ledger is a collection of guest accounts of persons who are not registered with the hotel. They have either received approval for direct billing privileges or paid a deposit on a future banquet, meeting, or reception. The night auditor treats these accounts just like the accounts on the guest ledger for registered guests. He or she must assemble the charges and verify their accuracy. The cash received from these accounts is reflected in the cashier’s report.
The figures in a city ledger can be quite large. A hotel that promotes direct billing as a customer service may have outstanding guest debit charges of $10,000 to $50,000. The hotel may hold a credit balance, amounts of money it owes guests in future services, of $25,000 to $150,000 or more from deposits on future receptions and meeting room rentals. The controller of the hotel must closely watch the balances of these accounts to ensure effective cash flow management.
The master credit card account—an account receivable that tracks bank, commercial, private label, and intersell credit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, and JCB—is held at the front office. Depending on the size of the hotel, the services offered to the guest, and the speed of reimbursement from the credit card agency, this figure may also be quite large. It is not uncommon for a medium-size hotel to have an outstanding credit balance of $30,000 to $50,000 at any one time. As checks are received from the credit card agency, this figure is reduced. It rises again when new charges are posted to a guest’s folio. When the front office manager asks you to retrieve a total for the Visa credit card balance in the accounts receivable. How would you proceed?
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