Glossary - Reception

Working in all the different departments of the hotel industry, you learn and use a lot of different and helpful terminology, to speed up the work process and keep up the standard and professionalism of your company. These are some of the terms we use in the front office department:

Account - A form in which financial data are accumulated and summarized.
Account aging - A method for tracking past due accounts according to the date the charges originated.
Account receivable - An amount owed to the hotel.
Account receivable ledger - A grouping of accounts receivable, including the guest ledger and the city ledger.
Adjoining - Rooms with a common wall but no connecting door.
Adjacent rooms - Rooms close to each other, such as across the hall.
American plan - A billing arrangement under which room charges include the guestroom and three meals.
Auditing - The process of verifying front office accounting records as to accuracy and completeness.
Back of house - The functional areas of a hotel in which personnel have little or no direct guest contact, such as the engineering, accounting and human resources.
Block- An agreed-upon number of rooms set aside for members of a group planning to stay at the hotel.
Cash voucher - A voucher used to support a cash payment at the front desk.
Central reservation system - A network for communicating reservations in which each participating property is resented in a computer system database and is required to provide room availability data to the central reservations center on a timely basis.
City ledger - The collection of all non-guest accounts, including house accounts and unsettled departed guests accounts.
Commercial hotel - A property, usually located in a downtown or business district, that caters primarily to business clients.Also called a transient hotel.
Confirmation letter - A letter sent to the guest to verify that the reservation has been made and that it's specifications are accurate.
Control folio - An accounting document used internally by a front office computer to support all account postings by department during a system update routine.
Direct billing - A credit arrangement, normally established through correspondence between a guest or a company and the hotel, in which the hotel agrees to bill the guest or the company for charges incurred.
Electronic locking system - A locking system that replaces traditional mechanical locks with sophisticated computer based guestroom access devices.
Emergency key - A key that opens all guestroom doors, even when they are double locked.
End of day - An arbitrary stopping point for business day, eststablished so that the audit can be considered complete through that time.
European plan - A billing arrangement under which meals are paid separately from rooms.
Forecasting - The process of predicting future events and trends in business. Typical forecast developed for the rooms division include room availability and occupancy forecast.
Front office accounting formula - Previous balance + debits - credits = net outstanding balance.
Guaranteed reservation - A reservation that assures the guest that a room will be held until check-out time of the day following the day of arrival.The guest guarantees payment of the room, even if the room is not used, unless the reservation is canceled properly.
Housekeeping status report - A report prepared by housekeeping department that indicates the current housekeeping status of each room, based on a physical check.
Key rack - An array of numbered compartments used to store guestroom keys.
Night audit - A daily comparison of guest accounts with revenue center transaction information.
Pre-registration - A process by which sections of a registration card or it's equivalent are completed for guests arriving with reservations.
T-account - A two column account-recording format in which debits are posted to the left side and credits to the right side.
Traveler's check - A prepaid check sold by banks and other financial institutions which is considered equivalent to cash.
Upselling - A sales technique whereby a guest is offered a more expensive room then what he or she reserved, and then persuaded to rent the room based on the room's features, benefits, and his or her needs.