How Upstay counts your money

What it does

This page explains how the Money area thinks, so the numbers on every other finance page make sense. You do not need to know accounting. Read it once from top to bottom, then keep it open beside Finance home the first few times you close a day.

In short: every charge goes on a guest’s bill, every rupee that comes in is a payment, and every night the night audit turns the nights guests slept into revenue and closes the day. A closed day never changes. Every report reads those same closed days, so two reports can never disagree.

Earned is not the same as collected

The most important idea in hotel finance is that money coming in and money earned are two different things:

Revenue (earned) is counted on the night a room is used, or the day a meal or service is given. A guest who books in January for a stay in March earns the hotel nothing in January.
Money collected is cash, UPI, card, online, bank transfer, money the OTA collected and Upstay credit that came in, whenever it came in. An advance for March is collected in January.

So a day can have high collections and low revenue (lots of advances for future stays), or high revenue and low collections (guests staying now who paid weeks ago, or a company that pays 30 days after checkout). Finance home shows both side by side for that reason.

Revenue is always shown before GST. GST is charged on top of the bill and is owed to the government, so it is never part of your revenue.

The business date

The hotel’s day is its business date, in India time. It runs until the night audit closes it, not until the clock strikes midnight.

Between midnight and 5 AM, a charge or payment still belongs to yesterday as long as yesterday has not been closed. A guest who settles at 1 AM after a late dinner is counted on the evening they dined.
From 5 AM, or once yesterday is closed, everything goes on the new day.
A day closed after 5 AM the next morning is recorded as a late close.

The bill and its lines

Each stay has a bill (the folio). Lines on it are:

Room nights, posted one night at a time by the night audit, with GST at the room’s rate.
Food, room service, banquets, laundry and other services, posted when they are given.
Allowances: discounts, waivers and goodwill. They reduce revenue, so they show as a minus.
Payments, each with its mode (cash, UPI, card, online, bank transfer, collected by the OTA, Upstay credit). A refund is its own line; the payment it came from stays.

A mistake on a bill is never rubbed out. It is corrected by a reversal beside the original, so anyone can see what happened and when.

What the night audit does

Every night the audit:

Settles the arrivals who did not come (no-show, or kept for a late arrival) and the departures not checked out.
Closes any cashier shift still open, so every drawer is counted.
Posts tonight’s room nights and their GST to every bill. A guest leaving today is never charged for tonight.
Moves money that was paid in advance for tonight out of Advance deposits and into revenue.
Checks that the four ledgers balance.
Saves the day’s numbers and a PDF pack, then closes the day. From then on that day cannot be edited.

See Close the day for the steps on screen.

The four ledgers

All money the hotel is owed, or owes, sits in one of four ledgers. The night audit checks each one every day: opening balance + added − taken off ± moved between ledgers must equal the closing balance, or the day does not close.

Ledger	What is in it	It goes down when
Guest ledger	Bills of guests in the house: charges so far less what they paid	The guest pays or checks out
City ledger	Bills sent to companies, agents, event hosts and OTAs that are not paid yet	You record their payment in Receivables
Advance deposits	Money received for future stays and functions. The hotel owes it until the guest stays, so it shows as a minus	The night it was paid for is posted
Upstay payout ledger	Online payments and Upstay credit Upstay collected for you, less its commission and transfers made	Upstay transfers the money to your bank

GST in one paragraph

GST is worked out line by line on each bill. Rooms up to ₹7,500.00 a night are 5% without input credit; above that 18%. Food is 5%; banquets, laundry and other services 18%. Within your state the tax is split into CGST and SGST (half each); to a business in another state it is IGST. A bill to a business with a GSTIN is B2B and is listed invoice by invoice; a bill to a guest without one is B2C and is summed by rate. Every GST file Upstay gives you (the register, GSTR-1, the GSTR-3B summary, the Tally file) reads these same lines, so they always agree. Ask your accountant to confirm the rates for your hotel before the first filing.

When an OTA or a company pays

Collected by the OTA: a prepaid OTA booking. The OTA took the money and pays you after checkout, less its commission, GST on the commission, TCS (0.5%) and TDS (0.1%). Match each payout in Tax and accounts.
A company (direct bill): at checkout, the charges routed to the company become an invoice in the city ledger, on the company’s credit terms. Record its payment in Receivables.
Online payments through Upstay: Upstay collects them and pays the hotel in its payout, less Upstay’s commission. See Payouts.

Who can use it

Everyone can read this guide. What each role can open in the Money area:

Role	What they do
Owner	Everything, including the profit and loss, commission, budgets, who may see each report, and schedules
Accountant	Finance home, Night audit (follows it), Reports, Payments, Receivables, Tax and accounts. Only the owner can add one
Manager	Runs the night audit and sees the books, without the profit and loss or commission
Front desk	My shift (their own drawer and takings) and the reports they are allowed

Where to find it

Sidebar → Money. Each part has its own page; the links are at the bottom of this one.

How to follow one stay through the books

An example, with round numbers. A guest books 2 nights at ₹4,000.00 a night, arriving 10 March, and pays ₹4,200.00 online on 1 March.

1 March: ₹4,200.00 is money collected (online). It goes into Advance deposits, because nothing has been earned yet. Revenue for 1 March: nothing from this guest.
10 March, night audit: the first night posts ₹4,000.00 rooms revenue plus ₹200.00 GST (5%, as the rate is below ₹7,500.00). ₹4,200.00 moves out of Advance deposits to pay it. The guest owes nothing yet.
11 March, the guest orders dinner: ₹800.00 food plus ₹40.00 GST goes on the bill and into the Guest ledger.
11 March, night audit: the second night posts another ₹4,000.00 plus ₹200.00 GST. The guest now owes ₹5,040.00.
12 March, checkout: the guest pays ₹5,040.00 by UPI. That is money collected on 12 March. The guest ledger for this stay is back to zero. Nothing is posted for 12 March, the departure day.

Totals for the stay: revenue ₹8,800.00 (rooms ₹8,000.00 + food ₹800.00), GST ₹440.00, collected ₹9,240.00, spread over three different days.

How to run finance every day

Through the day, the front desk takes payments and keeps their drawer in My shift.
Before you leave, open Finance home and read Needs you: arrivals, unpaid links, short drawers and anything that leaks revenue.
Each night, close the day in Night audit, or let Automatic close do it when every check is green.
Next morning, read the Daily flash in Reports (or have it sent to you each day; see Finance reports).

How to run finance every month

Make sure every day of the month is closed (Night audit → Days not closed must be empty).
In Receivables, chase anything over 60 days and download company statements.
In Tax and accounts, match OTA payouts and issue any credit notes.
Prepare the month for the accountant in Tax and accounts. For monthly filers, GSTR-1 is due on the 11th of the next month and GSTR-3B on the 20th.
Compare the month with your budget on Finance home.

How to run finance every year

Set next year’s monthly budgets (owner). See Finance home and plan ahead.
Download the year’s reports your accountant asks for (the profit and loss, the GST registers, the TDS deducted by OTAs) from Reports.
Check who may see each report in Schedules and access, especially after staff changes.

Tips & good to know

Every finance word on screen has a small i. Point at it, or tap it on a phone, to read what it means and how it is worked out. All of them are also on Finance terms explained.
Complimentary and house-use rooms are not counted as sold, and out-of-order rooms come out of rooms available, so occupancy and the average rate stay honest.
A kept no-show charge is other revenue, not a room sold.
Days before your hotel started using the night audit are closed as history. Their revenue is never counted a second time.
Upstay records the costs it knows about (payroll, commission, paid-outs from the drawer). Profit figures leave out everything else, so they are not your full profit.

Troubleshooting

Revenue and money collected do not match → That is normal. See “Earned is not the same as collected” above.
A payment made at 1 AM shows on yesterday → Yesterday was still open; it belongs to that day until 5 AM.
You want to change a closed day → You cannot. Correct it with a dated correction; a late payment lands on the next open day.
A Money section is missing → Your role does not have it, or your hotel does not have that module. See Finance.