The following article reviews how to check-out a reservation where the guest will be paying for all their own charges, and all the charges are located on Folio 1.
To learn how to check out guests with other billing scenarios (ie: City Account, House Account, Multiple Guests) please refer to the proper section of the Front Office manual:
- How to Check-Out a Reservation to the City Ledger (ie: Direct Bill)
- How to Check-Out a Reservation to a House Account
- How to Check Out a Reservation when Billing is Split among Multiple Guest Shares
- How to Check-Out a Reservation with Charge Routing
Checking out a guest infers that the guest will be paying their bill and then leaving the room they are currently staying in.
When checking out a guest, varying scenarios can apply. The guest may be paying for all charges on their folio, or their company may be paying for certain charges, or perhaps there are multiple people in the room, and they all wish to split the bill. To compensate for this, the PMS allows charges to be split into various Folios.
- Folio 0 is a summary of all the folios
- Folio 1 always belongs to the master guest whose name is the main name on the reservation
- Folio 2 to 6 and 10+ can be used to separate charges as the guest wishes
- Folio 7 is not a valid folio in the PMS and therefore is not available as an option
- Folio 8 is used for charges that will be taken care of by a 3rd party upon check out
- Folio 9 contains all reversed transactions.
To check out a reservation you must be either on the In House, or Departures screens. Locate the guest you wish to check-out and click on the reservation (ensure the black arrow is pointing towards the correct guest reservation). Select the Check-Out button located at the top of the screen (or select the F6 Function Key).
The Check-Out screen will appear with a list of folios and their balances located within the reservation that you are checking out. For this reservation there is only one folio, Folio #1.
This Folio has:
- Room Charges (RCH) totaling $250.00
- Other Charges (OthChg) totaling $198.99
- Taxes totaling $62.35
- There are no prior Payments (PMT) made on the folio, as the amount displayed is $0.00
- The total Balance of the folio is $511.34
There are three check-boxes in each Folio row:
- Print – check this box to print the folio upon checkout
- Post Pmt Here – When dealing with a single folio check-out, this box will be automatically checked. When dealing with multiple folio check-outs, check this box to choose which folio to place the payment on (in multiple folio scenarios, the check-box can only be placed next to one folio at a time).
- The Last Check-box – When dealing with a single folio check-out, this box will be checked automatically. When dealing with multiple folio check-outs, check this box to indicate which folios to pay. Based on which folios are selected, the Balance will be adjusted to display the new total payment required.
For reservations with a Credit Card on file, the card information will automatically populate here as default.
If the Payment Method is being changed at check-out, use the Code drop-down menu to select the proper method of payment.
Once the Payment Method is correct, proceed by clicking Check Out.
If the reservation is an Early Departure, the following box will appear asking you to select a reason for the early departure from the drop down menu provided. Once a reason has been selected, select “OK” to continue with the checkout.
Once the reservation is checked out, a message will appear to let you know the checkout was successful.
The reservation will now be moved to the Checked Out screen.
Here we can see that Mr. Edwards' reservation is now checked out and that the Visa Payment has been applied to his folio. The balance on his folio is now 0.
