Accounting Live

The month is closed by a list, and reopened by a signature

A month locks only when its checklist is done — every day audited, the sub-ledgers agreeing, the bank reconciled — and at the lock the trial balance is snapshotted and hashed. What one person must not do alone gets a second signature. Finance audits each day before it is believed.

A month has been lockable since the ledger arrived. Now locking it is a list with an owner for each task, most of them checked by the machine, and reopening it is two people's decision.

The list

Every day audited and the sub-ledgers agreeing with the books are mandatory; the bank reconciled, the GST return prepared, the GRNI accrued and the sign-off are advisory until a hotel makes them mandatory. A manual task is ticked by a person; an automatic one is run and marked with its evidence. The lock refuses until the list is done, and at the lock it takes the snapshot: each hotel's trial balance, materialised and hashed, so the closed numbers cannot drift. Once every month of the year is locked, the year's revenue and expense roll into retained earnings.

Approvals

One machine for everything one person must not do alone. A rule per kind of thing — a manual journal, a refund, a write-off, a vendor bill with no purchase order, a vendor payment, a vendor bank change, a credit override, reopening a month, a rate override, an owner distribution, a budget — with a threshold, a department, the role that signs and up to three levels. Every level a different person; the requester cannot sign their own; a reject ends it. Delegation for leave cover, with the signature saying whose authority it was. Separation of duties reported: which two rights one person must not both hold, and who does. A closed month is reopened only with an approved request once the account has the rule.

The day, audited by finance

The night audit closes the day operationally. Finance's own look before the day is believed: the books equal the folios, no occupied room went uncharged, no comp went unapproved, no bill was left open past check-out, the day's voids and refunds are listed. The controller signs the day off; a day with a failing mandatory check cannot be signed until it is explained; the days nobody has signed are the group's worklist. A control account's balance can be certified for a month — a name against a number — and a legal hold marks a record that must not be archived or deleted while a dispute or an audit is live.

More on Accounting

Every rupee has two sidesThe night audit closes into a double-entry general ledger — per legal entity, with a chart seeded for a hotel, control accounts that must agree with the sub-ledgers, and no journal that does not balance. ReceivablesA bill to a company is an invoice that is owed; a receipt is allocated to named invoices and the shortfall has a name; the debtor is reminded, and a debt is forgiven only with a signature. Payables and vendorsA vendor belongs to the books and says who it is — PAN, GST registration, MSME, TDS section — and a vendor's bill is matched against what arrived and what was agreed before it is owed. TDSThe deduction is a dated rule and the threshold is per year — two per cent of the contractor, ten of the professional, ten of the rent — held back, deposited by the seventh, returned each quarter. The payment runWhat is due is paid — MSME first, by law — with a bank file, an advice to the vendor, retention held, an advance adjusted, and one journal per run. Bank and cashThe hotel has bank accounts and the till has a float; the statement is read into the books and matched line by line; the cash position is one screen. Gateway and OTA settlementsThe gateway pays out net and the difference is the fee; the channel remits what it collected and takes its cut — both matched booking by booking against the statement. GST filingA registration is per state and every rule has a date; GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B are prepared from the books in the portal's shape; the purchase credit is only what the supplier declared. E-invoicingAbove the threshold a B2B invoice is registered with the portal — IRN, acknowledgement and signed QR on the printed bill — with cancellation inside twenty-four hours and a credit note after. Tally, Zoho and QuickBooksThe day leaves the books once and says where it went: Tally vouchers with the party and the GST fields, Zoho journals and invoices by API, a CSV QuickBooks reads — and a webhook for anything else. Cost of sales and the food costThe food that was used is a cost the day carries — consumption from the store, not purchases from the vendor — and stock on the shelf is an asset. The banquet ledger, packages, and a night not yet sleptAn event is a ledger of its own — deposits held, costs tagged, margin read; a package is split for the management accounts without touching the bill; and a night not yet slept is not yet earned. Fixed assetsA thing the hotel owns is numbered and wears out — the register, two books, depreciation, disposals, physical counts and capital work in progress. The owner reads the statement the industry readsThe uniform system's operating statement — departmental profit, undistributed expenses, GOP, GOPPAR — read from the same ledger as the hotel's P&L; with the cash-flow statement, changes in equity, the KPI sheet, and every hotel side by side. The year is planned by account, and the month is measured against itA budget per account per month: the rooms lines derived from occupancy and rate, the outlet from covers and check, the rest typed; approved by a second person; then every month the ledger is measured against it and a rolling forecast says where the year is heading. The wages are a journal the books receiveThere is no HR module. The payroll engine's result — by department: gross, PF, ESI, PT, TDS, advances, net — is imported once a month, posted as one journal, and paid: the staff, then each authority with a challan. The group adds up across its hotelsOne statement for a hotel, for a legal entity's hotels, or for the whole account — profit and loss, balance sheet, consolidated trial balance — and the owner's page: equity, the result, distributions, the FF&E reserve. A rupee is not the only moneyAn overseas agent invoiced in dollars, an OTA remitting in dollars: the invoice keeps its rupee value, carries a foreign face at the rate it was quoted, and at month end the open balance is revalued with the gain or loss named in the books. The books notice what is unusualRules, not models, read the live books every day and raise an alert with its evidence — a near-duplicate bill, an odd manual journal, a cashier's voids, a vendor's price drift, a bad GSTIN, an uncharged room, an unmatched bank line. Nothing posts by itself. What is next in the booksThe two things the accounting programme deliberately left for a customer to ask for — intercompany posting between two legal entities, and the model-based assistance — and the remaining "approved by" boxes moving onto the approval machine.