Balancing a Folio

Chorum divides accounting into one of two categories, much like any other point-of-sale or management system: debits A debit addresses any amount charged to the customer (room charges, housekeeping services, etc). and credits A credit addresses any amount paid by a customer or reducing the overall debits billed to the customer (cash or credit card payment, coupons, etcetera). Chorum stores the debits and credits associated with each guest's booking or account through the use of individual ledgers for their stay called folios A financial ledger used to track debits and credits posted against a given customer's stay, determining how much the customer owes or needs refunded for their stay., calculating the combined sum of all debits posted (billed) to the folio minus the sum of all credits.

The objective is to "balance" the folio; in other words, ensuring that the sum of all debits is exactly equal to the sum of all credits, resulting in a $0.00 balance. The guest neither owes money, nor are they due any refunds. In most cases, this balance must be reached prior to a guest's departure to ensure they've fully paid for their stay, else Chorum prevents you from checking out or closing the booking or account.

Balancing a folio requires nothing more than basic addition and subtraction. Chorum automatically does the math for you, but if the balance doesn't seem correct it helps to be able to manually check the system's math just in case. Add all your debits together using a calculator or a paper and pencil, then do the same again for all your credits. Then, subtract the total of your credits from your debits, like so:

Total Debits - Total Credits = Folio Balance

To add debits and credits to the booking, we use the Post Charge or Post Payment button, respectively. If a debit or credit needs to be offset To "oppose" or "reverse" a portion (or all) of an existing credit or debit., for example in the case of refunding a guest, we use the Post Adjustment button to make the change. Whenever we need to manually balance the booking, these three buttons are used as needed until the folio is at $0.00 - see Manual Postings for specific instructions if needed.

For reference, Chorum displays its balance calculation in a few places: in the top-right corner of the folio, above the guest's booking info, and in any posting menus (also in the top-right corner). Be mindful, however, that in guest bookings where folios have the "All," "A," "B," "C," "D," "E," and "F" tabs, each of these tabs is considered a separate "folio" and, depending on how your property handles guest billing, may have different balances in each tab. For best results, the "All" tab shows the collective balance of all tabs together.

As a final note, each folio will show its balance in either green or red coloring. If green, this means the guest still owes the balance in question (for example, in the above figure, the balance indicates the guest still owes $240 out of their total). If red, this means the guest has paid more than what has been billed to them so far (don't worry - this is fairly common as most properties collect the guest's full payment up front, then as room charges posts each night the balance gradually returns to $0.00). As an added measure, "red" balances are also surrounded by parenthesis, like so: ($100).