Front office terms explained: folio, posting, routing and more

A folio is the running bill for one stay. Posting is writing a charge or payment onto it. Routing is the standing rule that sends certain charges to another folio, such as a company's master account. Turkish front desks mix these English loanwords with their own words, so one term can carry two meanings.

A guest at check-out says the minibar was already paid for. The desk has a folio, a posting, a routing rule and a deposit, and no shared vocabulary to sort them out. Most billing arguments at a front desk are vocabulary problems before they are money problems. This article defines the front office terms that cause those arguments, gives the Turkish desk word next to each English one, and flags the places where one word quietly means two things. By the end you can check a folio, set routing and close a business day with the same words as the person on the next shift.

What is a folio, and what belongs on it?#

A folio is the running bill for one stay: every charge and every payment, in date order, until the balance reaches zero. Turkish desks call it the misafir hesabı, and older staff still say folyo.

One folio per booking is the default. A second folio is opened when two parties pay separately, for example a guest and a company, or two guests sharing a room. Charges (harcama) sit on one side and payments (tahsilat) on the other; the difference is the balance, not the revenue. Confusing the two is the most common reading error by new staff.

A folio is not an invoice. The invoice is the fiscal document defined by Turkish tax law. The folio is an internal record. Accommodation tax is a separate levy that must be shown on invoices and is outside the VAT base. Rates, timing and e-document rules belong to your accountant. Confirm current rates and application rules with your accountant. Public data. No endorsement implied.

A folio closes at check-out and stops changing. Anything corrected afterwards goes through a new document or a reversal, never by editing the closed record. Check the folio at check-in, not at check-out: a folio opened with the wrong rate code or the wrong routing is the usual origin of a disputed bill three days later. Every line should answer three questions without help: what was sold, on which business date, and who is paying for it. For the wider set of compliance words, see our hotel compliance glossary for Türkiye: KBS, KVKK, e-Arşiv, ÖKC.

What do posting, routing and master account mean?#

Posting is writing an amount onto a folio. Routing is the standing rule that decides which folio an amount lands on. A master account is the folio that collects charges for a group or a company.

A posting carries at minimum the business date, the outlet or department, the amount and currency, the person who posted it, and a reference such as a receipt, an order or a voucher. Without the reference, nobody can defend the charge a week later. Routing is configured before arrival, not at check-out. Typical rules: room and tax to the company master, extras to the guest; or the first two nights to the agency and the remainder to the guest.

The master account (ana hesap) collects only what the contract says the company pays. Everything else must stay on the guest folio, or the company is billed for the minibar. For foreign-currency postings, the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye sets its indicative rates once each business day at 15:30 and publishes them the same day, and sets no indicative rate on weekends, public holidays or half working days (TCMB, Gösterge Niteliğindeki Kurlar, 2026). Which rate your hotel must use for tax or invoicing is a question for your accountant.

The city ledger (cari hesap) is where a closed folio moves when a company or agency pays later. It is accounts receivable: aged, owned by a named person and chased. It is not a place to park a dispute. Hotels running several properties need the same routing rules at every desk, or the group report and the property report will disagree; our multi-property hotel management governance checklist covers that in depth. Test routing before a group arrives: post one imaginary room charge and one imaginary minibar charge, check which folio each lands on, then reverse both.

Money words at a glance#

Where does the front desk use one word for two things?#

Deposit and guarantee, block and allotment, walk-in and walk: each pair sounds like one idea and behaves like two, and the difference shows up in money and in inventory.

A deposit (kapora, avans) is money already received and posted to the folio. A guarantee is a promise to pay, usually a card or a contract, with nothing received yet. A guaranteed booking that does not arrive can be charged; a booking held only by a deposit is settled from that deposit.

A block (blok) is a set of rooms held for a group. An allotment (kontenjan) is rooms held for an agency to sell. STR's Forward STAR guidance says an allotment need not be reported as booked until a reservation is made against it and the room is taken out of inventory (CoStar Group, Forward STAR Data Reporting Guidelines, 2026). Two words, two inventory states. Bloke oda is not blok: one is a room taken out of sale, the other is a group holding. Say which one you mean, especially in a shift handover.

Pansiyon means board basis in a rate discussion and a small lodging in a facility list. When a sentence could be read either way, write oda kahvaltı or konaklama tesisi instead. Booking-status words such as definite, confirmed, tentative and optional are interpreted differently across the industry, per the same STR guidance. If a contract uses one, write down what it means for your hotel.

What is the difference between a guaranteed reservation and a no-show?#

A guarantee is the condition you attach to a booking. A no-show is what happens when the guest neither arrives nor cancels. The first decides whether you may charge; the second decides what you record.

A reservation record needs, at minimum, name and contact, arrival and departure dates, room type, rate and rate code, board basis, guarantee type, market or segment, and who pays for what. A walk-in is a guest who arrives without a booking: you sell from available inventory at the rate you choose, and you record the source as walk-in so the channel mix stays honest.

Walk (misafir kaydırma) means sending a guest with a confirmed booking to another property because you cannot honor it. This is a commercial practice, not something the desk can improvise; what you owe depends on your contract and your own policy, so agree the procedure with your lawyer and your insurer before it is needed.

No-show handling: charge according to the guarantee, close the folio, and record the event as a no-show rather than a stay. STR's guidelines define a no-show as a guest who guaranteed payment, did not cancel before arrival and did not occupy the room; they record no room night sold for it, and note that enforcing a guaranteed no-show policy can be discretionary, based on goodwill or guest loyalty (CoStar Group, Historical Benchmarking Data Reporting Guidelines, 2026). Group attrition and cancellation fees charged after the cutoff date are treated as miscellaneous income, not rooms revenue, in the same guidance. If your reports mix them, room revenue is overstated. Write the cancellation and no-show terms on the confirmation the guest receives: a charge the guest never saw in writing is a charge you will probably waive.

How do void, reversal, allowance and refund differ?#

A void cancels a posting that should never have existed. A reversal posts the opposite entry. An allowance reduces the amount owed. A refund sends money back. All four leave a trail, and none of them deletes anything.

Void (iptal) is used before the posting is settled, usually on the same business date and before night audit; the record stays, marked void. Reversal (ters kayıt) is used after the posting has been reported: you post the negative of the original with a reason, so the two entries can be read together. Allowance (indirim) is a reduction on the folio, for example after a service failure or at a negotiated rate; it reduces revenue and is not a payment.

Refund (iade) means money leaves the hotel. STR's guidelines ask for rooms revenue net of rebates, refunds, allowances and overcharges, and treat refunds for product or service problems as a reduction of rooms revenue (CoStar Group, Historical Benchmarking Data Reporting Guidelines, 2026). Complimentary rooms (ikram) are not revenue-generating rooms and are excluded from rooms sold in the same guidance; an owner-occupied room is treated as complimentary.

Desk rule: nobody deletes a posted charge. A hotel system should make deletion impossible and correction visible, which is why financial records are voided or reversed rather than removed. Ask who approved the correction and write the name in the reason field. The amount is small; the pattern is what an auditor looks for.

What are business date, night audit and cutoff?#

The business date is the day the hotel is accounting for, which is not always today's date. Night audit is the procedure that closes it. A cutoff is a time or a date after which something changes.

Between midnight and the end of night audit the hotel is usually still on yesterday's business date. A charge posted at 01:00 belongs to the night that is still open. Night audit closes the business day: it checks that rooms are accounted for, rates match, postings balance, and then moves the date forward. After it, yesterday is closed and only corrections are possible. To see how the whole day fits together, read how one hotel business day fits together.

Cutoff carries at least three meanings at one desk: the hour after which an arrival is treated as a no-show, the release date of a group block, and the deadline for same-day cancellation without charge. Write the meaning next to the number in your own procedure. Reports read the business date, not the clock: a daily report pulled at 09:00 and one pulled at 23:00 on the same calendar day can cover different business dates, which matters for what a GM's morning daily report should contain.

Read the date on the screen before posting anything unusual, especially on the first shift after a public holiday or a system restart. End each shift with a handover note: the business date, the open folios above a threshold you set, and anything posted without a reference.

What do rack rate and board basis mean?#

Rack rate is the hotel's published tariff rate. Board basis is what the rate includes in food and drink. Both are contract words before they are desk words.

Rack rate (tarife fiyatı) is the published reference rate. In Ministry-certified establishments the price tariffs applied are approved by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, under Article 16 of the Regulation on the Qualifications of Tourism Facilities (Presidential Decision No. 1134, consolidated to 31.08.2026, mevzuat.gov.tr). It is a reference point, not the rate most guests pay.

Board basis (pansiyon tipi) changes the cost of the stay without changing the room rate. A guest comparing two hotels on room rate alone is comparing two different products; say what is included before you quote. Occupancy words describe people, not beds: single, double, twin and triple say how many guests sleep in the room. An extra bed and a child policy are separate line items with their own prices.

Contract and channel terms such as allotment, release, rate plan and stop-sell belong to the distribution glossary. Keep the desk sheet to the words the desk actually uses, and link to the rest. Build it in both languages, English term and Turkish term side by side, because guests and staff each use one and neither is wrong.

What to do next#

Write your own one-page desk glossary this week: the English term, the Turkish word your staff actually use, one sentence of meaning and one desk example, and pin it where the shift handover happens. Then fix the two things a glossary cannot fix on its own: set routing before every group arrival, and make sure no one on the desk can delete a posted charge. Fiscal questions about invoices, accommodation tax and exchange rates go to your accountant, not to the glossary.