help wanted: night audit preflight for due-outs with open balance (base-15)

[telivity-otaip]

Why hotels care

Night auditors live this vignette every peak season (ops/harden/vignettes/base-15-night-audit-due-out-balance.md):

One due-out still has an open balance. Night auditor must not blindly close the day and invent a ghost checkout — and must not spend 40 minutes hunting the folio.

If audit "succeeds" while money is still on the house, occupancy and revenue flash reports lie until morning chaos.

Current state (code anchors)

• NightAuditService — idempotent runs (Bug 4), posts room charges, marks due-outs
• Staff notifications on audit.completed (errors / net revenue)
• Harden vignette base-15 defines BLOCKER vs FRICTION
• Folio balance APIs exist; preflight exception list for "due-out + balance > 0" is the gap to confirm/implement

What we need

1. GET (or audit dry-run) preflight exceptions before/with night audit: due-outs with non-zero balance, other locked exceptions already in product
2. Night-audit UI lists them with deep links to folio / front-desk departure
3. Policy switch (property setting) after operator input:
   • warn (default): audit may proceed, exceptions recorded on the run
   • block: refuse complete until acknowledged / resolved
4. Do not invent "ghost checkout" — never auto-checkout to make audit green
5. Tests + wire into ops/harden checklist

Open questions (night auditors / GMs)

• Should open city-ledger / direct-bill due-outs be exceptions or allowed?
• Acknowledge-and-proceed enough, or must cashier close the folio?
• Same treatment for in-house folios with large unposted POS?

Acceptance criteria

• Preflight returns due-out + open-balance rows for the business date
• Dashboard night-audit surface shows them before close
• No automatic checkout invented to clear the list
• Property policy warn vs block (defaults to warn until operators say otherwise)
• Vitest + vignette base-15 updated with the happy path

How to contribute

Night auditors and people who have closed hotels in Opera/Mews/Apaleo: please comment on warn vs block. Engineers: start with read-only preflight + UI.

Search keywords: night audit, due out, open balance, day close, folio, hotel audit exceptions, front office