Accounting

[Cruiseqeries]

I recently went to Australia on the Golden Princess. This was not my first time cruising with Princess. It’s also not the first time l have commented about their accounting system not only is their inital invoicing hard to understand (and I spent over 40 years as a bookkeeper), but their onboard bar record system is atrocious.  You only get a TOTAL for the drinks at each visit, and have no idea if it was your order or it belongs to someone else. I'm sure if you query this at the front desk it would be given to you, but this should not be necessary.

Yvonne Kittson 

Room B704 

[OzKiwiJJ]

On our recent Sea Princess cruise the drinks were immediately charged to our account per order, ie two cocktails would show as one charge, if we ordered another two that would be a different charge. Since I was tracking our average daily drinks spend (to compare against the package price) I was checking our account daily using Princess@Sea and had no difficulty confirming that the charges were correct. Yes, it would have been nice to have seen exactly what cocktails or wines we chose on a particular day as that would have provided a very useful record of what wines we enjoyed but, given Princess have only just moved from paper bar dockets, I'm reasonably happy with the level of detail provided so far. Maybe the Medallion will allow more detail to be captured.

[MicCanberra]

I usually check my account daily as well just to ensure I have not been charged for something I shouldn't be. I find it is better to get onto these things straight away rather than waiting until the night before debarkation.

[Bubbeh]

I'm with Mic and JJ, I check my spend on a daily basis.  I also run a hard  day book based on receipts and I write alongside each expense what it was for.  I've never yet had to contest a charge but, as an retired public servant and once upon a time bean counter, I find this a useful practice.

[OzKiwiJJ]

35 minutes ago, Bubbeh said:

I'm with Mic and JJ, I check my spend on a daily basis.  I also run a hard  day book based on receipts and I write alongside each expense what it was for.  I've never yet had to contest a charge but, as an retired public servant and once upon a time bean counter, I find this a useful practice.

I used a spreadsheet on my phone on our last cruise. It took a while to set up but it worked really well. Each day I check our account through Princess@Sea and plugged in the costs from the previous day so I could easily see what our daily pp average was for drinks. After a couple of weeks, once the average had smoothed out, we knew we could occasionally indulge in some of the more expensive wines without coming anywhere near the budget I'd set.

[Bubbeh]

13 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

After a couple of weeks, once the average had smoothed out, we knew we could occasionally indulge in some of the more expensive wines without coming anywhere near the budget I'd set.

Yay another budget setter!  I set a $100 (AUD) per day grog (wine / whiskey for me) spend for most cruises and as I drink very little on shore days, I've always found myself ahead.  Hubby drinks hardly at all, the occasional ale and American Honey or Drambuie.  Returned last week from a cruise, Singapore / Penang / Phuket with so much residual spend that I bought myself a very nice pearl necklace before disembarking.  😊

[MicCanberra]

LOL, I also budget for a daily spend, with port days differing to sea days.

Sometimes, what is saved on shoreside expenses can be spent onboard later on the cruise or put towards the next cruise.

[GUT2407]

And then I roll over the left over for a splurge if I need it.

[OzKiwiJJ]

1 hour ago, Bubbeh said:

Yay another budget setter!  I set a $100 (AUD) per day grog (wine / whiskey for me) spend for most cruises and as I drink very little on shore days, I've always found myself ahead.  Hubby drinks hardly at all, the occasional ale and American Honey or Drambuie.  Returned last week from a cruise, Singapore / Penang / Phuket with so much residual spend that I bought myself a very nice pearl necklace before disembarking.  😊

I budget for everything I can think of. You should see my master cruise spreadsheet, a separate sheet for each cruise plus a summary sheet showing pp per day costs so I can compare prices of new cruises.

 

Because of the drinks price increases I set a $70pp per day budget - we both have predinner cocktails, wine with dinner (and we don't always pick the cheapest wines 😉), and a nightcap. DH will sometimes have a beer with lunch but I usually don't bother. Our average over the whole cruise was $55 pp per day. Quite a decent saving so we decided to sneak in another short cruise before Xmas. 🤣

[OzKiwiJJ]

24 minutes ago, MicCanberra said:

LOL, I also budget for a daily spend, with port days differing to sea days.

Sometimes, what is saved on shoreside expenses can be spent onboard later on the cruise or put towards the next cruise.

As far as onboard drinks costs go port and sea days are no different for us but I budgrt foe onshore spending, including lunches, separately.

[MicCanberra]

There are different spends on the port days for shore/sure.

[Cruiseqeries]

Thanks for all the input on my post, BUT, I have to add more information for all to understand the problem.  I did check my Princess@Sea every day, but the amounts were totals (not broken down by drink) and after I checked at the desk, I was told it would be available soon.  This was not done the whole cruise of 29 days!  Poor accounting practice!!!!

[possum52]

1 hour ago, Cruiseqeries said:

Thanks for all the input on my post, BUT, I have to add more information for all to understand the problem.  I did check my Princess@Sea every day, but the amounts were totals (not broken down by drink) and after I checked at the desk, I was told it would be available soon.  This was not done the whole cruise of 29 days!  Poor accounting practice!!!!

I understand what you are saying, but I think the others who posted have kept track of how many drinks they have had and how much they cost each day. We certainly do that each cruise, particularly since the issuing of paper receipts from bar sales was discontinued. We haven't found any errors since during this time but we certainly did when paper receipts were issued. One cruise we were charged quite a large amount one late afternoon but our receipt showed it was just for two drinks. I queried it and watched as a staff member went through all the receipts for that particular bar and day and found our cabin number had been incorrectly put on a large group's receipt. It was all sorted quickly.

 

Leigh

[MicCanberra]

I just check daily, normally shows which bars, and what time, I purchased drink but not what the drink was.

[Kaylacool]

On 11/9/2019 at 10:57 AM, OzKiwiJJ said:

I budget for everything I can think of. You should see my master cruise spreadsheet, a separate sheet for each cruise plus a summary sheet showing pp per day costs so I can compare prices of new cruises.

 

Because of the drinks price increases I set a $70pp per day budget - we both have predinner cocktails, wine with dinner (and we don't always pick the cheapest wines 😉), and a nightcap. DH will sometimes have a beer with lunch but I usually don't bother. Our average over the whole cruise was $55 pp per day. Quite a decent saving so we decided to sneak in another sh ort cruise before Xmas. 🤣

Well done to you on keeping on top of expenditure.  I would love to be so organised. Is it possible at all for you to share your spreadsheet?

thanks

Kayla

[OzKiwiJJ]

52 minutes ago, Kaylacool said:

Well done to you on keeping on top of expenditure.  I would love to be so organised. Is it possible at all for you to share your spreadsheet?

thanks

Kayla

Sorry but it's not a simple spreadsheet and usually has to be tweaked for each cruise as they are all different  - different cruise lines so some USD conversions, some involve extra travel and so on. It's fairly messy. 🤣

[mr walker]

22 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

I just check daily, normally shows which bars, and what time, I purchased drink but not what the drink was.

Yes I normally check the account every couple of days, either on TV where available or just get a printout, & as you say it's just a where from & how much, not a what, was purchased. I usually toss any receipts at the same time. Me not having a receipt for something is not proof I didn't buy, else we would all just throw the receipts out 🙂

 

That said, I have found their accounting system pretty accurate, some times I find charges that I had forgotten about 😮 

 

I normally have a daily 'budget' of onboard expenses in mind, and mostly it works out close on average, but we buy what we want & do not pay attention to what we may have or may not have up our sleeve, or not as the case may be. After all we are only 'at sea' for around 20 days a year 🙁

[Gwendy]

Another daily checker either with app or on tv or failing all of those paper.  Cunard only does paper printouts of accounts.

On Sea Princess earlier this year when at times you just give your cabin no, no card required, I had four or five instances where my drinks never reached my account.  Maybe  they were charged to other people who knows.

[GUT2407]

I Don’t Normally keep any accounting, but then we don’t spend much

[MicCanberra]

I don't spend that much but it is still enough that I want to keep track of what we spend.

[GUT2407]

Sometimes we spend a lot but not many transactions

[GUT2407]

I do count Diet Cokes at least until I hit break even

[OzKiwiJJ]

On our last cruise I also tracked the number of coffees we ordered on our coffee cards. Let's just say that we had a very stretchy 15 coffees on each card 😉

[MicCanberra]

6 hours ago, GUT2407 said:

Sometimes we spend a lot but not many transactions

That would be K doing those ones.

[GUT2407]

27 minutes ago, MicCanberra said:

That would be K doing those ones.

Mmmmmm probably.