Accounting should be able to provide a hotel owner reliable insight into the operations and financial well-being of their business.  Insightful reports must be available without delay all the time to all key personnel without the owner or others waiting for their accountant to get around to creating the reports.  To operate your hospitality business efficiently, here are some more features available in a good accounting program:

  1. Strong Security – With a web-based accounting program you want to know that your data is secure. Data should be kept only on the server and there should be added security measures like encrypted communications and database encryption. Also, advanced security features within the software should allow you to control when and where your staff access the system. Your accounting software should also have the ability to let you assign specific roles and limitations to deny or grant access to individual line item accounts and processes. This specificity of control allows you to delegate more efficiently without compromising confidential information.  You control who sees what.
  2. Drill Down Reporting – Have you ever been reviewing past profit and loss statements, and seen an unusually high expense? If you have to go track down invoices, you’re wasting your time. Look for a program that has drill down reporting. ‘Drill down’ means you can easily click on one journal entry and it seamlessly opens another inquiry screen until the original line item entry and even the document is revealed, and you can see who made the entry, or who approved it if it’s approved.  Perhaps there was a large party which required extra supplies for that time period. With drill down report, you can accelerate your decision-making with quick access to past information and provide insights into future needs.
  3. General Ledger Consolidation – You can integrate financial reports across multiple hotels, still keeping separate books, to get consolidated financial reports. Use these reports to get an overview of your entire portfolio’s performance in any period, or one grouping of hotels, with support for multiple ledgers. Also, it’s a great tool to compare hotel sets within your portfolio. To do this, maintain the three C’s, same Chart of Accounts, same Calendar year, same Currency, at the hotels to be rolled up into consolidated reports.
  4. Advanced Financial Reporting –Programs with advanced financial reporting offer integrated reporting tools which are customizable so you can design financial statements that are tailored to your hotel(s) and create multiple budgets for different scenarios. Take advantage of built in financial reports which provide year-over-year comparison and budgets versus actuals, or show expenses as PAR or POR, for a deeper understanding of operations.
  5. Integrations – Consolidate the tools you use to manage your business more efficiently with other products which integrate with certain web-based accounting programs. For instance, manage employ functions with an employee portal. Other simplifying integrations available include Accounts Payable Automation, Microsoft Office 365 and Power BI, to list a few.

We will be hosting a free live webinar on how to get more from your hotel accounting on Tuesday August 2nd. I hope you join us for this educational event focused on improving hotel accounting efficiencies. Register at http://mbahotels.com/?page=webinar_register
What are your thoughts on or frustrations with your current hotel accounting program?  Are you looking for a better solution?  I’d love to hear from you. Email me at Charlie@mbahotels.com.
 
‘Till Next Time,
– Charlie Fritsch