6 Features to Maximize Return on Investment of Your Business and Accounting Software
There comes a point in the growth of your hotel business when manual entry, separate databases and inadequate reports and data from your legacy back-of-house technology is costing you more time and resources. You know you want one integrated software system that is easy to use, secure, offers time-saving efficiencies, and can help lower your operational costs, but what do you need to get these results? Here are 6 features to look for in modern business systems to get the highest return on investment.
- True Cloud ERP
True Cloud means that the software was built from the ground up to be hosted on the cloud across many hundreds of servers with multiple layers of data redundancy. All functionality is accessible through a standard web browser from anywhere, including on a mobile device. An added feature to make your life easier will be a full-functionality mobile app. In addition, with True Cloud the service provider is responsible for maintenance and upgrades.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software allows you to manage your hotel operations and business systems on one software platform. Your accounting, sales, customer service (CRM), human resources and business intelligence will be supported by a centralized database which allows each module or application to “talk” to the others; sharing data for more powerful and informative reports and analytics. Gain more business insight for better, more informed decisions.
- Designed for hotels
Hotels are a unique business model with unique data entry and report needs. By choosing a software with PMS integration, pre-built daily reports, and other hotel reports and custom dashboards, you save yourself and your staff the headache and time of trying to make your own customizations, work-arounds, and “fixes”.
- Flexibility
As a hotelier, your portfolio is often churning. You need software that accommodates and grows with your business; with flexibility like adding users without adding cost, plus integrated add-on features you can implement when you’re ready. The most flexible software will let you add a new hotel to your books with a few clicks and easily handle multi-company, multi-currency and inter-company accounting. Intercompany accounting reduces administration for hotels that want to regularly share venders, employees, inventory, and customers. Lastly, you need the flexibility to customize your dashboard, reports, work flows and approval processes.
- Automations
Recapture hours of the time for the GM, hotel accountant, and all employees, down to front desk staff, to focus on more important aspects of the business. Save time with automations like automated bank reconciliation, automated processes in accounts payable, automated payment processing, automated tax calculations and more. Plus, automated report generation gathers the information your GM needs daily, and automatically send reports to owners.
- Integrations
An ERP is a platform which interacts and integrates with many other systems. Adding integrated solutions for other areas of your business offers additional time savings and greater data and analysis. Hoteliers can benefit from integrating their accounting with services like AP automation, document management, sales tax automation, payroll, third-party HR, and credit card processing. Plus, when all your data is in one place, it’s easy to access everything in a few clicks. From a report, such as your Profit and Loss statement, click to view the invoice, vendor record, payment, or customer.
- Analytics
When you know more, you can make better business decisions, and profit more. Modern ERP and accounting software offers advanced analytics simply not available in Quickbooks, or any legacy business system. Design your own custom reports to see exactly what you need to know. Or use ready-made report templates. Here are a few reports you may want to get: Daily Flash with consolidation of multiple properties, On-The-Books/ Pace reporting directly imported from your PMS, and POR Comparison report to do internal benchmarking.
Lastly, I will mention as a hotel broker, that when it comes time to sell a hotel, it is vital to have current profit and loss statements. There is a saying in the industry, “time kills all deals”. A buyer can lose interest while waiting for delayed or late monthly or year-to-date financial statements. I would also add; detailed and accurate P&Ls are equally important. Insufficient accounting and reports can negatively impact a sale value. Potential buyers want to see precise line-items to make their own budgets and projections.
If you are ready to upgrade your accounting software, there is no software with as many integrations and automations or as fairly-priced as Hotel Investor Apps ERP & Accounting Software.
Hotel Investor Apps ERP & Accounting is built on an award-winning platform with 9 years of growth, 5,700+ companies on the platform in the USA and 150+ integrations. So, you get the advanced accounting functionality to handle all the complexities of your hotel portfolio with hotel-specific functionality like automatically importing PMS data into your daily report. Plus, ready-made reports and dashboards with the key performance indicators that hoteliers need to know. Dashboards and reports are fully customizable to provide each employee exactly the information they need. Just drag and drop tiles; even live stream third-party websites like Medalia and TripAdvisor to dashboards. Hotel Investor Apps offers a full mobile app, bank-level security, easy customization, plus digital help-guides, universal search and flexible live, online one-on-one training.
Hotel Investor Apps ERP & Accounting software is a true-cloud modern accounting solution that is helping hoteliers simplify and accelerate their business.
Learn more at https://hotelinvestorapps.com.
‘Til Next Time,
– Charlie Fritsch & Jaime Goss