Accounting is one of the most important processes hotels need to do on a regular basis. However, it’s not an easy task, and there are many challenges surrounding it. What’s even worse is that accounting often needs to be done when employees are overcrowded, and they have many other tasks that seem far more important to them.
Therefore many hotels have adopted hotel accounting software solutions to help them deal with this part of their work more effectively. However, the issue here is that not all hotel software that is used today is efficient. In fact, some of them reduce productivity and overall results.
Simply put, not all hotel accounting software is created equal. Here is how to recognize if your solution is hindering your work.
1. Unstable system and slow performance
The most obvious red flag showing that your hotel accounting software is outdated is sluggish performance. The whole purpose of these solutions was to harness the digital power of computers and use their resources to quickly tackle various accounting operations without having to do so manually.
However, if your software is so slow that it cannot track what you or your employees are typing in, then you would be better off without it. Additionally, if your software often freezes entirely and you can’t continue your work until you restart it, then this is quite damaging.
A lot of systems are poorly designed, and they start to have similar issues as soon as they are installed. On the other hand, some simply don’t have the capacity for a lot of data, and after some time, they start being unstable.
2. Employees Making manual reports
I was surprised when I learned that many of the hotels that use hotel accounting software don’t use these solutions to create their reports. The reason for this is that a lot of the software designed for hospitality needs doesn’t allow users to make reports.
On the other hand, some that do are much too complicated to use, and their report-making functionalities are poorly designed. Furthermore, some systems don’t even have the ability to track all the relevant data. The system should allow you to consolidate data in a few easy clicks. It should also provide a quick overview of financial activity, be it a single hotel or a chain.
This means that whoever is doing the reports won’t have all the data they need to get accurate results. In most cases, hotels decide to do this aspect of their work manually, but this just means that their hotel software is counterproductive.
3. Inaccurate inventory levels and cost calculations
Managing inventory is one of the essential aspects of accounting. All the items in the hotel need to be accounted for to be replaced and stocked on time.
This is how the hotel management ensures that they don’t spend more money than they should, while at the same time giving the guests all the things they need for a comfortable stay.
A hotel accounting software is designed to help you streamline cost calculations and keep track of the exact inventory numbers at any given moment. If this is still happening even while you are using the software, either that solution is not good, or your employees are using it in the wrong way.
The system should have a store valuation feature across the entire hotel chain. Also, it should provide recipe based costing to improve F&B cost accuracy.
4. Excessive overhead costs
One of the tricky parts of running a hotel is that there are many potential overhead costs that need to be tracked properly and controlled. If not, they will skyrocket, and it will be difficult to find out where the money is leaking.
If you notice that you have high overhead, but you can’t track down the issue(s), the chances are that your hotel accounting software is not good enough. A good system will allow you to account for all your overhead and help you reduce the costs of running, not increase them.
5. Loss of time and information
The right software should make the whole accounting process and all related tasks easier, therefore, reducing wasted time. It should make these operations faster while ensuring operational efficiency.
If your software is unreliable in terms of shutting down, malfunctioning or having technical issues, these benefits can even turn into clutter. You might end up having faulty or partial information that could lead to other big issues throughout your establishment.
On top of that, your employees could waste a lot of time trying to perform an action using the software. If this is the case, then your software needs to be replaced.
The point of this post is not to say that hotel account software solutions are generally bad. However, some of them are simply outdated and don’t meet the current standards. Therefore, you should find a modern, cloud-based solution like the only complete cloud hotel solution mycloud Hospitality to help you get rid of these issues and further improve your operations.
About The Author
Deepak Chauhan
Deepak Chauhan is responsible for marketing and positioning of “mycloud” platform and is a veteran in the hotel software industry with over 25 years’ experience giving him a strong understanding of the product requirements in the industry. He has very rare mix of working in operations of various hotels and chains for over 10 years and then co-founding a software product and service company, servicing 5 star hotels and chains for 14 years.
Deepak has led the development and marketing of cloud based hospitality systems to meet the specific, business objectives of small and mid-size properties across the globe and has worked closely with a diverse group of hoteliers and hotel technology vendors.
