Is your hotel portfolio currently on the hunt for the best hotel accounting software? Whether you’ve gathered up a few RFPs and are well on your way to finding the right fit for you, or are just starting a hotel accounting software comparison to begin determining what will be a good fit for your company, this hotel accounting software checklist will be your new best friend throughout the process. Make sure to pull up the questions below during your next vendor call or demo to help your team find the best hotel accounting software for your needs, or download our free PDF hotel accounting software checklist at the bottom of the page!

Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Quest

Hospitality Specificity

When gathering hotel accounting RFPs, ensuring that the prospective accounting software offers hospitality-specific features is of the utmost importance. Why? The hospitality industry is known for being financially complex. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • Do you support USALI chart of accounts and reporting formats?

• • Can your system handle hospitality-specific revenue recognition?

• • How are gift cards, loyalty points, and comp/house accounts handled?

• • How does the system handle market segmentation and channel-level revenue reporting?

Integration and Data Flow

When looking for the best hotel accounting software for your portfolio, make sure the software offers a plethora of integration capabilities, ensuring your data can flow from your old accounting setup to the new one as easily as possible. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • How does your accounting software integrate with payroll and time-and-attendance systems, given the complexity of hospitality’s labor complexity?

• • Which PMS platforms do you have native, pre-built integrations with?

• • Are your integrations real-time, batch, or manual file upload? What’s your typical sync frequency?

Multi-Property Capabilities

Even if your portfolio is only a few properties right now, investing in an accounting solution that can grow alongside your company will prevent you from having to switch software amidst a season of growth later. Ask these questions to make sure your prospective vendor can grow into the future of your company. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • Can each property maintain its own chart of accounts while still being able to access everything from a standardized corporate view?

• • How easily can you onboard newly acquired properties?

• • Can users have property-specific or role-based access permissions within a single instance?

• • How does your platform handle consolidated reporting across multiple properties with different ownership structures?

Reporting and Business Intelligence

Ensuring a prospective hotel accounting software has robust reporting and business intelligence capabilities is an essential part of a thorough hotel accounting vendor evaluation. The questions below will help elucidate the robustness of a vendor’s reporting and BI capabilities. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • Can your software generate USALI-compliant P&L’s, balance sheets, and STR-comparable reports natively?

• • What’s the flexibility for custom report building?

• • Is there real-time dashboarding for KPIs such as RevPAR, GOPPAR, flow-through, and labor cost percentages?

Implementation and Support

If a software takes ages to implement and the onboarding process is convoluted, too short, or doesn’t exist at all, it doesn’t matter how good it is. In many cases, your team will struggle to actually learn how to gain any value from it. Below are some questions to ask to avoid signing a contract with a software vendor with an implementation process that feels like an Ikea furniture assembly. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • What does a typical implementation timeline look like for a property of our size/complexity?

• • We have access to accounting services, and what is the hospitality service of that team?

• • What data migration support is provided?

• • What training is included, and is it role-specific?

• • May we speak to multiple reference accounts of similar size and scope to discuss their onboarding experience?

Automation and AI Readiness

Automation and AI: They’re the next big thing. When doing a hospitality accounting software comparison, make sure to ask questions about how these tools are implemented into a vendor’s software offering. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • What AP automation exists with your software?

• • Does your platform offer predictive casting or business intelligence suggestions and strategy?

• • Does your software use AI or automation for anomaly and error detection in transactions?

Services and Outsourced Accounting Options

If necessary, it is nice to have the option to outsource accounting needs to a knowledgeable team of hotel accounting veterans available at your fingertips. Instead of a “set it and forget it” vendor, ask these questions to make sure you’re getting the service you deserve alongside an appropriate software offering. Hotel Accounting Software Comparison Questions to Ask:

• • Do you offer outsourced accounting services? How hands-on are these services?

• • What’s the staffing model for your outsourced services?

• • What’s the pricing structure for outsourced services?

• • What’s your experience level with hotel-specific outsourced accounting versus general outsourced bookkeeping?

Which One of Your Prospective Vendors is Going to Provide the Best Hotel Accounting Software for Your Needs?

The bottom line is that it’s going to be the vendor that has the answers to these questions that best suit your company. To best decide, use this downloadable hotel accounting software checklist to find out! In the mood to test out this checklist sooner rather than later? Schedule a demo with M3 today and bring your checklist to see if we might be the right fit for your company.

FAQs

What should a hotel include in an accounting software RFP?

A hotel accounting software RFP should cover the scope of a project, functional requirements, and technical requirements. It should also offer a clear pricing breakdown and details on the implementation timeline and ongoing support.

How do you compare hotel accounting software vendors?

Compare hotel accounting software vendors based on your company’s specific needs. If you need assistance coming up with questions to compare vendors, check out our free, downloadable hotel accounting software checklist.

What differentiates hotel-specific accounting software from generic solutions?

Hotel-specific accounting software will have capabilities such as multi-property accounting, USALI compliance, and property-specific chart of accounts that make it easier for hotel management companies to use compared to a generic accounting solution.