By: Jill Wilder, President of Aptech
I recently heard an interesting metaphor about a specific hotel accounting system feature: Having a dashboard moves you from driving with your eyes in the rearview mirror to facing forward.
You wouldn’t drive a car solely using the rearview mirror, you would want to look forward and have a full, clear picture of what is in front of you. It’s the same with your hotel’s accounting software; just like the driver of a car, a hotel’s finance team needs a dashboard right in front of them to make quick, educated decisions.
The hotel and resort industry market size worldwide reached 1.5 trillion USD last year, up from $1.43 trillion USD in 2022. For a market that grew five percent during that time, hotel companies can’t afford to underperform when compared to their competitors.
Accounting solution dashboards allow users to easily review financial and operational data, identify trends, detect potential challenges before they become larger issues, and monitor their organization’s overall financial health – all on one screen, without having to execute multiple reports.
Why Hotel Finance Teams Perform Better with Access to a Hotel-specific Accounting Solution Dashboard
Finance teams have instant access to accurate data from multiple sources to clearly see where their hotel property or properties stand from a cash perspective, what they owe, and how they are performing today compared to a year ago – ultimately, they have a better understanding of whether the organization is on track financially or whether adjustments need to be made.
With real-time access to financial and operational data, users can monitor performance and trends as they happen – facilitating and encouraging quicker reactions to changing conditions, such as market shifts or operational issues.
According to a recent HotelTechReport survey, 39% of hoteliers believe that technology’s most important value proposition is “improving operational efficiency”. A dashboard is just one example of a tool that improves decision-making, boosts operational efficiency and improves the financial health of the organization.
A dashboard seamlessly consolidates and displays information from multiple systems or data sources and brings those bits of information to the forefront. If you want to drill down and do more detailed research and analysis – down to each system – a dashboard is a quick gauge of where your property stands (or properties stand). Dashboards are not flashy; they are intended to bring accurate accounting information to the finance director without having to run reports. Many confuse the fact that a dashboard actually is not an analysis tool, but a quick report card.
The Most Important Benefit of Hotel Accounting Dashboards
One of the most important benefits of an accounting solution dashboard is that finance teams can actually look at the data and not get mired down in creating it. Traditionally, the hotel industry takes more time to create the numbers and far less time looking at them. When they have to report their performance, they don’t always have the time to review the numbers. Dashboards provide quick access to accurate financial data from multiple systems and provide the luxury of time – time to review the numbers and properly understand the financial health of the organization.
The Answer is Clear
Why would you create more work for your finance team by manually going through multiple screens of data when reviewing your hotel property’s (or properties’) financials? Dashboards – especially when part of a robust accounting system, budgeting and forecasting tool and an intuitive business intelligence solution – can provide direct access to multiple data points and multiple properties, all on one screen. The automation built into these systems removes the requirement of manually pulling multiple reports, and limits errors because of this. Additionally, the finance team can identify trends in the accounting data and prevent potential problems.
Now is a perfect time to review your back office and accounting systems and ensure your finance team is using hotel-specific solutions that offer dashboards. Your team will see immediate benefits and more effectively monitor the health of your business.
If the numbers you gather aren’t accurate and based on real-time data, then your reports won’t be either and you will not have a clear view of your hotel’s performance. Dashboards empower hotel operators to make more informed decisions, improve efficiency, and achieve strategic goals. It’s time you ride in the front seat and properly drive your organization’s financial health forward.
