Accounting software for a hotel?

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I've been asked about which accounting software would be most appropriate for a hotel.

They use separate software for bookings, restaurant sales and stock etc, and daily summaries of takings are posted into the accounts system. All in, number of transactions through the software each month are approx 1,000. 

Any suggestions? Are Xero or Quickbooks Online the best options here, or is it worth looking at other software?

 

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By paul.benny
12th May 2022 09:52

I would suggest that you and the hotel need to define the requirements in more detail. Most fundamentally, do you want the finance systems to be integrated with the booking and payment systems (hint - you probably do). Ditto stock management and costing for the restaurant.

Are all/nearly all customers cash on checkout? Does hotel take deposits/prepayments? Is there much corporate business with credit accounts? How are bookings via intermedaries handled?

Etc

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By Deejay
17th May 2022 04:20

What I can tell you is this. Some years ago, consulting firm Mercer was brought in by the FD of the multinational I worked for to do some business process reengineering. The FD's second-in-command was the Head of Financial Planning & Analysis. My position at the time was Head of Business Profitability Systems - it was my job to design, build and deliver profitability analysis software to the company's accountants and financial analysts.

To cut a long story short, as part of its reworking of the company's costing processes, Mercer wanted to sell the company a cost allocation system based around an Access database, of all things. The FD asked my boss for his recommendations regarding this proposed system. The problem was that my boss was not a systems accountant and had no idea how to evaluate Mercer's proposal. Not wanting to admit that he did not know how to do evaluate the proposed system, he asked Mercer if their system would work. Naturally, Mercer recommended their own system, and my boss gave the FD his backing for it and, based on this, the FD signed the cheque for it.

Needless to say, trying to perform cost allocations for a multi-billion Euro company on an Access database led the system to fall flat on its face on day one. The company paid over a million pounds for a database that did not work and my boss spent a frantic few weeks trying to cover up the fact that he had messed up in a very big way.

The moral of the story - if someone asks you (especially if it's someone with whom you have an important business relationship) for a systems recommendation and you don't know how to answer, say that you don't know. Don't ask an unknown party or parties for their advice and then forward it to the asker as if it were yours. The chance of ending up with egg on one's face by doing that is very high.

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Aqilla
By Aqilla Cloud Accounting
13th Jun 2022 09:38

We have several hotels using Aqilla, many doing what you describe above and fully integrated

www.aqilla.com

Aqilla is a mid-market, “designed for Cloud”, Accounting / Postmodern ERP solution that sits above the well-known entry-level SME products such as Xero, Quickbooks and Sage. It has the capabilities of products like SunSystems (Infor FMS), SAP Business One, Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Intacct and many others but at a fraction of the complexity and cost.

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Replying to Aqilla Cloud Accounting:
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By Leywood
13th Jun 2022 11:18

Only 'several' out of the many many many?

You been asleep on the job Aqilla, only responding to posts form April and May today? ;-P

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