Accelerating Crisis Recovery: Turbocharge Your Hospitality Accounting System with These 5 Strategies
The hospitality industry has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to challenges and a lot of uncertainty for hotels and restaurants. With travel plans postponed or canceled, and restaurants forced to adapt to off-premises dining, the hospitality sector has faced significant challenges. However, one area that can provide a competitive advantage is revamping your hospitality accounting system.
In times of crisis, hospitality companies must find innovative ways to recover and thrive. By embracing new technologies and adopting modern financial management platforms, hospitality businesses can drive faster recovery and position themselves for long-term success.
Here are five strategies for hospitality businesses to accelerate their recovery:
Leverage automation for high-impact endeavours that bring significant value.
Manual processes can be time-consuming and prone to errors. By automating tasks in your hospitality accounting software, such as AP/AR, budgeting, planning, consolidations, and reporting, hospitality businesses can increase operational efficiency and free up valuable time for strategic initiatives.
Automated processes, including bank reconciliations and recurring invoices, save significant monthly hours, enabling finance teams to focus on driving revenue and customer satisfaction.
Harness the power of real-time data to make agile and informed strategic decisions.
In a dynamic environment, having access to real-time financial data is essential for making informed and agile decisions. Integrated cloud financial systems gather data from various sources, such as point-of-sale and property management systems, eliminating manual data entry and providing instant insights.
For example, connecting the hotel’s property management system to the financial system allows finance leaders to analyze guest booking patterns and revenue effects, enabling them to make optimal adjustments quickly.
Gaining a Comprehensive View of Your Business’s Financials
Real-time visibility into financial data is crucial for spotting trends and identifying areas of concern. To make informed decisions, you must have highly visible and easily digestible financial information in your hospitality accounting system.
Role-based dashboards provide real-time visibility to key operational and financial metrics, allowing finance leaders to monitor revenue, occupancy, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) at a glance. With drill-down capabilities, finance teams can quickly investigate drivers and take proactive measures to drive financial performance.
Empowering Remote Work By Embracing Cloud Solutions
The pandemic accelerated the shift to remote work, even in industries like hospitality that heavily rely on personal interaction. Cloud-based accounting systems enable employees to access up-to-date information from anywhere, facilitating remote work flexibility and ensuring business continuity.
The cloud offers cost savings, eliminates the need for server maintenance, reduces upgrade costs, and enables seamless collaboration and file sharing among team members.
Future-proof with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play a crucial role in continuously monitoring your business and identifying opportunities, risks, and events that may impact performance. It can revolutionize hospitality accounting by automating tasks that typically require human intelligence.
AI systems can analyze data, identify opportunities and risks, and provide real-time insights for strategic decision-making. For example, with AI, finance leaders can make timely adjustments to room rates, menu items, prices, and staffing allocations to optimize revenue and enhance overall performance.
Revamping the accounting system can provide a competitive advantage as the hospitality industry continues to navigate through uncertainty. By embracing automation, real-time data, enhanced visibility, cloud-based solutions, and AI, hospitality businesses can drive faster recovery and position themselves for long-term success.
In addition, investing in modern financial management platforms enables finance teams to focus on strategic initiatives, make informed decisions, and actively identify opportunities and risks. Embracing change and leveraging technology will propel your business forward in a post-pandemic world.
Sage Intacct offers a powerful solution to help businesses scale to new heights. Take advantage of the opportunity to unlock growth and resilience with a robust tech stack. Schedule a demo now and embark on a journey toward success.