Have you ever wondered why your revenue looks the way it does?
You have that P&L right there and you think, “Wait a minute...these revenue numbers...where are they coming from? How does this activity get here? Where are the details?”
First off, IT'S OKAY! We get that question from our new hotel owners and general managers a lot!
You see, 95% of the hotel revenue amounts found on your P&L are coming from your accounting system's Daily Revenue Report Module.
Now this is key!
Your Daily Revenue Report is the gatekeeper into your hotel accounting system like Hotel Investor Apps
or M3 regarding sales!
Hotel POS (Point of Sale) and PMS (Property Management Systems)
This is the entry point for all the activity from your Point of Sale Systems (food and beverage outlets like Squirrel or Aloha) AND your Property Management Systems (this is the front desk system like Fosse, OnQ, Opera, StayNTouch, etc).
All the revenue, non-revenue, hotel ledger, and receipt activity from your hotel systems feed to your accounting system's Daily Revenue Report.
Then that activity for each day creates the journal and cash entries to your general ledger which then creates that P&L.
The items on your Daily Revenue Report are made up of your chart of accounts.
SO, if you are using the same GL account for multiple items on your daily revenue report, ALL of that activity will be listed as a lump sum on your P&L.
If you want those details each item on your Daily Revenue Report will need it’s own GL account number.
So let’s do a 30,000 foot recap on how revenue activity gets to your P&L statement!
Activity from the POS and PMS Systems is captured into your hotel's accounting system's Daily Revenue Reporting Module.
The Daily Revenue Reporting Module is the gatekeeper and captures the activity here.
The activity is broken into daily revenue items and those items are associated to a specific General Ledger account from your Chart of Accounts.
That General Ledger activity then makes up the P&L numbers you are reviewing at the end of each month.
In essence, this is why the Daily Report is absolutely VITAL to your hotel's P&L statement and so important for your hotel accountant.
If the Daily Report is not right, your P&L WILL NOT be right.
So, the very first thing to do if your revenue seems off is investigate your Daily Revenue Report because it is the gatekeeper into your accounting system regarding sales! Since it is so important, we highly encourage your hotel accountant to complete an end of month accounting reconciliation between what your accounting system's Daily Revenue Report says and your PMS and POS Systems.
We require it as part of our process to make sure that what is captured in the accounting system 100% matches our hotel clients other systems. Then as a hotel owner, management company, and general manager you know that any discrepancy must be in one of those other systems and your accounting system is spot on!
