How to Avoid Death by Spreadsheet

Every property or hotel management company we work with tells us the same thing – the Daily Income Journal is your most important operational report. And for many, it’s also the most challenging to get your hands on.

In this article, we’ll talk about why it’s so difficult to produce a timely and accurate daily income journal and what you can do to significantly improve the process (and your business!).

What is a Daily Income Journal?

First things first, let’s take a look at why the daily income journal is so important for companies in the hospitality industry.

In a nutshell, a daily income journal reports on the cash that’s coming in everyday.

In a traditional accounting system, reports are usually built around a period – Month, quarter, year-to-date, etc.  But that’s not helpful for a hotel or property management company that needs to review and analyze occupancy rates, revenue, and budgets on a daily basis.

The challenges of managing daily revenues and budgets are just the nature of the industry. There’s a potentially huge difference between the occupancy rate (and the money you’re going to make) on a Friday or Saturday night versus a Tuesday or Wednesday.  Taking it a step further, that same Saturday night may generate more revenue in the summer months than in the winter (or holiday vs. non-holiday week).

By the time you get your hands on traditional financial statements at the end of the month, it’s way too late to make real-time adjustments and answer questions like:

• Did we perform as well as expected on Friday and Saturday?
• Do we need to discount room rates because of a temporary dip?
• Should we increase room rates because of an upcoming conference?
• Should we contact other local businesses and run a promotion?
• Does it make sense to run an ad?

Identifying these important trends and making forward looking adjustments rely heavily on your ability to quickly and easily produce a daily income journal.

But for many businesses, producing a daily income journal is not that simple.

Why Is It So Hard to Produce?

One of the most common challenges we see is the process of pulling huge amounts of data from a patchwork of different property management and/or point-of-sale (POS) systems into one consolidated report. Too often, all that data is manually pieced together and reconstructed (sometimes rekeyed) manually using Excel spreadsheets.

Sure, spreadsheets can serve their purpose and you can eventually produce a daily income journal. But the process is almost always very slow, tedious, and error-prone.  In addition, the more properties you manage, the more data you have coming in from many different software systems and the more time and effort it will take to pull data from all the different formats into one spreadsheet.

This tedious process makes it tempting to want to cut corners, which can result in a report that’s inaccurate, incomplete, unreliable, or all of the above.

Is There a Better Way?

The answer is yes – through better use of technology.

At Acumen Information Systems, we’ve developed a unique and automated approach to producing a daily income journal for our clients that’s simple and efficient.  By connecting to various property management systems and extracting the data automatically, we’re able to pull all the information needed into one single database in a very fast and efficient way. From there, you get a daily income journal that can be produced in seconds.

Powerful built-in reporting tools allow you to slice, dice, and analyze daily revenue, forecast, and budget on multiple departments and properties. No more spreadsheet chaos or re-keying/double entry of data.

Make More Timely Decisions

You can probably think of a lot of reasons that the daily income journal is one of the most important reports for a company in the hospitality industry. But essentially, it all boils down to one thing … the ability to make timely decisions and real-time adjustments.

You need to identify and diagnose an under-performing day or weekend in a timely manner. On the flip side, it’s equally important to analyze a day that did better than expected and determine what may have contributed to the success. Producing a timely and effective daily income journal is the key to spotting these trends quickly, before it’s too late to do anything about it.

In short, every single day of the week for a hotel comes with a different expectation that’s based on too many factors and too much data to manage manually.

If you’re drowning in data and spreadsheets, click below to learn more about our end-to-end software solution for hotel accounting and reporting.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][fusion_button link=”/sage-300-for-hospitality” color=”default” size=”medium” type=”” shape=”” target=”_self” title=”” gradient_colors=”|” gradient_hover_colors=”|” accent_color=”” accent_hover_color=”” bevel_color=”” border_width=”1px” shadow=”{{shadow}}” icon=”fa-hand-o-right” icon_divider=”yes” icon_position=”left” modal=”” animation_type=”shake” animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.3″ alignment=”left” class=”” id=””]Hotel Accounting[/fusion_button]

–

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]