Give the Back-Office to people who already speak Hotel.
Hospitality Accounting & Management Services (HAMS) gives independent hotels and groups a complete accounting team that reduces manual work, automates financial reporting, and closes the books on time, every month.
Trusted accounting support for hotels operating under the industry’s leading brands
Smarter Back-Office Solutions for Hoteliers.
One team for the whole accounting cycle, from the nightly audit to owner-ready financials, built to lodging-industry standards.
Cost Segregation
A hotel is one of the most component heavy assets in real estate, and most of that value depreciates faster than the building it sits in. A study breaks the property into its parts so flooring, casework, kitchen equipment, HVAC, signage, and site work can qualify for 5, 7, or 15 year recovery instead of a 39 year building life, and under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, for 100 percent bonus depreciation in year one. We coordinate the study, tie it back to your asset register, and hand your CPA schedules that hold up.
Learn more →Managed Accounting
Your full outsourced accounting department: AP, AR, GL, and month-end close with real-time portfolio visibility.
Learn more →Financial Reporting
USALI-compliant statements, departmental P&Ls, and budget-vs-actual owners and asset managers actually read.
Learn more →Labor & Payroll
Payroll coordination and demand-based labor reporting by department, tied to occupancy and your budget.
Learn more →Insights & BI
Dashboards that aggregate PMS, POS, and bank data into RevPAR, ADR, and flow-through you can act on.
Learn more →Tax Planning
Year-round planning from the same books we keep, so decisions get made while the year is still open. Structure, depreciation, and cost segregation coordinated to lower what you and your partners owe.
Learn more →Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation
A component-level asset register kept current through capex, disposals, and refurbishments, with depreciation schedules your CPA and lenders can rely on.
Learn more →From the first call to closed books, without the friction.
A simple, structured start gets you live in about two weeks, with a named team and reporting you can actually trust.
Book a discovery call
Tell us about your properties, your systems, and where the pain is. In 30 minutes you leave with a clear scope and a fixed price.
Onboard without disruption
We map your accounts to USALI, connect your PMS, POS and bank, and agree who does what, with no interruption to the front desk.
Meet your accountant
You get a named lead and a small team who know hotels, with their direct line and email. Never a shared support queue.
Run on numbers you trust
Reconciled daily, closed by day five, with owner-ready reporting. You finally steer the hotel on financials you can rely on.
Successful hoteliers know their numbers.
Close faster
A structured close calendar delivers reconciled financials by day five, not week three.
Cut manual work
Automated bank and PMS feeds replace spreadsheets and re-keying, so your team stops chasing numbers.
See every property
Consolidated and per-property views in one place, so you can compare, benchmark, and spot drift early.
Stay audit-ready
Clean trails and lender-ready packages mean tax time and due diligence are never a fire drill.
Tell us about your property.
A few details let us scope the right engagement and return a fixed monthly proposal, usually within two business days. No obligation.
- ✓ A tailored scope & fixed monthly quote
- ✓ A look at where your close is leaking time
- ✓ A named accountant who knows lodging
Our firm provides outstanding service to our clients because of our dedication to the three underlying principles of professionalism, responsiveness and quality.
01Professionalism+
Our firm is one of the leading firms in the area. By combining our expertise, experience and the energy of our staff, each client receives close personal and professional attention.
Our high standards, service and specialized staff spell the difference between our outstanding performance, and other firms. We make sure that every client is served by the expertise of our whole firm.
02Responsiveness+
Our firm is responsive. Companies who choose our firm rely on competent advice and fast, accurate personnel. We provide total financial services to individuals, large and small businesses and other agencies.
To see a listing of our services, please take a moment and look at our services page. Because we get new business from the people who know us best, client referrals have fueled our growth in the recent years.
Through hard work, we have earned the respect of the business and financial communities. This respect illustrates our diverse talents, dedication and ability to respond quickly.
03Quality+
An accounting firm is known for the quality of its service. Our firm's reputation reflects the high standards we demand of ourselves.
Our primary goal as a trusted advisor is to be available to provide insightful advice to enable our clients to make informed financial decisions. We do not accept anything less from ourselves and this is what we deliver to you.
We feel it is extremely important to continually professionally educate ourselves to improve our technical expertise, financial knowledge and service to our clients.
Our high service quality and "raving fan" clients are the result of our commitment to excellence.
We will answer all of your questions, as they impact both your tax and financial situations. We welcome you to contact us anytime.
Managed Accounting
Your full outsourced accounting department for hotels. Running a hotel means managing dozens of revenue streams, hundreds of vendors, and a labor model that changes with occupancy every week. Most independent hotels and small groups can't justify a full-time controller, yet they can't afford the blind spots that come from a part-time bookkeeper either. Managed Accounting closes that gap: HAMS becomes your accounting department. We handle the daily work, close the books on a schedule, and give owners a clear, current picture of every property.
What we take off your plate
Daily revenue and cash
We pull the night audit from your PMS, post revenue by department, reconcile cash, credit card settlements, and third-party payouts, and flag variances the same day they appear.
Accounts payable
Vendor invoices come to us. We code them to the right department, route them for approval, and prepare payment runs. You keep control of the bank: an owner or GM releases every payment.
Accounts receivable
City ledger, group master accounts, corporate direct bills, and travel-agent commissions are tracked, invoiced, and followed up so receivables don't quietly age into write-offs.
General ledger and reconciliations
Bank accounts, credit cards, PMS-to-GL, payroll clearing, and balance-sheet accounts are reconciled every month, not once a year when the CPA asks.
Month-end close
A fixed close calendar measured in business days, not weeks. Accruals, prepaids, management fees, and intercompany entries are booked so the statements you see are complete.
Reporting
USALI-formatted P&L, balance sheet, departmental statements, and budget-vs-actual, delivered on the same date each month. Multi-property owners receive a consolidated package alongside the individual hotels.
How it works
- Onboarding (30 to 45 days). We review your chart of accounts, map it to USALI, connect to your PMS, POS, bank, and payroll feeds, and clean up any backlog. No fiscal year-end required to start.
- Steady state. A named account lead and a small team handle your properties. You get a weekly touchpoint, a monthly close meeting, and a shared portal for approvals and documents.
- Your CPA stays your CPA. We prepare the year-end package and support the tax return; we don't replace your tax preparer or auditor.
What stays with you
Payment release, hiring and HR decisions, pricing and revenue management, and owner-level strategy. We give you the numbers and the analysis; the decisions remain yours.
Who it's for
- Independent hotels with 60 to 400 rooms that have outgrown a bookkeeper
- Owners of two to fifteen properties who want one set of books and one reporting format
- Management companies that would rather scale accounting than hire it
- Properties in the middle of a mess: months behind, no clean trial balance, or a controller who just left
Why HAMS
Hospitality is all we do. Our team understands USALI, PMS and POS systems, franchise reporting requirements, and the way hotel labor and revenue move with occupancy. You aren't teaching a generalist the business; you're adding people who already know it.
Related services
Managed Accounting is the foundation. Financial Reporting builds the monthly package from these books, Labor & Payroll supplies the labor detail behind the departmental statements, Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation keeps the capital side of the balance sheet right, and Insights & BI turns all of it into dashboards. Add any of them as needed.
Ready to hand off the books?
Tell us about your properties and we'll map out a transition plan within a week.
Talk to us →Financial Reporting
Owners, lenders, and brand partners all want the same thing from a hotel's financials: numbers they can trust, in a format they already know, delivered when they said they would be. Most hotels struggle on at least one of those three. Statements arrive three weeks late, the departments don't line up with the Uniform System of Accounts, or the GM and the owner are looking at two different versions of last month. Our reporting service fixes that. Every property gets the same package, built the same way, on the same day each month.
What we take off your plate
USALI statements
Departmental profit and loss for rooms, food and beverage, other operated departments, and undistributed expenses, laid out to the current edition of the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry so your numbers compare cleanly against STR, brand benchmarks, and your other hotels.
Balance sheet and cash flow
A reconciled balance sheet every month, with a cash flow statement that separates operations from owner distributions and capital spend. No surprises when the lender calls.
Budget versus actual
Line by line variance against the approved budget and the prior year, with a written commentary on anything material. Not just what moved, but why.
Owner and investor packages
A summary page the owner reads first, followed by the detail an asset manager needs. Consolidated across properties when you have more than one.
Lender and franchise reporting
Covenant calculations, debt service coverage, brand fee reconciliations, and quarterly reports in the format each party requires. We keep the templates current so you don't have to.
Forecasts and budgets
A rolling 90 day forecast tied to your booking pace, and an annual budget built department by department with the GM rather than handed down from a spreadsheet.
How it works
- Chart of accounts review. We map your existing accounts to USALI, flag anything coded to the wrong department, and agree on a reporting calendar with you.
- Close and package. Once the books close, we build the package, review it internally, and send it with commentary. Target is within ten business days of month end for most properties.
- Monthly review call. Thirty minutes with the owner or GM to walk through the numbers, answer questions, and agree on what to watch next month.
What stays with you
Operating decisions, budget approval, and what you choose to share with partners. We produce the reports and explain them; you decide what to do with them.
Who it's for
- Owners who are tired of waiting until the 25th to see last month
- Asset managers overseeing several hotels with several different accounting setups
- Properties preparing for a sale, refinance, or brand conversion that need clean historical statements
- Anyone whose current reports are technically accurate but nobody reads them
Why HAMS
We have spent years inside hotel financials. We know which lines lenders look at, how franchisors calculate fees, and why a rooms department P and L that looks fine at the total level can hide a labor problem. That experience shows up in the commentary, not just the columns.
Related services
Managed Accounting handles the bookkeeping that feeds these reports. Labor & Payroll supplies the labor detail in the departmental statements, Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation provides the depreciation that appears each month, and Insights & BI turns the package into dashboards.
Want statements you can actually use?
Send us your last three months of financials and we will tell you what we would change, no charge.
Talk to us →Labor & Payroll
Labor is the largest controllable expense in any hotel, and the hardest to see clearly. Payroll gets processed on time, but by the time it hits the P and L it's a single number, weeks old, with no connection to the occupancy that drove it. We close that gap. Payroll is coordinated with your provider and posted correctly, and labor is reported by department, by day, and against the rooms you actually sold, so managers can adjust before the month is gone.
What we take off your plate
Payroll coordination
We work with your payroll provider (ADP, Paychex, Paylocity, or whoever you use) to gather hours, review for errors, approve the run, and post the journal entries to the right departments and accounts.
Labor cost reporting
Hours and dollars by department and by position, compared to budget and to occupancy. Rooms labor per occupied room, F and B labor as a percentage of revenue, and overtime tracked weekly rather than discovered monthly.
Demand based scheduling support
Staffing guides tied to forecasted occupancy and covers, so the GM has a target for each department before the schedule is written, not after.
Tips, service charges, and gratuities
Tip pooling, banquet service charges, and credit card tip allocations tracked and reconciled so they are paid correctly and reported correctly.
Benefits and accruals
Vacation, sick time, bonus, and benefit accruals booked monthly so the P and L reflects the true cost of labor rather than a spike when someone leaves or a bonus is paid.
Compliance support
Wage and hour rule tracking for your state, tip credit and minimum wage changes, and documentation for workers' compensation audits and payroll tax notices.
How it works
- Setup. We review your payroll provider setup, department and job codes, and how payroll currently posts to the GL. Most hotels have codes that no longer match how the property runs; we fix that first.
- Each pay period. Hours come in from your time system. We review for missed punches, overtime, and coding errors, confirm with the GM, and release the run to the provider. Entries post the same day.
- Weekly labor report. Every Monday, each department head sees last week's hours and cost against occupancy and budget. Problems surface while there is still time to act on them.
What stays with you
Hiring, firing, scheduling, and pay rates. We give managers the information to staff well; the decisions and the conversations with employees remain with your team.
Who it's for
- Hotels where labor runs over budget every month and nobody can say exactly where
- Owners who want to see labor per occupied room without building the spreadsheet themselves
- Properties with high overtime, high turnover, or both
- Multi property groups that want one labor report format across every hotel
Why HAMS
Hotel labor is different from office payroll. Split shifts, on call banquet staff, tip credits, and occupancy that swings forty points in a week all make it harder to manage. We have done this for hotels for a long time, and our reporting is built around how a property actually runs.
Related services
Managed Accounting is where labor entries land in the books. Financial Reporting carries the labor detail into your departmental statements, Insights & BI puts labor against revenue on one dashboard, and Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation tracks the equipment and improvements your teams work with.
Not sure where your labor dollars are going?
Send us your last payroll register and occupancy report and we will show you what we would report on first.
Talk to us →Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation
A hotel is one of the most component heavy assets in real estate. The building itself depreciates over 39 years, but the carpet, kitchen equipment, HVAC, millwork, parking lot, and signage inside and around it do not have to. Broken out properly, a large share of the cost qualifies for 5, 7, or 15 year recovery, and under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, for 100 percent bonus depreciation in the first year. Most hotels never capture this because nobody is keeping the asset register in a way that supports it. We do.
What we take off your plate
Fixed asset register
Every capitalized item tracked with its cost, in service date, location, asset class, and recovery period. Acquisitions, disposals, and transfers recorded as they happen and tied to your general ledger.
Cost segregation coordination
We work with a qualified engineering firm to break a purchase or renovation into its building components, review the study, and book the resulting classifications so the tax benefit is documented and defensible.
Depreciation schedules
Book and tax depreciation calculated separately, with bonus depreciation, Section 179, qualified improvement property, and MACRS applied where each is appropriate. Delivered in a format your CPA can use directly.
PIP and renovation tracking
Property improvement plans and major renovations classified on the way in, so new spend lands in the right asset class immediately rather than being reconstructed at year end.
Capitalization policy
A written policy for what gets expensed and what gets capitalized, applied consistently across every property, so your books hold up in an audit or a sale.
Disposals and impairments
When assets are replaced, scrapped, or written down, the register and the GL are updated together, and gains or losses are recorded correctly.
How it works
- Register build. We start from your existing schedules, invoices, and closing statements, and rebuild the register so every asset has a class and a recovery period. Existing hotels usually have a single line called Building; we fix that.
- Study and classification. For acquisitions, renovations, or properties that have never had one, we coordinate a cost segregation study and book the results. The engineering firm does the study; we make sure the accounting matches it.
- Ongoing maintenance. Each month, capital spend is reviewed and added to the register. Each year, we deliver the depreciation schedules and support your CPA through the return.
What stays with you
Tax filing and the final call on tax positions. We prepare the schedules and coordinate the study; your CPA signs the return, and we work with them directly so nothing gets lost between us.
Who it's for
- Owners acquiring a hotel or completing a refinance
- Properties in the middle of a PIP or a major renovation
- Hotels whose depreciation schedule is a single line for the building and a single line for FF and E
- Groups that want one capitalization policy and one register format across every property
Why HAMS
Getting depreciation right on a hotel takes accounting, engineering, and tax working together. We sit in the middle of that. We know which components a hotel typically has, what a good cost segregation study looks like, and how to book it so the benefit survives scrutiny.
Related services
Managed Accounting is where capital spend gets identified in the first place. Financial Reporting reflects depreciation in your statements each month, Insights & BI shows the cash impact of capital projects, and Labor & Payroll tracks the labor on renovations and PIPs.
Buying, renovating, or refinancing?
Tell us about the property and we will outline what a cost segregation study could mean for your first year.
Talk to us →Insights & BI
Every hotel already has the data. It sits in the PMS, the POS, the bank feed, the payroll system, and the accounting software, and none of them talk to each other. So the GM builds a spreadsheet, the owner builds a different one, and both are out of date by the time anyone looks. We pull those sources together into one set of dashboards, refreshed automatically, so the people running the property and the people who own it are looking at the same numbers on the same day.
What we take off your plate
Daily performance dashboard
Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, and pickup for the next 30, 60, and 90 days, pulled from the PMS each morning and compared to last year, budget, and the comp set where you subscribe to STR.
Flow through and margins
Revenue changes are only half the story. We show how much of each additional dollar reached the bottom line, by department, so a strong month on the top line does not hide a weak one underneath.
Labor against revenue
Hours and cost by department laid over occupancy and covers, updated weekly. Rooms labor per occupied room and F and B labor as a share of revenue, with the trend visible rather than buried in a payroll register.
Cash and working capital
Bank balances, upcoming payables, aged receivables, and projected cash for the next eight weeks on one screen. Owners see it before the accountant has to call.
Portfolio view
For groups, every property side by side on the same metrics, with the ability to drill from the portfolio total to a single department at a single hotel.
Alerts and commentary
When something moves outside its normal range, the right person gets a message that morning. Each month we add a short written note explaining what the dashboards show and what we would look at next.
How it works
- Connect the sources. We link the PMS, POS, bank, payroll, and accounting systems. Most connections are read only and take a few days. Where a system has no export, we set up a simple daily file.
- Build and check. We build the dashboards on our standard hotel model, then reconcile them to your financial statements so the numbers on screen match the numbers in the books.
- Use them. The GM gets the daily view, department heads get theirs, the owner gets the summary. We review the dashboards with you on the monthly close call and adjust as the property changes.
What stays with you
Pricing, revenue management, and every operating decision. The dashboards tell you what is happening and why. What you do about it is yours.
Who it's for
- Owners who want to see the property without asking for a report
- GMs who are tired of building the same spreadsheet every Monday
- Groups with several hotels on several systems who want one view
- Asset managers who need to compare properties on a like for like basis
Why HAMS
Most BI tools are built for retail or software companies and then bent to fit a hotel. Ours starts from how a hotel runs. The metrics are the ones a hotel owner asks about, the departments match USALI, and because we also keep the books, the dashboards reconcile to the financials instead of contradicting them.
Related services
The dashboards draw on everything else we do. Managed Accounting keeps the books the numbers come from, Financial Reporting produces the statements they reconcile to, Labor & Payroll feeds the labor view, and Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation supplies the asset and depreciation data behind the balance sheet.
Want to see your hotel on one screen?
Tell us which systems you run and we will show you a sample dashboard built on the same model.
Talk to us →Cost Segregation
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) permanently reinstates 100% bonus depreciation for qualified property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025, supercharging the tax benefits of Cost Segregation studies.
How the New Bill Changes Cost Segregation
- Permanent 100% Bonus Depreciation: Bonus depreciation was phasing down under previous laws (dropping to 40% in 2025), but the OBBBA permanently restores full expensing for assets with a recovery period of 20 years or less.
- Maximized Front-Loading: A cost segregation study splits a building into components (such as 5-, 7-, or 15-year property like flooring, electrical, or land improvements) rather than using standard 27.5-year or 39-year schedules.
- Immediate Year-One Write-Offs: Because 100% bonus depreciation is back and permanent, all those reclassified short-lived assets can be fully deducted in the very first year they are placed in service.
Key Considerations
- Cash Flow vs. Future Brackets: Immediate write-offs lower current taxable income and increase cash flow, but you should weigh whether saving deductions for a future higher tax bracket makes more sense.
- Recapture Rules: Accelerated depreciation via reclassification can trigger Section 1245 recapture taxed at ordinary income rates upon selling the property.
Considering a cost segregation study?
Tell us about the property and we will outline what reclassification could mean for your first-year deductions.
Talk to us →Tax Planning
We are a CPA firm, and tax planning is the part of our work where that license matters most. Filing a return is history. By the time the forms are due, nearly every decision that set the number was made months earlier, and all that is left is reporting it accurately. Planning is the opposite. It happens while the year is still open and while the outcome can still be changed. We work with independent hotels and boutique hospitality groups all year rather than once each spring, and we build the plan on the same books we keep. Because our team closes your month by day five and reconciles the PMS, POS, payroll, and bank feeds as they come in, we are never guessing at your position. We run projections from real numbers, refresh them every quarter, and tell you what the year looks like while there is still time to act on it. That planning starts with structure. How the properties are held, whether each one sits in its own entity, how management fees move between related companies, and how your operating agreements allocate income and losses all shape what you and your partners will owe long before a single deduction is claimed.
From there we look at the assets. Hotels are capital-heavy businesses, and depreciation is usually the largest lever an owner has. We coordinate cost segregation studies so that flooring, casework, specialty electrical, kitchen equipment, and land improvements are reclassified into shorter recovery periods, and with 100% bonus depreciation permanently reinstated under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for qualified property placed in service after January 19, 2025, those reclassified components can often be written off in the first year. We weigh that against the other side of the ledger: whether accelerating deductions now is worth more than carrying them into a year you expect to be in a higher bracket, what Section 1245 recapture will cost at sale, and how a large paper loss interacts with passive activity limits, basis, at-risk rules, and the business interest limitation under Section 163(j). Renovations get the same treatment.
Qualified improvement property, repairs versus capitalization, partial asset dispositions on the components you tear out, and the timing of the placed-in-service date can each move a deduction by a full year. We also pursue the credits and elections that hospitality operators routinely leave unclaimed, including the FICA tip credit on tipped food and beverage wages, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit on qualifying hires in an industry that hires constantly, energy efficiency deductions on lighting and HVAC work, and the qualified business income deduction where the ownership structure supports it. State and local exposure gets the same attention, because for a hotel it is rarely simple. Transient occupancy and lodging taxes, sales tax on rooms, banquets, and resort fees, franchise and gross receipts filings, and nexus in every state you operate in are all places where a small error compounds quietly until it surfaces in a notice or a diligence request. We keep those filings current and flag exposure before a lender or a buyer finds it.
Around all of it sits the ordinary discipline that keeps surprises out of the year: quarterly estimates sized to reality so you are neither lending money to the government nor absorbing an underpayment penalty, K-1s that reach your partners early enough to be useful, distributions timed against covenants and cash needs, and documentation clean enough that an examination is a paperwork exercise rather than a reconstruction. When you eventually sell, refinance, or bring in a partner, we model the tax before you sign, including installment treatment, 1031 exchange timing, and how to recapture and state sourcing land in the year of the transaction. We stay in the room with your attorney and your wealth advisor as well, because decisions made at the property rarely stop at the property. Every one of these depends on your specific facts, and we will tell you plainly when something does not fit rather than sell you a strategy you do not need. What you get is not a return prepared in a vacuum. It is a plan you understand, revisited every quarter, priced up front, delivered by people who know how a hotel actually earns and spends its money, and supported by books that stand behind every position we take.
Related services
Planning works because the underlying records do. Managed Accounting keeps the books the projections run on, Fixed Asset Accounting & Depreciation maintains the schedules behind every depreciation decision, Cost Segregation supplies the reclassification study, and Labor & Payroll produces the wage data behind the tip and hiring credits.
Want to know where your year is heading?
Tell us about your properties and your ownership structure, and we will walk you through the planning opportunities still open to you this year.
Talk to us →Privacy Policy
Here is our Privacy Policy required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999.
We collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following sources:
- Information we receive from you on applications, tax organizers, worksheets and other documents;
- Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others;
- Information we receive from a consumer-reporting agency.
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone, except as permitted by law.
We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to those members of our firm who need to know that information to provide services to you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information.
If you have any questions about this policy, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Disclaimer
No Rendering of Advice
The information contained within this website is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for obtaining accounting, tax, or financial advice from a professional accountant.
Presentation of the information via the Internet is not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, an accountant-client relationship. Internet subscribers, users and online readers are advised not to act upon this information without seeking the service of a professional accountant.
Any U.S. federal tax advice contained in this website is not intended to be used for the purpose of avoiding penalties under U.S. federal tax law.
Accuracy of Information
While we use reasonable efforts to furnish accurate and up-to-date information, we do not warrant that any information contained in or made available through this website is accurate, complete, reliable, current or error-free.
We assume no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of this website or such other materials or communications.
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Frequently asked questions
The questions owners and operators actually ask us, grouped so you can head straight to what matters to you.
What we take on, how switching over works, and starting mid-year.
6 questions Your team →Who you'll actually deal with, their background, and the hours we keep.
4 questions Accounting →The daily close, payables, month-end, taxes, and multiple entities.
6 questions Payroll →Processing, tipped staff, cross-department hours, and who's liable.
6 questions Reporting →What you receive and when, USALI, and brand and lender packages.
6 questions Systems & data →The tools we connect to, who owns your data, and what leaving looks like.
3 questions Controls & security →How we prevent fraud, protect data, insure the work, and where it's done.
4 questions Commercial →How pricing works, the honest in-house comparison, terms, and next steps.
5 questionsGetting started
What we take on, how switching over works, and starting mid-year.
What exactly do you take off our hands?+
Some or all of the back office: daily revenue reconciliation from the night audit, accounts payable, payroll, general ledger and month-end close, and the reporting that comes out of it: departmental P&Ls, owner packages, lender submissions and brand-standard returns. Scope is set property by property. Plenty of clients start with the daily close alone and add functions once they've seen a few months of it.
What do you not do?+
We don't audit. A firm that keeps your books can't independently audit them, so you'll keep a separate auditor and we'll prepare the file they work from. We don't hold your money, and we don't make operating decisions. Rate, staffing levels and capital spend stay with you and your operator.
How long does it take to switch over?+
Onboarding runs in two stages, with the timeline confirmed in your proposal. Setup covers the chart of accounts, system connections, opening balances and agreeing who does what. That is followed by a parallel run where we produce the same outputs as your existing process, so you can compare them line by line before anything is switched off.
Do we have to wait for a fiscal year end?+
No. Mid-year transitions are routine. A month-end boundary is the cleanest starting point, and a quiet trading period is easier than a peak one, but neither is essential.
We're in the middle of a mess: books months behind, no clean trial balance. Is that a problem?+
It's a common reason people call. Clean-up is quoted as a separate project before ongoing service starts, because the effort depends entirely on what state things are in. We'll tell you what we find after reviewing your recent months, including anything we think you should discuss with your auditor or your lender.
Do we have to change accounting software?+
No. We work in whatever you already run. If your current system genuinely can't produce departmental reporting (some general-purpose packages can't, without heavy workarounds) we'll say so, tell you what changing would cost, and let you decide. We don't earn anything on that decision.
Your team
Who you'll actually deal with, their background, and the hours we keep.
What happens to our in-house accounting staff?+
That's your call, and both outcomes are common. Some owners replace the function outright. More often the repetitive daily work moves to us and the on-property controller shifts to forecasting, capital planning and working alongside the GM, the work they were hired for and rarely get to. We'll give you an honest view of which split fits your size.
Who will we actually deal with?+
A named account lead plus a small team who work your properties every day, not a shared queue. You'll have their direct line and email. If someone is on leave, their cover is briefed and named in advance rather than assigned when the query arrives.
Are your people qualified?+
Details of our team's qualifications and hospitality experience are available on request. Everyone assigned to a hotel account has closed hotel books before. Hospitality has enough of its own mechanics (city ledger, house accounts, OTA settlement timing, tip credits, FF&E reserve) that a strong generalist accountant still needs a year to be useful, and we'd rather they learned it somewhere other than on your properties.
What hours do you work?+
Our working hours and time zone are confirmed at proposal. The daily reconciliation runs overnight, so your flash report is waiting when the property opens. Urgent items, such as a failed payment run or a payroll cut-off, follow an agreed escalation route.
Accounting
The daily close, payables, month-end, taxes, and multiple entities.
What happens each day?+
Your night audit output is reconciled against the PMS, the POS and the bank: room and F&B revenue, credit card batches, OTA and channel settlements, city ledger postings, comps and allowances against tolerance. Anything that doesn't tie is flagged to a named person on property that morning, while the folio and the shift paperwork still exist to resolve it.
How fast do you close the month?+
A fixed close calendar, agreed with you in advance and measured in business days rather than weeks, including accruals, prepaids, management fees and FF&E reserve. Departmental statements and the owner package go out together rather than a week apart. Properties with complex F&B, multiple outlets or unusual ownership structures take longer, and we'll tell you which yours is before you sign, not after.
How do you handle accounts payable?+
Invoices are captured and coded, matched three ways against the purchase order and receiving where you use them, and routed for approval to whoever your policy names. Approved invoices go into a payment run on your schedule. Aged payables are reviewed weekly and anything heading towards a supplier problem gets raised rather than left in the report.
Who releases payments?+
You do, unless you specifically ask otherwise. The standard arrangement is that we prepare the run and your authorised signatories release it from your own bank. Where clients want us to release within limits, those limits are agreed in writing, apply per payment and per run, and every transaction stays visible in an account you control. We never hold client funds.
Do you handle sales, occupancy and tourism taxes?+
Our scope for sales, occupancy and tourism tax filings is set out in your engagement letter. Rates and rules vary by jurisdiction and change more often than people expect, particularly local occupancy and tourism levies, so we track the ones that apply to your properties as part of the service.
Can you handle multiple entities and inter-company transactions?+
Yes. Most portfolios have a property-holding entity, an operating entity and sometimes a management company, each with its own reporting requirements. We keep them separate, handle inter-company charges and eliminations, and produce both entity-level statements and the consolidation.
Payroll
Processing, tipped staff, cross-department hours, and who's liable.
What does the payroll service cover?+
The scope is confirmed in your engagement letter and covers time and attendance import, gross-to-net, statutory deductions and filings, payslips, year-end forms, and posting the payroll journal into the ledger so labor cost is in your P&L rather than reconciled later.
Do you handle tipped employees?+
Yes. Tipped pay arrangements are handled according to the rules in your jurisdiction and the arrangement in place at each property. This is the single most common source of hospitality payroll penalties, so we document how each property does it and flag anything that looks non-compliant rather than processing it quietly.
Can you handle staff working across departments or properties?+
Yes. Cross-department and cross-property allocation is normal in hotels (a supervisor covering F&B and banqueting in one week) and the hours land in the right department for labour cost reporting rather than all in one bucket.
What labour reporting do we get?+
Labor cost and hours by department against budget and against forecast, cost per occupied room, overtime by department and by manager, and variance reporting on an agreed schedule. The point is to see the overrun during the period, while there's still something to be done about it.
Who is liable if a payroll filing is wrong?+
Responsibility for payroll errors, and the remedies available, are set out in your engagement letter. We walk through that section with you before you sign so the position is clear on both sides rather than discovered later.
Can you take on payroll without the accounting?+
Whether payroll can be taken on separately is confirmed at proposal. The two work better together, because payroll is usually the largest cost line and it's the one people most want to see against occupancy in the same report.
Reporting
What you receive and when, USALI, and brand and lender packages.
What do we actually receive, and when?+
- Daily: flash report each morning, local time, covering occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, revenue by department, and variance to budget
- Weekly: payables position, cash position, labor against forecast
- Monthly: departmental P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, owner package, brand submission
- Quarterly: lender covenant reporting, capital spend against budget
- Annually: budget support and the audit file
Do you report in USALI format?+
Yes, in the USALI departmental structure that brands, lenders and buyers expect. If your current statements aren't in that structure, part of the setup is getting them there, which also makes your numbers comparable against industry benchmarks.
Can you produce our brand's required reporting?+
The brands we regularly report for are confirmed at proposal. Brand reporting formats are specific and they change; we maintain the mappings so a format update doesn't become your problem.
We have a lender with covenant tests. Can you handle that?+
Yes. Covenant calculations, debt service coverage and any bespoke schedules your facility agreement requires, on the lender's timetable. We'd want a copy of the facility agreement at setup so the calculation matches the document rather than someone's summary of it.
Can we get portfolio-level and property-level views?+
Both, from the same close. One chart of accounts across the portfolio, a common close calendar, consolidated roll-up, and the ability to drill into a single property or compare like assets against each other.
Can reporting go out under our own branding?+
Yes. For management companies reporting to owners this is usually the point: the package goes out under your letterhead and we stay off the owner call unless you want us on it.
Systems and data
The tools we connect to, who owns your data, and what leaving looks like.
Which systems do you work with?+
Our current PMS, POS, payroll and banking integrations are confirmed at proposal. Where a direct integration doesn't exist we work from scheduled exports, which is slower to set up but no less reliable once running.
Who owns the data?+
You do. Your ledger, your records, your reporting history. Our data retention and export policy is available on request.
What happens if we leave?+
You get a full export of your ledger, supporting documentation and reporting history in a standard format, with the notice and handover periods set out in your engagement letter. We'll work with the incoming provider or your internal team through the transition. A provider who makes leaving difficult is telling you something about how they expect to keep clients.
Controls, security and risk
How we prevent fraud, protect data, insure the work, and where it's done.
What stops fraud or error inside your team?+
Segregation of duties between whoever posts and whoever reviews, approval thresholds set by you, no authority to move money outside agreed limits, and the monitoring and review controls set out in our controls documentation. Separating record-keeping from payment authority is exactly what makes an outsourced back office a control improvement over one person on property doing everything.
How is our data protected?+
Details of our technical and organisational security measures, including any certifications we hold, are available on request. Payroll and payables data is among the most sensitive you hold, so it's a fair question to press us on: ask for the report, not the summary.
Are you insured?+
Details of our professional indemnity and cyber cover, including limits, are available on request, and certificates can be provided.
Where is the work done?+
The locations our teams work from, including whether any work is performed outside the United States, are confirmed at proposal. Worth stating plainly: some owners have contractual or lender restrictions on where their data can be processed, and it's better to find that out now.
Commercial
How pricing works, the honest in-house comparison, terms, and next steps.
How is it priced?+
A fixed monthly fee per property, based on room count, whether there's food and beverage, transaction volume, and which functions you hand over. Quoted after the discovery call and held for an agreed period, so it's a budget line rather than an hourly meter. Project work (a clean-up, an audit preparation, a system migration) is quoted separately and agreed before it starts.
Is it actually cheaper than doing it in-house?+
Usually, and the honest comparison isn't salary against fee. It's salary plus employer costs, benefits, recruitment, software licences, holiday and sickness cover, and the cost of the month where the controller resigns and nothing closes. For a single small property with simple operations, a good part-time bookkeeper can be cheaper, and we'll tell you if we think that's your situation.
What contract term?+
Term, notice period and any minimum commitment are set out in your engagement letter, and we walk through them with you before you sign.
What if it isn't working?+
Raise it with your account lead. If it isn't resolved, there's an agreed escalation route. The parallel run at the start exists precisely so problems surface before you've committed, and the notice period in your engagement letter means you're never trapped in something that isn't working.
Still have a question?+
Contact us using the details in the footer, or request a proposal below. If it's a question about your specific properties, the discovery call is short and you'll leave it with a scope and a price whether or not you go ahead.