Accounting Live

The owner reads the statement the industry reads

The uniform system's operating statement — departmental profit, undistributed expenses, GOP, GOPPAR — read from the same ledger as the hotel's P&L; with the cash-flow statement, changes in equity, the KPI sheet, and every hotel side by side.

The profit and loss by account is the accountant's. An owner, a lender and a management company read something else: the Summary Operating Statement of the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry.

Departments, then what is undistributed

Rooms, food and beverage, banquets, other operated departments — each with its revenue, its expense and its departmental profit. Below them the undistributed expenses: administrative and general, IT, sales and marketing, property operation and maintenance, utilities. What is left is gross operating profit. Management fees, then rent, property taxes and insurance, then interest, depreciation and amortisation come off underneath.

Every line carries its share of revenue, the amount per occupied room and per available room. GOPPAR is the number the owner remembers.

The schedule is on the chart

Each account's place on the statement is a column on the chart of accounts, filled in by department and role the first time anyone reads the statement, and kept where a hand has set it. A new entity's chart is classified when its first statement is read.

Beside it

The cash-flow statement, indirect from the balance-sheet movement so it always foots. Changes in equity. The sub-ledgers against the books as one report with a verdict per row. A KPI sheet — TRevPAR, GOPPAR, revenue per available seat-hour in the outlet, banquet revenue per event — and net channel profitability: room revenue by source less the commission the source cost and the card charges its guests' payments carried.

Every hotel side by side

The same statement's summary lines for every hotel on the account, one column each — the owner's benchmark.

More on Accounting

Every rupee has two sidesThe night audit closes into a double-entry general ledger — per legal entity, with a chart seeded for a hotel, control accounts that must agree with the sub-ledgers, and no journal that does not balance. ReceivablesA bill to a company is an invoice that is owed; a receipt is allocated to named invoices and the shortfall has a name; the debtor is reminded, and a debt is forgiven only with a signature. Payables and vendorsA vendor belongs to the books and says who it is — PAN, GST registration, MSME, TDS section — and a vendor's bill is matched against what arrived and what was agreed before it is owed. TDSThe deduction is a dated rule and the threshold is per year — two per cent of the contractor, ten of the professional, ten of the rent — held back, deposited by the seventh, returned each quarter. The payment runWhat is due is paid — MSME first, by law — with a bank file, an advice to the vendor, retention held, an advance adjusted, and one journal per run. Bank and cashThe hotel has bank accounts and the till has a float; the statement is read into the books and matched line by line; the cash position is one screen. Gateway and OTA settlementsThe gateway pays out net and the difference is the fee; the channel remits what it collected and takes its cut — both matched booking by booking against the statement. GST filingA registration is per state and every rule has a date; GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B are prepared from the books in the portal's shape; the purchase credit is only what the supplier declared. E-invoicingAbove the threshold a B2B invoice is registered with the portal — IRN, acknowledgement and signed QR on the printed bill — with cancellation inside twenty-four hours and a credit note after. Tally, Zoho and QuickBooksThe day leaves the books once and says where it went: Tally vouchers with the party and the GST fields, Zoho journals and invoices by API, a CSV QuickBooks reads — and a webhook for anything else. Cost of sales and the food costThe food that was used is a cost the day carries — consumption from the store, not purchases from the vendor — and stock on the shelf is an asset. The banquet ledger, packages, and a night not yet sleptAn event is a ledger of its own — deposits held, costs tagged, margin read; a package is split for the management accounts without touching the bill; and a night not yet slept is not yet earned. Fixed assetsA thing the hotel owns is numbered and wears out — the register, two books, depreciation, disposals, physical counts and capital work in progress. The year is planned by account, and the month is measured against itA budget per account per month: the rooms lines derived from occupancy and rate, the outlet from covers and check, the rest typed; approved by a second person; then every month the ledger is measured against it and a rolling forecast says where the year is heading. The wages are a journal the books receiveThere is no HR module. The payroll engine's result — by department: gross, PF, ESI, PT, TDS, advances, net — is imported once a month, posted as one journal, and paid: the staff, then each authority with a challan. The group adds up across its hotelsOne statement for a hotel, for a legal entity's hotels, or for the whole account — profit and loss, balance sheet, consolidated trial balance — and the owner's page: equity, the result, distributions, the FF&E reserve. A rupee is not the only moneyAn overseas agent invoiced in dollars, an OTA remitting in dollars: the invoice keeps its rupee value, carries a foreign face at the rate it was quoted, and at month end the open balance is revalued with the gain or loss named in the books. The books notice what is unusualRules, not models, read the live books every day and raise an alert with its evidence — a near-duplicate bill, an odd manual journal, a cashier's voids, a vendor's price drift, a bad GSTIN, an uncharged room, an unmatched bank line. Nothing posts by itself. The month is closed by a list, and reopened by a signatureA month locks only when its checklist is done — every day audited, the sub-ledgers agreeing, the bank reconciled — and at the lock the trial balance is snapshotted and hashed. What one person must not do alone gets a second signature. Finance audits each day before it is believed. What is next in the booksThe two things the accounting programme deliberately left for a customer to ask for — intercompany posting between two legal entities, and the model-based assistance — and the remaining "approved by" boxes moving onto the approval machine.