29-Nov-2024 Seamless Stays, Streamlined Finances: Transforming Hotel / Resort Accounting with Integrated Solutions

Overview:

The hotel & resort in Alibag offers comfortable accommodations alongside a full-service restaurant, catering to both in-house and external guests. Operated by a dedicated husband-and-wife team, they manage two resorts simultaneously. The property is conveniently listed on major online booking platforms such as Booking.com, Agoda, Go-IBIBO, and MakeMyTrip, ensuring seamless reservations for guests.

All bookings from various aggregators are seamlessly integrated into a centralized reservation system. This system efficiently handles tasks such as tracking bookings, invoicing, payments, cancellations, and other accommodation-related operations. Additionally, a separate dedicated system manages the restaurant operations, including order booking, billing, payments, inventory management, menu updates, and table management, ensuring smooth and efficient service. Accounting was done in Tally.

Problem:

The management faced significant challenges in maintaining control over accounts due to a lack of integration between their core systems. Key data points were fragmented across three platforms: the booking software, restaurant management software, and Tally. This disjointed setup led to inefficiencies, such as manually consolidating information from these systems into Excel to generate invoices, a time-consuming and error-prone process.

Additionally, reconciling bank accounts became increasingly complex. Payments were recorded separately in different systems across various channels, including UPI, card swipes, IMPS, net banking, and cash. This lack of synchronization not only delayed financial reporting but also hindered accurate tracking of transactions, impacting operational efficiency and decision-making.

Solution:

To address the challenges faced by the management, we implemented Zoho Books as a centralized accounting solution. Data from both the reservation system and the restaurant management system of Resort was seamlessly extracted and integrated into Zoho Books. We customized Zoho to link all transactions using a unique Booking Reference ID, ensuring that all associated data—revenue from room bookings and restaurant services—was consolidated in one place.

This setup enabled automated generation of comprehensive revenue reports, capturing income from both accommodations and restaurant services. Additionally, Zoho Books efficiently recorded payments across various modes, including UPI, card swipes, IMPS, net banking, and cash, all tied back to the corresponding booking ID.

The implementation provided the management with greater control over invoicing and compliance with government regulations. With streamlined processes and centralized data, reporting became more accurate and time-efficient, empowering the team to focus on growing their business.