5 Best Hotel Accounting Software

The best hotel accounting software includes the ability to monitor income and expenses, produce basic financial reports, and manage revenue. They should also be able to handle multiple properties, room inventory, staffing, and payroll. Software with additional features, such as integrations with property management systems and a powerful booking engine are also useful.

We have identified five of the best accounting software for hotels:

• Nimble Property: Best overall hotel accounting software for those seeking extensive hotel management features
• Cloudbeds: Best for hotels that want an integrated booking engine
• Hotelier Books: Best for limited-service hotels on a budget
• QuickBooks Online: Best for small, independently owned hotels that need basic accounting
• M3 Accounting Core: Best for hotel businesses with construction projects

Best Hotel Accounting Software Compared

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Nimble Property: Best Overall Hotel Accounting Software for Hotels Seeking Extensive Hotel Management Features

Standout Features

• Budgeting module: Using real-time data, Nimble Property allows you to compare your budgeted amounts with actual revenue and expense figures. You’ll have access to budget and forecast comparison reports, letting you make informed financial decisions.
• 1099 payment tracking: You can record and track payments to 1099 contractors. You can also create a 1099 payments report with a specific date range that shows the vendor’s name, social security number or tax ID number, payment type, method, and account information.
• Key performance insights (KPI) dashboard: Nimble Property’s intuitive KPI dashboard shows your company’s financial metrics in real-time, providing a view of revenue per available room, average daily rate, and occupancy rates. You’ll also be alerted when there are checks to be printed, transactions to be approved, and recurring dues. QuickBooks Online, M3 Accounting, and Cloudbeds don’t have a KPI dashboard.
• Inventory management: By tracking and forecasting based on room occupancy, you can simplify your inventory management while increasing your company’s profits.
• Door lock system: This feature allows you to assign a specific ID to each person who has access to your property. It’s useful if you want to grant or restrict access to particular areas, according to your needs. None of the other software we compared has this feature.

Our Expert Opinion

Nimble Property has many features that make it a good accounting software for hotel businesses wanting access to special hotel management tools. The door lock system, for example, allows you to grant different levels of access to your property. You can use the KPI dashboard to view financial metrics and also set budgets. In addition to its accounting software, you have the option to outsource your books to a dedicated bookkeeper.

Cloudbeds: Best for Hotels That Want an Integrated Booking Engine

Standout Features

• Revenue management (PIE): PIE stands for Pricing Intelligence Engine, which assists you in gathering all of your market data in real-time, allowing you to make informed pricing decisions. The all-in-one insights dashboard shows a basic overview of the crucial information to be considered by comparing rates with your competitors.
• Payment processing: Available as an add-ons, Cloudbeds Payments is a powerful payment solution that provides hotels with an efficient method for managing all payment types. It features built-in reporting, security, and analytics as well as integrating seamlessly with the Cloudbeds platform. Payment processors include Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, PayU, Braintree, and SagePay.
• Booking engine: Cloudbeds’ booking engine uses dozens of payment processors and supports multiple languages and currencies. You’ll also be able to send pre-arrival emails with property information and potential upsells, such as room upgrades. This is the only platform on this list that has a built-in booking engine.
• Cash Drawer: You can log the cash flow for your property in one place using the Cash Drawer feature. This is especially useful if you’d rather not have the information easily accessible. You can create several different drawers—for example, one called “walk-ins,” in which you record any incoming and outgoing cash transactions.
• Housekeeping organization: With Cloudbeds, you can keep track of room status and conditions, monitor room notes, and assign staff. It’s also mobile-friendly, so you can access this information from anywhere.
• Powerful integrations: Cloudbeds integrates with several accounting systems, including QuickBooks, Xero, M3, Yardi by Omniboost, and DateV.

Our Expert Opinion

Cloudbeds has useful features—such as real-time reporting analytics and housekeeping organization functions—and strong hotel management tools, such as a booking engine and pricing intelligence engine. It also has great financial features but cannot generate financial statements, such as a profit and loss (P&L) or balance sheet, without an accounting integration. While the pricing isn’t transparent, it includes unlimited users with individual roles and permissions.

Hotelier Books: Best for Limited-service Hotels on a Budget

Standout Features

• Budgeting: With Hotelier Books, you can benchmark your expenses and forecast budgets for the upcoming year. All of the data will be consolidated on a customizable dashboard, and you can plan for capital expenditures by forecasting current budgets.
• Daily sales automation: You can integrate your hotel’s property management system with Hotelier Books and retrieve the sales and receivables for your properties and the statistical data for analysis automatically.
• KPI dashboard: Stay in sync with all of your hotel operations by monitoring performance metrics on an intuitive dashboard. You can use the dashboard to access information, such as revenue per available room, occupancies, and average daily rate.
• Accounts receivable (A/R) and A/P management: Manage your receivables and payables by using Hotelier Books’ artificial intelligence tools. These enable you to view and approve all bills to be paid and receive timely alerts and updates on pending and overdue receivables.
• Financial reporting: Hotelier Books offers more than 80 industry standard reporting structures and access to customizable reports, such as income statements and daily sales. You can download your reports in multiple formats.

Our Expert Opinion

Hotelier Books is cloud-based accounting software and bookkeeping service platform and its features make it ideal for limited service small-scale hotel business owners. With software that’s both feature-rich and affordable, it allows you to manage the accounting for your properties and provides access to business insights. The software is easy to set up and manage, and you can outsource your books to one of its dedicated bookkeepers.

QuickBooks Online Plus: Best for Small, Independently Owned Hotels That Need Basic Accounting

Standout Features

• Class and location tracking: The class and location tracking features that come with the Plus and Advanced plans allow you to separate net profit by type of property and location and track for properties with multiple profit centers.
• Powerful mobile app: QuickBooks Online has a powerful mobile app that’s available for both iOS and Android users. It includes nearly all of the functions as the desktop interface, plus mileage tracking and receipt capture.
• Assisted bookkeeping: QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping is an add-on service that gives you access to a QuickBooks-certified live bookkeeper who will manage your books and provide the reports you need. One of the best features of QuickBooks Live is the ability to communicate with your bookkeeper via one-way live video chat, and you can ask them questions at any time. The price for QuickBooks Live starts at $200 per month for businesses with up to $10,000 in monthly expenses.
• Bill payment: QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced allow you to input and organize unpaid bills and pay them online for free, streamlining your accounts payable (A/P) process and allowing you to keep a handle on your bills.
• Customizable reports: One of the best accounting software for reporting, QuickBooks Online can generate more than 100 reports—provided you’re subscribed to Advance. Standard reports include balance sheets, P&L statements, and sales reports by customer, location, or class.

Our Expert Opinion

QuickBooks Online is our top-recommended small business accounting software and a great option for small independently owned hotels looking for basic accounting. If you don’t have a need for hotel management features or are already using separate software for that, you can rely on the powerful tracking features and customizable reports that QuickBooks offers or you can integrate it with hotel management apps, such as roomMaster or HotelKey. If you need assistance with your books, then you can sign up for QuickBooks Live, an add-on feature

M3 Accounting: Best for Hotel Businesses With Construction Projects

Standout Features

• Tax and reporting: With M3 Accounting, you can easily set sales tax rates for vendor invoices. You can also track vendor payments and print data on Forms 1099 and 1096 automatically. The Report Writer will customize your reports to extract the desired data.
• Labor management software: M3 allows you to streamline labor management with its cloud-based reporting system by using a personalized dashboard. It’ll give you access to on-demand management of associate earnings, including biometric capabilities. You can also prepare payroll, set custom rules, and track performance to see what does and doesn’t work.
• Budgeting: This feature is especially useful if you’re planning a construction project because M3 can assist with setting up budgets and tracking costs. This includes the ability to attach vendor invoices to each project. Budgets can be set up with key metrics and a feature to lock metrics, ensuring they stay consistent across properties.
• Insight software: Available as a separate software package that integrates with M3 Accounting, Insight also pulls data from Labor Management, PMS systems, and any other available data integrations. You can automatically import your data from any application programming interface (API) to collect all of your information in one location.
• Outsourced accounting: M3’s team of accounting specialize in the hospitality industry and will work with you based on your needs. Whether you need someone to handle your day-to-day bookkeeping or manage your books on a monthly basis, you can outsource tasks like sales/use/occupancy tax filing and daily bank reconciliations

Our Expert Opinion

M3 Accounting is a robust accounting and analytics platform designed for the hospitality industry and is especially useful for hotels with construction projects because of the ability to create up to three budgets and track project costs. Using a core accounting module, you can manage the accounting for your entire property portfolio as it includes time tracking, A/R and A/P, and financial analysis.

You can also integrate with HR, payroll, and about 40 property management systems. If you prefer to outsource your bookkeeping, you can work with one of its accounting staff who can also provide implementation support and training.

How We Evaluated the Best Accounting Software for Hotels

We evaluated these programs in terms of general features that we’d expect to find in hotel accounting software but also assessed them based on whether they had the basic features we’d take for granted, such as access to financial reports or A/R and A/P tracking. We also took into account each software’s ease of use, pricing, and our own expert evaluation.

Bottom Line

Nimble Property is the overall best accounting software for hotels because of its powerful KPI dashboard, inventory management features, and budgeting module. If you need a booking engine, then Cloudbeds is for you. If you run a limited-service hotel on a budget, Hotelier Books is a great option. QuickBooks Online Plus is ideal for independently owned hotels with basic bookkeeping needs. For hotels undergoing construction projects, M3 will allow you to set up budgets and track costs.