The Best Hotel Accounting Software
Hotel accounting software is essential to maintaining a profitable hospitality business. In this guide, we assessed top systems for functionalities like multi-entity reporting, flexible invoicing, and usability to support independent inns to large commercial chains.
- Supports accounts payable, receivable, and reporting
- Invoicing feature allows scanning receipts and documents into PDFs
- Industry-specific reporting through DPAnalytics
- Offers over 235 interfaces for integration with PMS, POS, payroll systems
- Multi-currency functionality
- Customizable labor models
- Built-in automated hotel payroll
- USALI compliant accounting
Hotel accounting software includes a wide range of tools for the hospitality industry, such as flexible invoicing, inventory management, and tracking expenses and multi-entity revenues. We used our advanced review methodology to evaluate top solutions for all types of hotels, from resorts to bed and breakfasts.
- M3 Accounting Core: Best Overall
- Data Plus Hospitality: Best for Large Hotel Chains
- Inn-Flow: Best Employee & Labor Management
- NetSuite: Best Cloud-ERP
- Sage Intacct: Best for Multi-Entity Reporting
- Xero: Best for Small Hotels
- QuickBooks Online : Best for Independent Hotels
- Zoho One: Best Custom Built Solution
M3 Accounting Core - Best Overall
M3 is an accounting software purpose-built for hotels with multiple locations and entities. Its property management features are desirable for enterprises and hotel chains, as they consolidate reporting across all properties in a single portfolio. This consolidation helps managers visualize key metrics like revenues, expenses, and cash flow from all properties.
M3 Accounting Core also includes multicurrency exchange rates for companies with hotels located globally. Other accounting features include automated check writing, budgeting, and financial forecast creation. While it provides many hotel accounting features, some reviewers critique its dated interface and slower reports.
Data Plus Hospitality - Best for Large Hotel Chains
Data Plus Hospitality’s DP pay module streamlines the vendor payment process for large hotel chains managing several vendors with a high transaction volume. The system supports several payment methods, including virtual cards, ACH, integrated pay network, and checks. It integrates directly with the accounting module, helping automate reconciliation by having company-wide vendor payments in one place.
The DP pay module also helps reduce costs. It automatically identifies and flags invoice discrepancies and vendor errors when received, so you don’t have to check every line of your payments manually. This is a cost and time-saver for large chains that can’t manually look over each vendor bill they receive, which can lead to overcharge errors going unnoticed.
Additionally, Data Plus’s DP pay module helps lower fraud risk when issuing B2B vendor payments. The tool offers administrative security controls so only authorized users can access it, ensuring the correct employees make payments through secure channels. It even provides complete audit tracking, essential in ensuring each entity can be audited if suspicious activity arises.
Inn-Flow - Best Employee & Labor Management
Inn-Flow is a hotel accounting platform with labor management and payroll. Its accounting covers everything you need for finances, including AP automation, daily reconciliations, bank feeds, and even USALI-compliant reporting. And because its employee management is built right in, hotel owners can view their workforce alongside everyday finances.
Inn-Flow also connects to your property management system (PMS) to pull live occupancy data across all your rooms. Those numbers then feed into labor models to calculate the number of staff hours needed for each department. If occupancy drops midweek, the model can adjust staffing accordingly to avoid expensive overstaffing. From there, managers can build schedules with a simple drag-and-drop tool that flags when someone is approaching overtime.
The system also includes Smile ID, a facial recognition time clock that prevents employees from clocking in for each other. Employees can also request time off directly from the clock, so managers don’t have to track it separately.
On the payroll side, Inn-Flow handles tax filings, direct deposits, and W-2s automatically. Pricing for payroll is based on the number of employees, while the accounting package is based on the number of hotels managed. That said, pricing is not publicly available and requires a custom quote.
NetSuite - Best Cloud-ERP
NetSuite is a comprehensive cloud ERP system that provides hotel-specific solutions. Its inventory management module works well for the hospitality industry by providing a real-time view of all channels and properties. It can track supplies, amenities, and retail inventory across multiple locations, which is essential for franchises and chains managing many hotels.
The enterprise performance management module helps chains with automated account reconciliation, increasing accuracy and speed while pulling financial data from various sources. This feature is valuable for hotel chains with many different revenue streams that can complicate financial analysis. NetSuite is best for mid to large-size hospitality businesses, as the software is expensive in comparison to other options.
Sage Intacct - Best for Multi-Entity Reporting
Sage Intacct is best for hotel franchises and multi-location hotel chains due to its unique dimensional reporting engine. The reporting dashboard is great for hotel chains, providing multi-entity metrics, flexible revenue recognition, and automated consolidations from parent companies. These features help franchise owners and managers track financial data from all properties and automate accounting processes.
Sage Intacct is fully cloud-based and can easily integrate with hotel property management and POS systems like BILL or Yooz, allowing flexibility for businesses already utilizing them. Sage also offers inventory management and HR modules from their marketplace, which can be effective for hospitality franchises but come with additional costs for each.
Xero - Best for Small Hotels
Xero is best for small hotels and single-entity businesses looking to streamline their accounting processes like invoicing, inventory, and expenses. After demoing Xero, we like their optimized cash flow management features, allowing companies to automate financial statements and inventory processes. The automatic invoicing reminder feature helps minimize payment delays and create a less intrusive billing experience for guests.
Xero allows unlimited users, letting owners collaborate with any number of team members and accountants. The system is affordable; their mid-tier “growing” plan is $55/month. While Xero is effective for single-entity businesses, it does not have multi-entity support for companies managing more than one hotel.
QuickBooks Online - Best for Independent Hotels
QuickBooks Online is effective for small, independently owned hotels because of its optimized mobile app and strong accounting features. QuickBooks Online’s mobile app lets users manage their finances, create invoices, and accept payments on the go. The app is ideal for independent hotel owners who are already on a time crunch and need quick access to their financials. There is also high user praise, with 4.7/5 stars on the Apple App Store with over 185,000 ratings.
Its accounting features include automation for invoicing and payments, expense tracking, and organizing bills. We don’t like that it lacks industry-specific features like daily operating statements and the ability to analyze multiple revenue streams separately. The software is affordable; its “simple start” plan is $38/month but only allows one user.
Zoho One - Best Custom Built Solution
Zoho One is a business management software suite that includes built-in accounting with Zoho Books. The platform is easy to use and provides features for inventory tracking, customer management, and custom configurations with Zoho Creator. This allows businesses to modify content, such as invoices, which is necessary for hotels that itemize charges for room service and amenities. Zoho’s modules are easy to understand due to their simple and modern user interface.
Beyond editing invoices, Zoho Creator allows users to create custom applications that seamlessly integrate with the rest of the platform. Hotels can create a custom room reservation system or an app to manage guest profiles. In comparison, other software requires integrating with hotel management software; Zoho offers its own, so the interface is familiar and data stays connected. However, ERPs with more features might better suit companies with more than one property or rapidly growing businesses, as Zoho Books is a relatively light software.
What is Hotel Accounting Software?
Hotel accounting software allows hoteliers to track revenue and expenses accurately to maintain a positive ROI and make better business decisions. The hotel and resort industry sees a constant influx of new customers on a daily basis. This means owners need to have a system in place to create many new invoices daily and keep track of last-minute added services (i.e., room service) and incurred damages that need to be charged to the customer’s account. The system also needs to track the costs of complimentary items like travel-sized soaps and instant coffee.
Room rate calculation is also an important part of hotel accounting systems. Knowing the time of the week or time of year with the highest demand for hotel stays helps businesses adjust pricing as needed. Companies can also adjust room prices based on the amenities in a particular room; for example, rooms with king-size beds will be set higher than rooms with queen-size.
The accounting software also helps manage payroll. Hotel owners and general managers can track payroll by specific departments, from housekeeping to front desk personnel or individual employees. The system will track the hours worked to calculate wages and provide tax calculations for your state and federal taxes.
Key Features
- Core Accounting: Track revenue and expenses with the accounts payable and accounts receivable modules. Keep financial records in the general ledger with the chart of accounts, financial statements, journal entries, and more.
- Room Rate Calculation: Automate rate calculation and adjustments based on the day of the week and seasonality. Apply extra charges for room upgrades. Manage block rates for large groups.
- Invoicing: Create invoices for scheduled stays, special event reservations, and charges for room damages.
- Budgeting and Forecasting: Calculate cost per occupied room (CPOR) and generate budgeted vs. actual comparisons to create financial plans.
- Financial Reporting: Create reports on financial data, including profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets.
- Payroll: Track wages for employees in various departments, including front-desk staff, back-office personnel, housekeepers, and chefs.
Primary Benefits
Some of the benefits of hotel accounting systems include:
Streamlined Billing and Invoicing
Hotel accounting software makes it easy to bill for a regular night’s stay, extra services, and special events. If your customers order room service or take stocked items from the minibar, you can add these extras to the final invoice at the end of the stay. Any damages that occurred or stolen items can also be added as additional charges for the customer.
Hotels with conference rooms or other large spaces they rent out for special events must be invoiced appropriately. Not only do you need a system that tracks the cost of the rental space, but you also need to manage room rates for large parties. Customers with large groups can set up room blocks to lock in pricing for a set number of guests.
Optimize Your Room Rates
The most optimal price of a hotel room will fluctuate depending on the season, day of the week, and ongoing events in the area. Hotel businesses need to keep their pricing competitive–having pricing too high will drive customers to your competitors. Pricing too low will cost you money. Hotel accounting systems can analyze the current rates of competitors and estimate the demand for hotel stays to help you determine the best pricing for your rooms.
The system will also keep track of room amenities to adjust pricing between the different rooms available in your hotel. Rooms with larger or more beds, whirlpools, or other extra amenities will automatically cost more than basic rooms.
What Does Your Hotel Business Need?
The right accounting software for your hotel business primarily depends on your functionality requirements and the size of your business.
- Small Hotels: Hotel owners that run small inns with only a few rooms generally use generic accounting software like QuickBooks, Xero, or FreshBooks to track income and expenses. Small to midsize hotels with high customer turnover managing many rooms in one location should consider an industry-specific solution. Owners can use hotel accounting software to determine room rate changes and manage additional charges for add-on services and upgrades.
- Multi-Location Hotels: Large hotel chains with multiple locations need all-in-one hospitality management software. Hospitality software allows hoteliers to manage all business operations from one system. In addition to accounting, these systems also manage customers, inventory, reservations, events, housekeeping schedules, maintenance requests, and point-of-sale transactions across all locations.
Business intelligence tools are available in some advanced systems that allow hoteliers to estimate the demand for their hotels in any particular location. BI tools assist owners with making important business decisions like increasing or decreasing room rates or hiring seasonal staff. The system can factor in data from the prices of surrounding competitors, upcoming events, or seasonality.
Pricing Guide
Hotel accounting software can range from $50/month for small bed-and-breakfasts to over $100,000/year for enterprise hotel chains. What you pay depends completely on how many properties you manage and how specialized your needs are.
Here’s a general breakdown based on property size:
Single Property (Small Hotels & Inns)
If you run an independent hotel, inn, or bed and breakfast, general accounting tools are usually enough. These platforms cover core functions like invoicing, expense tracking, bank reconciliation, and standard financial reporting, but aren’t built specifically for hospitality.
- Most solutions fall in the range of $50 to $100 per month, though you won’t get features like daily operating reports, PMS integrations, or USALI-compliance.
Multi-Property Operators (5–20 Properties)
As soon as you’re managing multiple properties, generic accounting software starts to fall short. At this stage, you need more structure for multi-property reporting, integrations with your PMS, and standardized financials.
- Expect costs to fall in the range of $250 to $600+ per property, per month, depending on the features and modules you need.
Large Hotel Groups (20+ Properties)
For larger portfolios, accounting software becomes significantly more advanced and more expensive. These systems support multi-entity consolidation, deeper integrations across your tech stack, and stronger reporting.
- Pricing at this level is almost always custom, but most organizations can expect total costs in the range of $30,000 to $120,000+ per year, depending on scale and complexity.
Franchises & Management Companies (20+ Properties)
Franchise operators and third-party management companies have the most complex requirements. They need to standardize reporting across multiple properties with different owners, brands, and financial reports.
- Pricing is typically custom, with most organizations falling in the range of $50,000 to $150,000+ per year, especially when factoring in implementation and configuration.
