Operators have wanted a near-real-time P&L for years. Now, companies that have the right financial foundation in place are proving how close you can actually get.
In Dallas, a regional director of operations overseeing 10 properties has worked hard to build an operational cadence that lets GMs meet a 10:30 AM daily deadline to clear any unmapped PMS entries. They don’t need extensions. They don’t need to double-check. They just lock in their numbers and move on to the next task.
Across the country in New England, the SVP of Operations for a 75-property management group knows that the hospitality-specific accounting platform that’s provided on-time, accurate financial reporting for the past 18 months is “precious”.
By combining disciplined daily processes with the right financial platform, these hotel management companies are living proof that near-real-time reporting is no longer an aspirational concept on some roadmap. It’s within our grasp. But if a near-real-time P&L is within reach, why don’t more hotel companies already have it?
For a long time, delayed financial reporting was treated as a natural part of running a hotel due to disconnected systems and manual processes. Accounting teams have gotten very good at compensating for gaps in systems that weren’t designed around the way hotels operate.
No matter how efficient you try to make the manual processes, there’s only so much lag you can remove when your technology is confining you in the first place, and the tolerance for waiting is starting to disappear.
The industry might have accepted the lag for a long time because there wasn’t much of an alternative. Now there is. And as more operators modernize their back office and get closer to real-time visibility, it’s becoming harder to defend why reporting is still delayed.
The operators getting closest to real time have started with their foundation. They know that the only way financials can keep pace with the business is to remove as many manual handoffs as possible and replace them with a back office where more of that information can move automatically.
Lark is a living example of this. Since switching from a legacy accounting platform to HIA’s hospitality-specific ERP, the company has experienced more than 18 months of “on-time and accurate” financial reporting, on top of improving their year-end and tax filings.
“What I’ve observed is that our accounting ERP, being the foundational source of truth, has proven to be the most important piece.” –Scot Hopps, former SVP of Operations at Lark
In fact, Lark has become so protective of that foundation that, at the time of a podcast interview with Hotel Tech Report, Scot Hopps called it “precious,” and for good reason. When your ERP is the place you trust to tell you what’s happening across 75 hotels, its role changes. It becomes something you can keep building on.
And that’s exactly what Lark is doing.
They’re working toward incorporating daily payroll metrics to get even closer to a near-live P&L while pushing that visibility further into operations. Scot also mentioned the value in having his GMs and department managers use the information to understand GOP and labor targets, while regional leaders can see “six, eight, ten properties stacked on top of each other,” find the outlier, and know where to focus.
Lark has also been able to use AP automation to close the lag on expenses. Through its Factura integration, invoices don’t have to wait for a batch entry process before they’re reflected in the financials. “As soon as an invoice is approved, it goes into HIA,” Scot explained. “So we’re seeing that in real-time expenses and mid-month.”
That gives them a real advantage because their revenue and expenses aren’t operating on two completely different timelines. They’re keeping pace together. Because at the end of the day, a near-real-time P&L isn’t about seeing revenue faster. It’s about knowing where profitability stands sooner.
To read more about Lark’s transformation, look at their case study.
A connected back office gives you the ability to get closer to real time. Actually getting there requires your data to be current and trusted. The only way to do that is with daily verification. Lowen Hospitality Management, a Dallas based ownership and management group who transitioned to HIA two years ago, has built consistency like this into every morning.
“I’m huge at analyzing data and making sure it’s clean. So we wait for the GMs to do that. We give them a window until 10:30 in the morning. After that, the accounting team goes in and does the review to make sure there are no variances. If I know for a fact that every day is clean, then I can trust that if I decide to run a P&L, the data is correct.” — Rafael Luque, Regional Director of Operations, Lowen Hospitality Management
The daily reconciliation happening between the two teams is more than just meeting a deadline. It’s what really makes these numbers trustworthy. Instead of allowing 30 days of operational and financial errors to pile up for month-end, GMs and accounting work in tandem to confirm that what actually moved through the bank matches what’s on the books. Once that day is released, they don’t have to prove those numbers all over again.
“One of the things I always talk to my general managers about is ‘P&L on demand.’ The P&Ls are on demand — run, click the buttons, and you’ll know exactly where you are. If I come to your property and ask how your GOP is looking and you tell me you don’t know, then we have a problem.” — Rafael Luque, Regional Director of Operations, Lowen Hospitality Management
This simple but effective cadence enables Lowen to have accurate, real-time reporting, and has helped them reduce their month end close time from roughly two and a half weeks to 12 days. Now, Lowen wants to get it down to five to seven.
Read the full case study on Lowen Hospitality Management and HIA here.
Even with the right foundation and daily discipline in place, labor is still one of the hardest parts of the P&L to keep current. Unlike revenue, invoices, or bank activity, labor doesn’t arrive as a finished transaction. It builds hour by hour across scheduling and timekeeping systems that sit outside the general ledger entirely. That’s why the best operators are working to solve this last piece of the P&L-on-demand puzzle.
Business intelligence is becoming a big part of how they do it. Modern BI solutions can give operators much better daily visibility into what’s actually happening with hours, wages, overtime, CPOR, and MPOR. But labor is constantly moving. You can build the perfect schedule and still have someone stay late, cover a callout, or get sent home because occupancy didn’t materialize.
As technology evolves, I expect the time currently required to sync BI data, including labor, will significantly decrease. This will enable us to get very close to live data. The goal isn’t necessarily to make every number perfectly live. It’s to remove enough lag that operators can make today’s decisions with information that reflects what’s actually happening today. Lark and Lowen Hospitality Management are well on their way to achieving that, and the rest of the industry will be hot on their heels.
That’s ultimately what we’re helping operators do with HIA. By bringing hospitality-specific accounting, business intelligence, and daily labor dashboards together, we’re making daily, verified, real-time reporting possible. To see how close you can get to knowing where your portfolio stands today, request a demo.
Co-founder and COO
Chip Fritsch, instrumental in overseeing HIA’s daily operations, brings 15+ years of hospitality industry experience to his role. His responsibilities span from product development to business growth strategies and client onboarding. A former full-service hotel General Manager, Chip knows the in-and-outs of hotel operations and that motivates him to develop new products and services to best support hoteliers. The past 7 years have seen Chip immersed in hospitality software where he has been pivotal in helping HIA win the Acumatica Development Award.
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