Choosing the Right Accounting System for Your Hotel

What Accounting System should independent Hotels use?

Small and independent hotels often don’t get the same attention from software providers as the big chains. But at Antravia, we think your financial needs are just as important, and in some ways, even more complex. Whether you're running a boutique hotel in the Caribbean or a family-owned property in Italy, your accounting system needs to keep up with seasonal shifts and demands, multiple revenue streams, and the realities of hospitality finance.

Here’s how to think about your accounting systems if you run a small or mid-sized hotel. This is especially for owners who are not part of a big brand like Marriott or Hilton, and who want better financial insights without hiring a full-time finance team.

What makes hotel accounting different

Hotels are not like other small businesses. Your income isn’t just “sales.” You may also have:

• Room revenue

• F&B revenue from a restaurant or bar

• Spa, activities, or excursion income

• Conference or event rentals

• Ancillary charges like airport transfers, minibar, or late check-out
  

You also have prepayments, no-shows, refunds, deposits, and possibly travel agent or OTA commissions. And then there are the taxes, sometimes different VAT or sales tax rates for rooms, food, and alcohol.

Your accounting system needs to handle all of that. It must be able to:

• Track revenue streams separately

• Match prepayments with future stays

• Show true profitability by department

• Handle local and international tax correctly

• Reconcile bank feeds and payment platforms

• Provide real-time cash flow

  
  

Most accounting systems on the market can handle standard bookkeeping like sales, expenses, bank reconciliations, and financial reports. But hotels need more than that. You’ve got room revenue, restaurant and bar income, service charges, occupancy tax, and sometimes even third-party commissions to track. The right system needs to handle all of that, while also connecting to your property management system, point of sale, and payment tools. If it doesn’t integrate, your team is left keying in the same data multiple times — and that’s where mistakes creep in.


The minimum setup for serious hotel finance

A point for smaller hotels: at Antravia, we have seen many that are still managing finances in Excel. That can work, but it’s not scalable. Manual tracking increases risk, slows down reconciliation, and limits your ability to spot patterns in revenue and cost. We believe you need at least:

• A cloud-based accounting system

• Bank feed integration

• Basic automation for recurring bills and payroll

• Department-level P&L breakdowns

• FX handling if you receive foreign payments
  

Multi-currency support is also essential if you’re welcoming international guests. One guest might book in dollars, settle their minibar bill in euros, and pay the final invoice in pounds. The accounting system needs to reflect each of those transactions properly, without you needing to create separate journal entries for every currency shift. Not every system handles this cleanly. Many will show a single base currency and force you to calculate the FX manually. That’s not good enough for real-world hotel finance.

Popular systems like Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage all have a presence in the market, but their suitability depends on how your hotel operates. According to 2024 data from Software Advice, QuickBooks remains popular among smaller U.S. properties. Xero sees strong use in the UK, Australia, and Southeast Asia, especially where cloud access and multi-currency are priorities. Sage continues to be used across Europe, particularly in hotels that have been running it for years. But none of these systems are perfect out of the box. What matters is how you configure them. If your chart of accounts doesn’t match your operation, the numbers won’t mean anything. You’ll end up with journal entries and reports that confuse more than clarify.

Another key challenge is how your system handles commissions and OTA deductions. If a guest pays $200 but you receive $180 after the OTA takes its cut, you need a way to log both the gross revenue and the commission cost. Too many hotels just record the net receipt and ignore the deduction, which misstates both revenue and costs. Over time, that skews your financials. If you also get chargebacks, especially from direct payments on your website, your accounting platform needs to flag them properly so your income reporting is not inflated.

Integrations sometimes matter more than features

We have seen a lot of hotel owners impressed on features, but what you really need is compatibility with your other systems. Can your accounting system integrate with your PMS (property management system), your POS (point-of-sale) for the restaurant, and your booking engine?

If you use Cloudbeds or RoomRaccoon, look for direct or indirect integrations to push daily revenue into Xero or QuickBooks. Some systems like Mews and Hotelogix offer native accounting integrations, or at least decent exports. The goal is to avoid duplicate entry and to automate journal creation.

One recurring issue is disconnected reporting between F&B outlets and the hotel’s main ledger. The restaurant may run its own system. The spa may use another. But if those don’t feed cleanly into your central accounting, your month-end process will be painful. Worse, your numbers won’t reflect true departmental profitability. You need to know if your restaurant is subsidizing room revenue.

For the restaurant or spa, use POS systems that can push daily summaries into your books, not just receipts. That way, you can track food costs, wastage, and profit per outlet and not just revenue.

Accounting for prepayments and deposits

This is where we have seen many small hotels sometimes go wrong. A guest pays in January for a stay in July. That’s not revenue yet (although we understand the concept of cash accounting, blog on this coming soon!). If you recognize it early, your monthly profit is overstated. It also means you can’t see real occupancy-adjusted profitability.

Your system should track deferred revenue and release it only once the stay occurs. Many hotels also forget to adjust for cancellations and no-shows. Those adjustments matter when you’re trying to understand your real room yield.

Multi-currency and FX exposure

If you’re receiving payment from OTAs in USD but paying suppliers in local currency, you’re exposed to exchange rate swings. A proper accounting system should let you track FX gains and losses accurately. You also need to know what rate your bank or Stripe is using when they convert incoming payments.

Don’t rely on just your PMS reports. Reconciliation across systems matters. Your accounting software should show you both the gross and the net of OTA bookings, including commission deductions, so you can match what was promised with what was actually received.

What real hotel owners get wrong

We’ve worked with dozens of hotels over the years. Here are the most common mistakes we see:

• No tracking of departmental profitability, so the restaurant looks like a “nice to have” but is actually losing money

• All bookings lumped into one line item, making it hard to spot margin trends

• No cash flow forecasting, so payroll hits during a slow week create panic

• No system for tracking cancellations and chargebacks

• Underestimating the cost of OTA commissions and FX fees
  

What to do if you use an accountant

Even if you have an external accountant, you still need access to good numbers during the year. Many hotel owners outsource tax and compliance, which is fine, but you should never be waiting until year-end to know how you’re doing.

Use your system for internal visibility. Run a monthly P&L. Compare month-on-month. Look at occupancy-adjusted room revenue, not just raw revenue. See how your F&B is performing as a standalone department.

The Antravia view

Good accounting systems don’t just track. They help you make decisions. They show you where money is leaking, where revenue is underperforming, and where to focus your energy.

The Antravia view is simple. The right accounting system is the one that gives you confidence in your numbers. That might be Xero with a hospitality add-on, QuickBooks with careful configuration, or a regional tool that understands your local market. What matters is structure, integration, and clarity. You should be able to see exactly what your guests are spending, what you’re earning by department, and where your risks are.

We help independent hotels set up their accounting systems correctly... from FX to restaurant reconciliation to commission deduction mapping. If your numbers are messy or you’re not sure if your system is telling you the truth, get in touch.

And if you haven’t already, read our other guides on managing FX in travel, restaurant performance in hotels, and direct bookings vs OTA strategies.

Ready to get serious about hotel finance? Let’s talk.