What does a sold room cost?
Not the price: the cost. Cleaning, linen, breakfast, channel commission, a share of energy. Without that number a 15% discount can be a good deal or a loss, and you will not know until year end.
Management accounting
You are selling more than last year and earning less. Where did the margin go?
You know your revenue to the day. You know your margin in June, when the accountant closes the previous year — and by then it is a photograph, not a decision.
The problem
Statutory accounts answer a different question
Statutory accounts exist to tell the tax authority how much you earned. They do not exist to tell you where: those are two different jobs, and asking the first to do the second is why so many hotels cannot answer three simple questions.
Does the restaurant earn, or is it a service?
Both answers are legitimate — a loss-making restaurant that fills the rooms can make sense. But it is a decision, and to make it you need to know rather than sense it.
Which channel leaves you the most margin?
Not the one with the highest ADR: the one with the highest ADR minus commission, minus acquisition cost, minus cancellations. The ranking changes, and sometimes it flips.
The method
USALI: the accounts split by department
USALI (Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry) is the scheme the hotel industry uses to split accounts by department — rooms, food and beverage, other — attributing to each its own revenue and its own direct costs.
It is not a regulation and nobody imposes it: it is a convention, and it does two things a statutory chart of accounts does not. First, it tells you which department earns. Second, it lets you compare yourself with other hotels, because they are counting the same way.
| Question | Statutory accounts | Your own spreadsheet | USALI management accounting |
|---|---|---|---|
| When the numbers arrive | In June, about last year | When you have time to update it | Every month, from the PMS data |
| Margin by department | no | If you built it yourself | yes |
| Cost of a sold room | no | Approximate | yes |
| Margin by sales channel | no | Rarely | yes |
| Comparable with other hotels | No: it depends on the chart of accounts | no | Yes, that is the point of a shared scheme |
| Who keeps it up to date | Your accountant | You | The system, from data you already enter |
The spreadsheet is not the wrong choice: it is the choice that works as long as you update it. The trouble is that it stops in exactly the months when it would matter most — the full ones.
Where we come in
CostCore
It takes revenue from the PMS and costs from where they arise — invoices, suppliers, payroll — and puts them into the departmental scheme. If the PMS is OS that revenue arrives on its own, night by night; if it is another one, or none at all, it is imported. The result is a P&L that keeps itself current, with margin by department and cost per sold room, plus a cost forecast that moves with forecast occupancy.
It connects to a PMS that is not ours too: replacing your PMS in order to do management accounting would be a project that serves nobody.
Further reading, if you want the detail
- Selling more and earning less The case this page starts from, with the numbers.
- Which systems exist, and which is worth it The alternatives on the market, compared without cheerleading.
- The controller in a hotel: who does it when there is none Why in independent properties that job is done by the owner, in the evening.
Questions people actually ask us
Does it replace the accountant?
No, and it does not try to. Your accountant does the statutory accounts and the filings: those are compulsory and they answer to the tax authority. Management accounting answers to you, every month, about things that are not in the statutory accounts — which department earns, what a room costs, which channel pays.
The two run on the same data and do not overlap.
Is it useful without a restaurant?
Yes, and only the number of departments changes. Even a rooms-only property has costs that behave differently: those that follow rooms sold (cleaning, linen, breakfast, commissions) and those that stay fixed whatever happens. Separating them is already half the work.
How much do I have to type in by hand?
Revenue depends on which PMS you run: if it is ours it arrives on its own, night by night; if it is another one it is imported, which is a periodic step rather than a daily one. For costs it depends how you receive them: electronic invoices are read automatically, paper ones are recorded the way you already record them.
The part that asks for your time happens once, at the start: deciding which cost belongs to which department.
How long before I see something?
The first closed month already gives you margin by department. Real comparisons need twelve months, because seasonality moves everything: an October is not judged next to an August, it is judged next to the October before.
We will show you your own P&L
Not an example: your numbers, split by department, in half an hour.
Request a demo