Instructions - General about accounting - Hotel Operations

Modified on Wed, 08 Sep 2021 at 03:25 PM

Index

  1. Summary of accounting

  2. Invoicing different products

  3. Invoicing & different payment methods


Index description:

In this article we are trying to explain accounting in general. This will help you understand why we do things the way we do in Godo Property, for example when it comes to Accounting system connections.


1. Summary of accounting

In simple terms, accounting in relation to hotel operations you need to think about 3 things.


  1. Invoices 

  2. Payments 

  3. Customer (invoicee)


Whenever an invoice is sent to accounting, a payment is needed so that the invoice is “balanced”. If I send an invoice for 100 euro, a 100 euro payment should follow. Otherwise there’s an outstanding debt. 

And if there’s an outstanding debt the accounting won’t be balanced as shown here:

A customer(invoicee) will also be attached to each invoice. So imagine that when an invoice is created it will be assigned to someone. In our case this can be for example: Booking.com, a travel agency or the hotel itself, i.e. paid on the spot.

This way if I create an invoice that is assigned to booking.com I know where this money is coming from. Or in the case of a travel agency, which travel agency should pay the invoice.



2. Invoicing different products

On each invoice there can be multiple products. For hotels this can be for example accommodation (the room charges) and extra charges such as dinner, spa or anything else that can be bought at the hotel. Products in accounting always have a certain code. I.e. Accommodation might be “1234” and Spa service might be “1220”. These codes also differ between accounting systems and can actually be text strings, numbers, different lengths etc. What is important here is that the company is able to see in their accounting what was bought or invoiced for. 
In our system like Godo Property, each charge item should have a code under “Status” with the exception of accommodation which is usually empty for “default”. 

You can read about this more in depth here: Link missing to article



3. Invoicing & different payment methods

There are two ways to think about this when creating an invoice. Either you have a payment or a gift certificate in hand or you create an invoice that will be paid later via bank transfer.

(Basically paid on the spot or paid later)


The benefit of our connections to accounting systems is that everything that has been paid for at the hotel can be balanced out in the accounting if the payment is delivered with the invoice. 

Then the only unbalanced invoices that should be in accounting are for example for Travel agencies that will pay after the guest has stayed. 


One could imagine that when multiple invoices are sent that the different payment methods might be the following:

The Credit cards and Cash are usually paid on the premises while the wire transfer (invoices for travel agencies for example) are paid afterwards. Then after we send multiple invoices from Godo Property the balance sheet might look like this:


Note, in our system wire transfer would be equivalent to “invoiced” / which usually does not have a payment method as it’s supposed to remain unbalanced. All other payments should have a payment method (a payment with a status in our reservations) to be delivered with the invoice.



How do we make sure that the payments are delivered to the accounting: Link missing to article

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