Top Strategies to Control Labor Expense for Your Hotel Company

Everyone in the hospitality industry is struggling to find and retain employees right now. These challenges are felt not just in front of house, but also back of house departments like accounting. Regardless of the employee role, there are some important HR technology tools that can help you manage your labor and control one of the largest variable expenses at your hotels to improve hotel performance and profitability.

The first, and most obvious, technique to control labor costs is to reduce turnover. Tools like Netchex’s mobile app can help with this by engaging employees early on and making their lives easier with access to paychecks, PTO requests, even enroll in benefits. For additional insight into turnover, use the Netchex analytics tool to view turnover by employee tenure, department, or manager. 

Additionally, drive accountability down to each hotel and each manager to reward top performers and identify areas for additional training. With a labor management tool like HIA Business Intelligence which integrates Netchex labor data, you can monitor labor across your portfolio and break it down by hotel, department and position. GMs can set their own custom thresholds and get notifications when thresholds are met (good and bad) like highest or lowest cost per occupied room or minutes per occupied room. This lets you reward those doing a good job. Notifications also help managers take action mid pay period, such as if overtime hours exceed thresholds.

Then, use the guidance provided by HIA Business Intelligence to measure how labor affects the bottom line, for example, wages as a percent of revenue. When performance and financial data is blended with your labor data, you can get at-a-glance visuals on key metrics like minutes per occupied room. With custom standards set per property, position, or season, the controller or GM can monitor actual vs. standard costs per position or actual vs. standard hours by position. HIA Business Intelligence makes it easy to change filters and drill down into data, so you can benchmark your hotels, such as by brand or region. All data is available in real-time to help you maximize revenue and control labor costs.

The last, and most important tip to manage your labor cost, and indeed all expenses, is a total back-office software. There is only one platform designed specifically for the hospitality industry which integrates data from front of house systems, like PMS, POS, and STR—while also offering advanced accounting functionality with built-in time-saving automations, and personalized dashboards by role, that is Hotel Investor Apps ERP & Accounting Suite.

When using HIA ERP you have instant access to critical financial and operational reports so that all decisions are data driven for quicker responses and a more competitive business. The available hotel software integrations reduce or eliminate the need for manual data entry, which reduces errors and saves time. Streamline processes with features like recurring transactions, reclassification, smart-matching bank reconciliation, and inter-company accounting or workflow options like automated approval mapping and scheduled reports which run and send automatically. 

Additional efficiency is gained when you add integrated solutions such as AP automation. With modern hotel ERP technology, your team can get more done in the same amount of time, to close books faster, and have more time for important duties like benchmarking expenses and other analysis.

Bonus advantage: you will take some burden off your accounting staff when you provide modern technology that makes their lives easier and jobs more enjoyable for a more efficient and productive team!

The HIA Business Intelligence for labor management is built-into the HIA ERP product with one login and one seamless experience.

For more information on either the HIA ERP or HIA Business Intelligence tools, to see how these could benefit your hotel business, click here to request a demo.

This blog is sponsored by Hotel Investor Apps, a trusted Netchex technology partner.

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