hotel financial coach
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Material and Immaterial Expenses
David Lund | February 5, 2024
By David Lund There is a critical understanding that all hospitality financial leaders need to clearly understand and communicate when it comes to expenses. It is a simple distinction that is many times missed or not clearly understood. That is what this piece is all about: Clearing up the mystery and setting the expense record straight. Here’s the scoop! That was quite a mouthful, and I do not want to downplay the importance of the need to understand the difference and impact of material and immaterial expenses on the monthly profit and loss statement. The materiality refers to the significance of the expense item in the context of t...
Hospitality Financial Leadership – How to Properly Record Packages in Your Hotel
David Lund | January 15, 2024
By David Lund Packages are, on the one hand, straightforward. They are a well-established offering in most hotels, customers love them, and they are not going away. On the other hand, most hoteliers are at a loss to properly set up and manage the transactions so that they do not end up with a mess in their books and systems. That is what this piece is about: How to properly administer these seemingly complicated and unruly devices. First: Pricing aspect Packages are a combination of a room and at least one other component, like a bed and breakfast package. They can also combine many items like we see in a romance package: room, meals, ro...
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Why You Need an Internal Control Review Program in Your Hotel
David Lund | June 19, 2023
By David Lund Here is the scenario You finally have a full-blown accounting policy manual in place. It has taken several months and a lot of work, but it is done. Something to be proud of indeed! But, wait a minute, it seems like no one knows about these policies and whenever you speak about such and such internal control not being followed, you get the deer in the headlights look. This all too familiar stare means one thing, these people have no idea what you are talking about. Your policy manual might be complete but you are still a long way from compliance. What is the solution? The answer is you need a regular program to test ...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: Why You Need to Reconcile Your Credit Cards Every Day
David Lund | May 22, 2023
By David Lund The dreaded credit card reconciliation need not be such a big deal if we bite-size it. That is what this piece is all about: How and why you should balance your hotel credit cards daily. That is right – every day – and I mean you need to know the cards are balanced to three separate and connected points. First of all, just to properly date myself and reminisce just a little, I can remember mailing off the backs of the card imprints each day. I was working at the front desk, and we would separate the imprints by type and run a tape to balance to our front office Micros posting terminal. OMG, can you imagine? Then t...
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Why Technology Has the Hotel Business Bootstrapped
David Lund | April 24, 2023
By David Lund Bootstrapping is a statistical metric that uses random sample replacements. That definition is not for me, so bootstrapping also has a broader slang meaning that most people get. It means you are stuck or at least unable to take big strides to alleviate or remove the problem that is literally at your feet. In the hotel world it is the operational technology stack that has us all bootstrapped. That is what this piece is all about. How we find ourselves in this predicament and how we might be able to literally run away from it. To understand and begin to solve this problem we need to look at our structure. In the broad...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: Why Prioritizing Employee Development Has the Best ROI for Owners Too
David Lund | March 27, 2023
By David Lund A lot has been said about why we have such a labor crisis in hospitality. Some would say it is no wonder because we have forgotten – or better still allowed – the forces that be to drive the agenda around how we invest in and manage our hotels. So how did we get into this mess, what is the solution, and the best part – how can it pay off? First of all, to understand how to fix a problem one person once said you need to understand what the problem is and why we have that problem in the first place. The problem is people do not want to work for a company, owner or brand that is not loyal to them. What our industry d...
Use a Business Mindset: David Lund on Hotel Finance
David Lund | February 13, 2023
David Lund, a financial consultant for hotels, shares his thoughts on how hotels should approach hotel finance software and tools, and the role technology plays in daily operations, highlighting the skills needed to succeed. With vast experience in hospitality operations, finance, and accounting, David offers his unique view on the hospitality business and advocates financial literacy for hoteliers as one of the most crucial skills to have. How did your journey in hospitality start? I grew up in the shadow of the Algonquin Hotel in my hometown of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, in Canada. I ended up working there right out of high school and w...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: How to Write a Great Monthly Executive Commentary
David Lund | December 19, 2022
By David Lund They go by many names: owner’s commentary, monthly commentary, executive commentary and more. The names can be different but in essence, they are all the same thing – a review of the prior month’s results plus a forward look into the coming months from a financial and market perspective. The monthly commentary is a great example of the “full disclosure principle” and if you are wanting a brush up on that you can watch this short video. So, in this piece, I am going to explain a strategy you can use to get your team to produce a great monthly commentary. Not only will you have the information you need to expla...
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