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Hospitality Financial Leadership: What’s Possible in the Future With Hotel Financial Statements
David Lund | January 18, 2021
By David Lund I am a big fan of the Uniformed System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI), or as she is affectionately called “You Sally.” It has been the guide that our industry uses to properly present financial information for a long…long time, in fact almost 100 years. It lays out the format for our financial statement presentation and essentially acts as a referee if you like, to tell us what goes where. What revenues, costs of goods, expenses, and payroll belong to which department. Having a guidebook in its 11th edition that details where it goes and what it looks like are a gift. I know many industries struggle w...
Improving the Hotel Bottom-Line Begins With Knowing How to Read a P&L
HotStats | December 7, 2020
By Aggie Wojciechowska "Here's the bottom line..." It's a familiar turn of phrase that is succeeded by the speaker getting to the sum or crux of the issue—the overarching point. In running a hotel, getting to the bottom line means getting to what matters: profit. In order to arrive at that point, there are many inputs, both revenue and expense related, which mingle together to produce an outcome. The telling of that dance is recorded in the profit and loss statement (P&L), a signpost that records the story, of which the bottom line is the finale. How to read the story is the first step toward financial success. The P&L (al...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: A Bit About “You Sally”
David Lund | November 30, 2020
By David Lund By someone’s estimate there are roughly one million hotels in the world. I take it that number includes all the different kinds of hotels from small inns and hostels all the way up to your full-service multi-outlet mega hotel operations. For simple math I am going to estimate that half of this number of hotels fall into the small inns and hostels, and that leaves 500,000 of what I’m going to call real hotels. Of those 500,000 I am willing to bet that 50 percent do not know about or use “You Sally.” If we ramp that number up by multiplying the 250,000 real hotels by the average number of department managers, GMs and...
Benchmarking 101: The Bottom Line on Utility Costs
HotStats | September 22, 2020
In the age of COVID, numerous operating costs have decreased, as hoteliers have done all they can to reduce expenses to help offset the extreme reduction in revenue. Still, there’s never zero cost. Even a closed hotel has expenses. So, too, do hotels operating at reduced capacity. One of the areas that hoteliers should always be mindful of is utilities, which in the 11th edition of the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI) are recorded in the Property & Maintenance schedule. Utilities include electricity, gas, propane, oil and water/sewer. Utilities can have a massive impact on a hotel’s profit. And even...
A Tale of Two Occupancies: Total Room Inventory vs. STR Standard
STR | August 4, 2020
Occupancy has long been one of the key hotel performance metrics measured by STR. Reported on both a monthly and weekly basis, occupancy is easily calculated by dividing rooms sold (demand) by rooms available (supply), providing a straightforward representation of the percentage of rooms occupied during a given time period. However, even this traditional metric has not escaped the impacts of COVID-19. Voluntary and mandated hotel closures have caused a fundamental shift in the way we record and report supply, and thus, a new occupancy metric has been born. The status quo In normal times, and in alignment with USALI guidelin...
HFTP Offers New Digital Format for the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI), 11th Revised Edition
HFTP | August 4, 2020
Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) has just released a new format for the USALI, 11th revised edition: a digital version that is available through a subscription service. The popular guide is widely used internationally and its primary purpose is to offer operating statements formatted to provide hotel owners, managers and other interested parties with operational information pertinent to the lodging industry. The USALI was first published in 1926 and is currently in its 11th edition. The subscription will make it easy to access on multiple digital devices. "In 2018, HFTP purchased the copyright to the USALI with t...
Here’s How COVID-19 Has Altered USALI Financial Reporting
HotStats | June 22, 2020
By Tanya Venegas Occupancy decimation isn’t the only curveball COVID-19 has thrown at hoteliers. Turns out, accounting procedures have been hard to figure out as well. Enter the Financial Management Committee of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), which is tasked with responding to inquiries regarding operational reporting under the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI). They have now put forth guidelines concerning the reporting of alternative revenue sources and recording expenses rarely seen before in the lodging industry. In this blog, we will provide an overview of the reporting of COVID-...
HFTP Debuts Two USALI Certificates, Developed and Powered by Ascend
Ascend | April 22, 2020
The new certificates demonstrate a professional’s expertise on the widely used Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI). Course discounts available through August 31, 2020 Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) is debuting two new professional certificates which demonstrate one's expertise in the USALI 11th Revised Edition: The USALI-11 Certificate, Theory and USALI-11 Certificate, Practice. Each certificate is a four-module course which cover the concepts, organizational structure and application of this industry-wide reporting standard. Developed by Ascend, a hospitality talent development company,...
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