Are you looking for a Serviced apartment management & reservation software? here are useful tips on how to find the right solution and why QuickBooks accounting software is the best.
A serviced apartment business is one that is fully furnished and available for short or long term stay – it’s slightly different from a hotel; in addition to the similar services offered by hotels and guest houses; amenities like TV, bathroom, bedroom, you have a kitchen to cook your meal if you like. It’s actually a great choice for business travellers who are staying for a longer time and are looking for a home away from home.
For startups running a serviced apartment business and are interested in automating their business and accounting system while focusing on growth and sustainability of their business, this guide will help you understand how implementing an accounting software will drive efficiency and improve productivity. You may also refer to my previous article on accounting software for hotels in Nigeria; it contains similar deliverables just that I will be expanding the idea by discussing steps to track the performance of serviced apartment.
In setting up an accounting software for your serviced apartment, you need to ask certain questions before deciding on the best financial application to deploy:
- Is the software application simple to use?
- For off the shelf software, is it easily customizable to solve your accounting challenges?
- Can multiple users work on a company file?
- Is it available on the cloud or desktop?
- Can I make a reservation for customers?
- Can I create and send an invoice to customers that book apartments via email or as PDF attached file?
- Will expenses incurred and/or paid for easy to track so that I can rely on the profit or loss report?
- Is there a report that shows all customers list and accounts receivable balances for a specified period?
- Can I also track VAT charges on customers’ invoice and file my returns with relevant tax authorities?
- For repairs, maintenance and apartment supplies, is there a report to shows all my payables?
- I also want to track my fixed assets; building, furniture & fittings, etc with provision for depreciation?
- On inventories, you also need to be sure that all inventory purchases, usage, and quantity available for properly accounted.
While these are not all the questions, as you may still have business specific challenges to address, it surely will help you get your serviced apartment business on a right path to achieving maximum efficiency and productivity.
What’s the best accounting software for a serviced apartment?
There is no straight answer to this question but from my experience in business support and software implementation, QuickBooks is the best; not only is it affordable as an off the shelf and one-off financial application but the flexibility built into customizations of charts of account makes deployment simple and adaptable to virtually all business type.
Talking about multi-user access, you can create a company file on a network (LAN or WAN /Cloud) and give each of the accounting staff access via unique login names and passwords. This, alone, enhances effective transaction entries as the company expands or establish more serviced apartments in different locations.
When there is a room booking, “item list feature > services” is there to help you select the specific apartment either by code or room number on the invoice or receipt while you fill in the details of the transactions; customer’s name, address, amount paid, VAT, the number of days and VAT charges. If there is any unpaid balance, you can always use the “customers and receivables report”.
What if there is a reservation? I use the “create invoice window” and then “pend it” – which means that the transaction value will not hit the account until the customer arrives, after which I make the invoice final.
The “write a check and enter bills” windows lets you record all payments for expenses incurred and outstanding balances payable to vendors respectively. Also, for new asset purchases or replacement, you can as well use the same window to record details of the transactions.
There is an inventory window that helps you check items in each serviced apartments and if there is a need for replacement or repair, the “Adjust stock” and “write check” are both built to handle these functions respectively.
Finally, you can explore the expanded report section of QuickBooks to see your cash inflow and outflow, view receivables and payable balance summary, generate a financial statement that shows your overall performance on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis.
If you have questions and need clarifications in a certain area of financial management, feel free to talk our in-house expert by sending a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or call 08105090001.