ACCOUNTING
DEPARTMENT
In many hotels, the accounting department combines
staff functions
and line functions, or those
functions directly responsible for servicing
guests. The accounting
department’s traditional role is recording financial transactions, preparing
and interpreting financial statements,
and providing the managers of
other departments with timely reports
of operating results (line
functions). Other responsibilities, carried out
by the assistant controller for
finance, include payroll preparation, accounts receivable, and accounts payable
(staff functions).
Another dimension of the
accounting department’s responsibilities
deals with various aspects of
hotel operations, cost accounting, and
cost control throughout the
hotel. The two areas of central concern
to the accounting department are
rooms and food and beverage. The
accounting department’s front
office cashier is responsible for tracking
all charges to guest accounts. At
the close of each business day,
which varies by hotel but
typically occurs at midnight or after the bulk
of guests’ transactions have been
completed (i.e., check-in, restaurant
charges, retail charges, etc.),
the night auditor is responsible for reconciling all guest bills with the
charges from the various hotel departments.
Although the front office cashier
and the night auditor
physically work at the front desk
and, in the case of the cashier, have
direct contact with guests, they
are members of the accounting department and report to the assistant controller
of operations.
The food and beverage department
may be responsible for food
preparation and service, but the
accounting department is responsible
for collecting revenues. The food
and beverage controller and the
food and beverage cashiers keep
track of both the revenues and expenses of the food and beverage department.
The food and beverage
controller’s job is to verify the
accuracy and reasonableness of all food
and beverage revenues. In
addition to tracking and preparing daily reports on the costs of the food and
beverages used in the hotel, in many cases the accounting department is also
responsible for purchasing and storeroom operations.
Finally, the director of systems
is responsible for designing
the accounting and control
systems used throughout the hotel. As you
can see, the accounting
department is anything but a passive staff unit
contending with routine
recordkeeping. The accounting department
is also responsible for
collecting and reporting most of a hotel’s operational and financial
statistics, which provide important data for decision making and budget
preparation purposes. The head of the accounting department may report not only
to the hotel’s general
manager but also to the hotel
chain’s financial vice president or to the
hotel’s owner. The reason for
this dual responsibility and reporting relationship is to afford the hotel
corporation an independent verification
of the financial and operating results of the
hotel.
