USALI | Hotel accounting basics | Room Revenue Segmentation

What is the Uniform system of accounting for lodging industries (USALI)

Uniform System of Accounting Lodging Industries (USALI) has been around for almost 100 years. It started out as a guidebook for the Hotel Accountants Association of New York City in the late 1920s. Since then It was adopted by the American Hotel Association and most recently by the association, Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals, or perhaps better known as HFTP.

USALI is the bible for the financial standards in the hotel industry. It lays out detail and provides a solid and usable framework for the hotel industry to follow when it comes to how we present financial information.

What are the Key Features of USALI?

Hotel financial information must be organized and reported by department, rooms, F&B, MODs, A&G, S&M, POMEC. Not just all thrown together like baked spaghetti. USALI puts things in order and makes sense of how your hotel business is operating in a uniform fashion so we can then compare our results to others.

Why do we need to understand USALI?

USALI is followed all over the world by big and small hotels alike. Management companies emphasize on following usali as it provides a uniform basis of accounting and analysis. If there are no standard definitions all hotels would be free to use any type of definition that may suit hotel performance.

Hotel owners will not be able to analyse and compare hotel performance with other hotels in absense of standard definitions. The management fee is tied up with Gross operating revenue (GOR) and Gross Operating Profits (GOP), there may be confusion and distrust among managers and owners in absence of standard definitions and guidelines on what should be included in these terms.

What you would learn in this Course on USALI

In this Module, you will be able to understand the Definitions (Revenue, Expenses, Statistics) and Format of profit & loss statements for the Rooms Department in the hospitality industry prescribed by the Uniform system of accounting for lodging industries (USALI).

We will be covering and understanding

• key terms used in the rooms department
• Definitions of Revenue line items, Revenue segmentation,
• Meaning of Expenses line, what goes inside and what is not.
• What expenses are variable and fixed.
• What are operating statistics which are prescribed by USALI and helpful in understanding P&L,
• How to read and understand Rooms department profit & loss statement.

If you are looking to head hotel finance teams, then this course is a must for your development.