Looking for the best accounting software for your hotel business? Read on.
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Zoho Books is the best accounting software out there for hotels, due to its intuitive interface that’s easy to get started on, robust book-balancing features, and decent app library that lets you connect with other systems to manage processes like reservations and sales.
Larger hotels will be better off going for Xero, as the software has better cash flow projection features, and it’s able to track fixed assets, making it particularly useful for businesses tracking furniture and other hotel equipment.
We’ve done the hard work for you, rigorously testing and researching the best hospitality accounting software on the market, to help you decide which will be the right pick for your hotel business.
- Zoho Books is the best overall hotel accounting software due to its affordable pricing, generous invoicing limits, time tracking, and intuitive interface.
- Xero is best suited for established and chain hotels needing unlimited user access, advanced cash flow forecasting, fixed asset tracking, and AI automation.
- QuickBooks offers up to 60 pre-built reports and custom financial analytics, making it ideal for growing, boutique, or seasonal hotel operations.
- Hotel accounting software automates room reservation tracking, room service charge logging, and role-based staff management to save hours of daily admin.
- When choosing software, hotels must prioritize systems that support surge pricing, special event budgeting, POS integrations, and multi-location scalability.
Best Hotel Accounting Software
From room bookings to food and beverages to events, hotels rely on multiple revenue streams. The best hospitality accounting software can help you keep track of these transactions and prevent mismanagement from occurring.
Read on to learn about our top picks in ascending order, or use the links below to jump to a specific section:
- Zoho Books – Best hotel accounting software overall
- Xero – Best for established, chain hotels
- QuickBooks – Best for growing hotels
- FreeAgent – Best for budget-conscious hotels
- FreshBooks – Best for hotel accounting software beginners
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| Try Xero now | Try Zoho Books | Try QuickBooks | Get Quotes | Try FreshBooks |
1. Zoho Books: Best Accounting Software for Hotels Overall
- Price from: $15 per month
- Free trial: 14 days
- Company overview: Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting software that helps businesses manage invoicing, expenses, inventory, tax compliance, and financial reporting through an integrated and user-friendly platform.
Zoho Books is the best overall hospitality accounting software for hotels due to its affordable entry pricing ($15/month), generous invoicing limits, built-in time tracking, and intuitive user interface.
Zoho Books also offers a useful cash flow projection tool to help hoteliers predict future earnings and expenses, as well as budgeting tools that can be used to create budgets for specific time periods and expense accounts. These capabilities make Zoho Books especially useful for hotels that are serious about boosting their financial performance, especially compared to competitors like FreshBooks and Clear Books.
Zoho Books’ App Store, which lets you connect with over 100 third-party apps, doesn’t quite match Xero’s offering of 1000+, but its selection does include lots of options hotels may find useful. For example, it integrates with POS systems like Lightspeed POS and various payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, enabling you to accept a wide range of online payments for bookings.
Editing an invoice was easy for our team, with clear indicators for all sections and a simple, intuitive layout. Source: Tech.co testing
How much does Zoho Books cost?
Zoho Books offers five different pricing plans, with costs ranging from $15 to $240 per month. You can also get started with Zoho Books for free, as long as your hotel’s annual revenue is less than $50,000.
Its Standard plan is an affordable option for smaller lodgings, offering a three-person user limit, the ability to track up to 5,000 expenses, and 10 reporting options. If you want to unlock more flexible user or expense limits, I’d recommend the Professional or Premium plan, while Zoho Books Elite and Ultimate are the tiers that offer full-fledged inventory management.
My experience with Zoho Books
A big reason why Zoho Books earned its top position is that it’s extremely easy to use. It actually performed the best in our user experience research, due to its modern design, well-signed sidebar, and familiar, pre-populated layouts.
“The navigation was straightforward, especially around invoices and quotes—I didn’t really need to leave that section once I was in it.” – A member of Tech.co’s user testing team
Compared to more information-heavy platforms like Xero and QuickBooks, Zoho Books’ interface was uncluttered and took little time to get to grips with. Still, I found Zoho Books particularly easy to handle simple bookkeeping processes, suggesting that the platform will suit the needs of smaller hotels using accounting software to send off invoices and quotes.
The setup process for Zoho Books was simple, providing us with a step-by-step guide to tackle the basics. Source: Tech.co testing
2. Xero: Best for Established, Chain Hotels
- Price from: $27 per month
- Free trial: 30 days
- Company overview: Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Xero offers businesses tools for invoicing, expense management, bank reconciliation, payroll integration, and financial reporting to simplify everyday financial management.
Xero is the top-rated accounting platform for established chain hotels, featuring unlimited user access, advanced cash flow forecasting, fixed asset tracking, and AI-driven automation.
It also offers the best AI automation features, making it an especially great fit for larger hotels that would benefit the most from automating time-consuming tasks like bank reconciliation and expense categorization, leaving staff more time to focus on the hospitality experience.
Xero’s industry-leading App Store also connects with over 1,000 cash flow forecasting tools like Float and Help, which will benefit established hotels requiring very advanced insights into their financial health, and cash flow projection tools with longer timeframes.
When I tried Xero, I found creating invoices with the platform really straightforward. Source: Tech.co user testing
How much does Xero cost?
Xero offers three different pricing options for hotels – Early ($27/month), Growing ($59/month), and Established ($97/month).
Its Early plan is the provider’s entry-level plan and will be a good choice for smaller lodgings like motels and BnBs. However, if you need to send over 20 invoices and enter over five bills a month, you’d be better off going for its Growing or Established package.
Xero is currently running a promotional deal that gives businesses 90% off their plans for the first six months, helping to make the platform more accessible in the short term.
Xero’s plans also have no user limits. This is very rare for accounting platforms, with other providers on this list enforcing strict user caps on most plans. This is just another reason why Xero is a great option for larger hotels, especially if they require multiple different staff members to manage finances together at the same time.
My experience with Xero
While Xero’s book balancing features aren’t quite as robust as Zoho Books’ the platform offers a wealth of useful core accounting capabilities to help hotels manage their finances efficiently.
For example, its invoicing features let you create clients, enter descriptions, and manage different currencies with ease, and the platform’s pre-populated email fields also help to streamline the processes by reducing the need to enter data manually.
Additionally, Xero’s useful AI features can streamline a range of time-consuming processes. The platform uses AI to automatically match bank transactions with accounting records and classify expenses. It also automatically categorizes budgets and forecasts, which gives it a leg up over QuickBooks and Zoho Books, which don’t currently offer this feature.
Xero’s profit and loss features give you a detailed overview of your business’s financial health. Source: Tech.co user testing
3. QuickBooks: Best for Growing Hotels
- Price from: $20 per month
- Free trial: 30 days
- Company overview: An accounting software developed by Intuit that helps small and mid-sized businesses manage invoicing, expenses, payroll, cash flow, tax preparation, and financial reporting through a comprehensive suite of financial management tools.
QuickBooks is the best fit for growing hotels, offering a much more streamlined setup process and slicker interface than Xero, which caters well for hotels using accounting software for the first time.
However, QuickBooks’ variety of pre-built reports makes it an especially good choice for hotels interested in using in-depth financial reports to grow their customer base and overcome challenges. The software’s growth tools also lend themselves well to independent boutique hotels and those with strong seasonal fluctuations.
QuickBooks also offers its very own payroll platform – QuickBooks Payroll – that hoteliers can use to manage payment processes, tax deductions, and more. Its powerful cash flow projection tools help hotels manage their finances effectively. For example, its Cash Flow Planner provides visual representations of your projected cash flow over a chosen period, plus lets you set a minimum cash flow threshold and sends alerts if your balance drops below that level.
QuickBooks lets you set up recurring invoices, automatic invoice sending, and more. Source: Tech.co user testing
How much does QuickBooks cost?
QuickBooks lets you choose between five pricing plans, with prices ranging from $20 to $340 per month.
Its entry-level Solopreneur is the most affordable but lacks accounts receivable and budget forecasting features, so it won’t be able to meet the needs of most hotels. Its Simple Start package ($38 per month) offers lots more useful accounting features, but if you need to unlock greater user limits, we’d advise opting for a more advanced plan.
QuickBooks is also running a special deal which gives you 50% off its accounting plans for the first three months.
My experience with QuickBooks
QuickBooks’ beginner-friendly set-up guide made getting started with the platform a dream. The platform provided me with helpful tooltips to help me navigate the process, and its well-organized dashboard made it simple for us to access core features.
However, I found that completing certain tasks, like setting tax rates and creating expenses, was a bit confusing and required a lot of manual steps. Due to its slightly steep learning curve, I found the platform to be less suitable for beginners than alternatives like Zoho Books and FreshBooks.
That said, QuickBooks also excels in reporting and analytics. The platform lets you create custom reports to match your hotel’s specific needs, and import customers and invoices using CSV files. Depending on your chosen package, QuickBooks also offers up to 60 pre-built reports to help you measure a variety of key metrics, including profit and loss, sales per customer, expense by vendor, and more.
I was able to create in-depth reporting dashboards with QuickBooks, but the learning curve was a bit steep. Source: Tech.co testing
4. FreeAgent: Best for Budget-Conscious Hotels
- Price from: $27 per month
- Free trial: 30 days
- Company overview: FreeAgent’s software is primarily designed for small businesses, offering tools for invoicing, expense tracking, tax management, cash flow monitoring, and financial reporting to simplify day-to-day financial administration.
FreeAgent is a reliable option for smaller hotels with a tight budget, as it doesn’t charge for additional users – making it the most cost-effective accounting platform on this list, especially for hotels that need a lot of users to access the software.
Additionally, FreeAgent provides an easy-to-use platform that simplifies complex accounting tasks and offers some stand-out capabilities – including its Tax Timeline tool, which gives you a clear overview of future tax dates and payments.
Moreover, the platform has a Cash Flow Functionality which calculates your cash flow and automatically updates it based on your bank balance, invoices, bills, and more. Unlike providers like FreshBooks, you won’t have to upgrade to an expensive plan to unlock these features, lowering the barrier to entry for hotels with smaller budgets.
Check out our in-depth FreeAgent review for more information.
How much does FreeAgent cost?
FreeAgent only offers one plan, which costs $27 per month when billed monthly, or $270 per year when billed annually. It also doesn’t incur charges for extra users — making it the most affordable accounting platform on this list.
With FreeAgent’s promotional offer, businesses get 50% off for the first six months on the monthly plan and 50% off for the first year on the annual plan. This brings the price down to $13.50/month and $135/year, respectively.
My experience with FreeAgent
FreeAgent’s intuitive dashboard provides clear reminders of upcoming tax obligations and payment deadlines, helping users stay organized and avoid missing important dates.
“It notifies you within the main dashboard—like your tax timeline—of what’s expected and when it’s due. Unlike other platforms, it really felt trustworthy in keeping you on track.” – A member of Tech.co’s user testing team
However, FreeAgent lacks advanced features you’d find in more robust systems like Zoho Books and Xero, such as automatic account codes and options for multiple delivery addresses.
Its App Store, which is home to over 90 third-party integrations, is also more limited than lots of competitors. It only connects with one POS system too (SumUp POS), making it less suitable for larger, established hotels with complex operations.
The FreeAgent dashboard provided us with a snapshot of your business’ financial situation. Source: Tech.co testing
5. FreshBooks: Best for Accounting Software Beginners
- From: $23 per month
- Free trial: 30 days
- Company overview: An intuitive accounting platform tailored to small businesses – providing easy-to-use tools for invoicing, expense management, time tracking, online payments, and financial reporting.
FreshBooks is ideal for hotels new to accounting software because it’s easy to get started and helps novice users manage simple accounting processes with ease. And if you were to get stuck, the platform’s helpdesk is on hand 24/7 to help you smooth out problems.
FreshBooks offers all the accounting features you need to manage simple processes with ease, including customizable invoices, automatic tax calculations, time tracking, and more. Its user-friendly platform simplifies a lot of complex processes too, particularly when it comes to converting quotes into invoices.
Other useful features include bank reconciliation, receipt scanning and financial reporting, which help businesses monitor spending, maintain accurate records, and gain a clearer understanding of their financial performance. Its mobile app also allows users to manage invoices and expenses while away from the office, and project profitability tracking helps businesses understand which activities generate the strongest returns.
Learn more about how the provider compares to QuickBooks in our QuickBooks vs FreshBooks review.
FreshBooks makes managing invoices straightforward. Source: Tech.co user testing
How much does FreshBooks cost?
FreshBooks offers four pricing plans for hotels to choose from: Lite ($23/month), Plus ($43/month), Premium ($70/month), and Select (custom-quoted).
Its Lite plan lets you create and send estimates, track expenses in real-time, and send invoices to five clients a month, making it suitable for smaller hotels with relatively simple accounting needs.
FreshBooks Plus caters to hotels with up to 50 clients and offers much stronger reporting tools, while Premium and Select give you access to FreshBooks’ full suite of features and are better suited to larger hotels with more complex financial processes.
FreshBooks’ current deal gives you 80% off plans for the first four months too, helping to make the service even more affordable.
My experience with FreshBooks
FreshBooks’ 24/7 AI chatbot is useful if you encounter any issues with the software. The platform also lets you connect with a human agent, offers video tutorials, and a useful knowledge center, making its customer support center on par with QuickBooks.
However, after I tested out FreshBooks’ knowledge center, I struggled to find support on certain subjects like ‘tax returns‘, suggesting that the portal is slightly less comprehensive than those offered by rivals like QuickBooks and Xero.
While FreshBooks will be able to meet the needs of most small lodgings, its lack of advanced financial management tools — such as cash flow projection and custom reporting — could be a dealbreaker for bigger hotels. Not only does it miss out on useful cash flow projection tools, but it also doesn’t let you tailor reports to your specific needs. If you’d like to mitigate cash flow problems before they emerge, you’d be better off opting for an alternative like Xero, QuickBooks, or Zoho Books instead.
FreshBooks lets you track time with the timer, or by logging time manually. Source: Tech.co user testing
Key Benefits of Hospitality Accounting Software
The best hospitality accounting software must address the three core needs that our research shows small businesses require: A flexible interface, a fair price, and a strong support team. But that’s not all you’ll get. Hotel-specific accounting software includes the ability to:
- Track reservations: Hotels will need a system that handles a calendar for reserving rooms a year or farther in advance. Any accounting system that tracks this future income while logging any cancellations can save managers endless hours of tracking these details by hand.
- Handle room service: When guests call for room service, your accounting service should be able to record the sale for the guest’s final checkout.
- Check the financial status of your hotel at a glance: Good data reporting tools will mean you can auto-generate profit-and-loss reports for each day, week, or quarter.
- Manage all staff: A hotel comes with many different types of workers, and the right system can track each one in turn, including management, maintenance, housekeeping, kitchen, front desk, and wait staff. Payroll may be available, either through the service or with an integration.
An accounting system can automate many of the above functions, ultimately saving a hotel dozens of hours of work each day.
Want to upgrade how you communicate with guests? Check out our guide to hotel phone systems.
What to Look for in Hospitality Accounting Software
While many other businesses just sell products, the hospitality industry sells an experience, which makes ensuring a painless, streamlined service even more important.
You’ll need to consider what unusual or rare software features you’ll need to log every expense associated with your hotel, bed and breakfast, or event convention center. Here are a few considerations to start with:
- Software that can handle room pricing changes: The same room will go for more money as the weekend or a holiday nears, but you’ll need to have software that handles surge pricing to take full advantage.
- Managing income for special events: Hosting large events can be a major source of income for many hotels or restaurants, but it requires a budget for cleaning, catering, and potential overtime. Does your software allow you to budget accordingly? An integration with your POS solution can be useful.
- Integrations: POS isn’t the only integration you may need. From customer-relationship management (CRM) to marketing and hospitality-specific needs, including catering and dry cleaning, the right integrations will help your entire tech stack remain easy to use.
- Scalability: If your hotel expands or franchises out, you’ll want an accounting service that is cost-effective and able to handle the additional terminals or locations that you’ll be adding. It will also need to allow funds to flow to where they are needed most.
How We Research and Compare Accounting Systems
At Tech.co, we take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we’re giving you the clearest, most useful recommendations.
After conducting an initial investigation to identify the most relevant, popular, and established accounting tools in the market, we conducted further research, including testing six major accounting software platforms.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we’ve established an accounting software testing methodology that scores these platforms against six main categories, and 25 subcategories — with a total of 1,512 areas of investigation being considered overall.
We also put the platforms through their paces with hands-on testing to gain a deeper grasp of their average user experience. We dedicated 57 hours to carrying out 37 user tests, with a total of 555 tasks being completed in total.
Our main testing categories for accounting software are:
- Core accounting features: We check how adept a platform will be at managing accounting tasks, focusing on key bookkeeping features like invoicing, tax preparation, journal entry, time tracking, financial transactions, and payment support.
- Operational efficiency: We determine how capable a system is at ensuring day-to-day processes run seamlessly, paying close attention to third-party integrations, collaboration tools, AI automation, and customization options.
- Financial planning: We assess how capable a system will be at measuring income, profits, and losses. Specifically, we check for the presence and quality of forecasting and budgeting, inventory management, reporting, and compliance tools.
- Help and support: We assess how useful and reliable a platform’s support system is, focusing on support options, whether it’s 24/7 support or knowledge center accuracy, as well as cloud backup, and security safeguards.
- Pricing: We compare the overall cost of each platform, taking factors like monthly costs, set-up fees, hidden fees, and free plans into account. We also measure how strict contracts are, and how much it would cost for a business to terminate them early.
- User experience: An overall judgment of how easily users can interact with the platform. We tested each accounting platform and got our team to report how easy they were to use, how they felt when they were using them, and how likely they were to recommend the platform to another business.
When it comes to calculating a product’s final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, with factors like “core accounting features” and “operational efficiency” being prioritized for small businesses, while sector-specific features are valued more highly for businesses across different industries.
We understand that accounting software is always evolving. That’s why at Tech.co, we have full-time product researchers to re-run this testing process regularly. It’s the only way to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Learn more about our research.
Zoho Books was the best hotel accounting software we researched, offering better core bookkeeping features than its competition, with a learning curve and price low enough to suit smaller types of accommodation.
The provider’s scalable pricing packages and advanced cash flow management tools also position it well for larger, more established hotels, as long as they don’t require a large selection of third-party integrations.
Xero is another strong choice for established hotels, with the best time-saving AI features we’ve researched, and enough third-party apps to meet the needs of any lodging.
QuickBooks, on the other hand, will be best suited to boutique hotels, or any other business that would benefit from highly customizable reports, while FreeAgent and FreshBooks should be on the radar of smaller hotels and people trying out accounting software for the first time.
With each platform offering a unique set of strengths and limitations, finding one that matches the unique needs of your hotel is paramount. Once you’ve decided on which trials or demos to check out, try finding the best deals with our link page:
FAQs
Most leading platforms (such as Xero and Zoho Books on higher tiers) offer automated multi-currency support.
They automatically apply real-time exchange rates to bookings, online payment gateways, and foreign bank transactions, simplifying invoice generation and financial reconciliation for international clientele.
While general cloud accounting platforms track overall revenues and expenses, calculating specific hospitality metrics — such as RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) or ADR (Average Daily Rate) — typically requires an integration with a dedicated Property Management System (PMS) or custom reporting tags within software like QuickBooks.
Standard accounting software focuses on general ledgers, invoicing, and bill payments.
On the other hand, hospitality-specific tools (or standard platforms integrated with a PMS) handle specialized processes like night audits, daily room rate fluctuations, occupancy-based budgeting, and multi-department revenue splitting (such as lodging, F&B and spa).
Cloud accounting platforms allow you to set up custom tax rules and automated tax calculations for guest invoices. Software with localized compliance features or dedicated add-ons can track occupancy taxes, city tourism levies, and sales tax separately to ensure accurate filing.
Yes. Top cloud accounting providers utilize bank-grade data encryption (256-bit SSL), regular automated cloud backups, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and role-based access permissions to restrict unauthorized staff access and safeguard sensitive guest payment data.
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