Four ways accounting integrations are changing the hospitality and retail industry

Accounting integrations are slowly but surely finding their way into all sorts of industries. The retail and hospitality industry is recognising more and more the importance of keeping accounting efforts in the one place. As hospitality goes through a huge shift, accounting integrations are being utilized to sync data for sales, payroll, inventory and more.

The retail industry has also already experienced significant transformation over the past years. Retailers often have e-commerce stores and products and inventory information is shared across various platforms. In many cases businesses are moving from offline stores to online stores. E-commerce is increasing steadily, and more customers prefer the convenience of online solutions. The increase in e-commerce has allowed retailers collect more and more data to offer the best possible service and to be across all customer and sales information within their store. Since most businesses also use multiple systems for sales purposes, it makes sense to use integrations that will help keep everything in one place.

Adding point of sale (POS) software to your business is a great start, but accounting integrations are the lesser-known heroes of the industry. Integrating POS with e-commerce and accounting software can keep track of all relevant business data and help you work more efficiently. There are so many solutions accounting integration software provide that can improve the way you work. Here are just a few ways they are changing how your hospitality or retail business runs.

Sync your sales

Keeping track of the sales your business has made during the day, week, or month is extremely important to your success. With accounting integration software, you can automatically sync sales and payment data from your point of sale into your accounting system. Instead of having an unstructured multitude of sales transactions to manually process from your POS, an integration can send one set of organised data straight to your accounting software, saving you or your bookkeeper or accountant a lot of time. Some integration features include a summarised daily sales invoice which automatically syncs daily sales and payment totals to an invoice each day and an auto-sync schedule that allows you to choose when sales data should be synced and all relevant order records captured.

The hospitality industry is being turned on its head, with system integrators finding new ways to ensure that business owners spend less time looking at spreadsheets and more time running their business. This is a similar trend that has already been seen in the retail industry, where the capture and collection of sales information at a very high level is being done. The automation of different business processes is crucial as it allows you to focus on the important things like sales and marketing analysis and reports. An integration can easily sync online sales straight to your accounting software.

Some other features include breaking down sales according to categories, locations, regions and tax types, as well as capturing relevant sales transaction components such as service fees, tips, taxes and surcharges. Integrations generally sync sales by applying each sales component to a desired account in your accounting software. The user usually is able to do this through a configuration and settings page. For example, the user could map service fees to a ‘service fees’ revenue account type. In general, the user has a great deal of flexibility available to them to map transactions in a way that will be most useful and convenient for them in terms of managing their accounts (and accounting software).

Keep track of your inventory

Accounting integrations are able to save businesses both time and money by ensuring they can keep focusing on work that creates the most value for the business, instead of wasting time on manual data entry. Keeping on top of your inventory is as important as selling the products themselves. If you run out of products, you can’t sell anything! Before businesses started using inventory platforms and accounting integration software, they would have to physically check or use spreadsheets to keep track of how many products they had left and how quickly things were being sold. Now businesses can sync the data from their point of sale system with their accounting system, and not worry about having to check all of their different pieces of software to make sure balances are up to date.

In the case of both the hospitality industry and retail industry, the user can have access to a great deal of information either via their POS or e-commerce platform. Things can become tricky however, in the case of managing multiple locations that share a central warehouse or undertake in transfers of inventory across multiple locations. Without careful integration and management, a business might have a situation that the product was sold offline or in another store but is still visible online or in another location.

Optimising your inventory helps maintain customer satisfaction and avoid wastage. Handling costs and storage are incurred with every inventory item purchased, stored and sold. If you purchase too much stock, it can lead to unsold items on shelves. Additionally, having too few items can lead to missed sales opportunities and unhappy customers. With an integrated inventory management and accounting software solution you can increase your accuracy of data analysis and provide valuable insights like sales forecasts and cash flow. Real-time integration solutions allow businesses to plan out more accurate levels of inventory required for demand. A seamless flow of information between platforms in an integration is essential.

Automate payroll

An issue many businesses come across is managing their payroll. Simple things like knowing when employees start and finish a shift can be difficult to manage without having a system in place. Managing payroll is an integral part of running a business. Accounting integration software give business owners the ability to see when employees clock on and clock off. Gone are the days of chasing information regarding who’s turned up for which shift, and who needs to get paid when. Accounting integrations sync data from your point of sale system to ensure your employees’ time is accurately tracked and that correct payments can be made with minimal effort. It also gives you more visibility and control in relation to how long your employees are working and how much they are being paid. Keeping track of shifts and comparing them with the productivity of your employees will give you a better idea on how you can improve staff profitability.

Some payroll integration features include the ability to map employees, capture employee time for multiple establishments and setting pay rates depending on the day of the week (e.g. overtime pay for Saturday and Sunday). The hospitality industry in particular requires precision due to strict legislation regarding pay rates. A good payroll integration should not only save time and money, but it will also mean businesses can avoid employees being paid incorrectly and causing unhappiness. Issues with the payroll process may also cause headaches for your bookkeeper or accountant who might waste a considerable amount of time making corrections.

Manage purchase orders

Purchase orders are an essential part of the hospitality and retail industry. A purchase order integration can save a lot of time and effort by avoiding the need to re-key this information into your accounting package. It works by capturing the relevant purchase order data from your POS or inventory management system and inserting this information into your accounting package. A purchase order integration should minimise errors arising from manual entry. It will allow you to stay on top of your costs, see exactly what’s been ordered from suppliers and ensure that your suppliers are invoicing you correctly.

Accounting integration software offer many benefits that can help improve the performance of your business. It is surprising that many businesses still rely on manual work and managing the flow of information across their systems by themselves. Accounting integrations can help to minimise data entry and re-keying that can lead to errors. It can also provide insights into information across different processes, such as the speed at which stock is turning over, wastage, the performance and costs associated with employees. An automated process will allow you to focus on more important business activities – no more worries about manual data entry and mistakes. Accounting integration software provide a simple way to sync data from your POS system or inventory management system into your accounting package.