Hotel ERP Consultant, India

From night audit to a daily voucher

In many Indian hotels the night auditor closes the day in the PMS, prints the reports and leaves them for accounts. Next morning someone enters room, food, beverage, banquet and other revenue into Tally, along with settlements by card, UPI, cash and company credit. Errors creep in through manual entry, and they surface when the GST return does not agree with the PMS.

I replace that routine with a posting specification. Each PMS transaction code is mapped to a ledger, a department and a GST code, and the result is one balanced voucher per business day. Revenue is split by segment so corporate, OTA, travel agent, walk-in and group business can be compared. Payments are posted by mode, including UPI and wallet settlements, and the payment gateway or bank statement is reconciled against them. Advances and guest ledger balances remain balances until they are applied.

Before configuration, I check what the PMS can export. Some PMS products used in India offer a Tally or accounting interface, others an API or a file. The integration requirements are written around that, and testing runs real audit days through the interface, comparing the voucher with what accounts would have entered by hand. The overall hotel model is on my hotel ERP page.

GST invoices for corporate guests

Corporate guests in India often need a tax invoice in their company's name with its GSTIN so their employer can claim input tax credit. When the GSTIN is not captured at check-in, or the address and place of supply are wrong, the invoice has to be cancelled and reissued, and the corporate customer delays payment until it is fixed. My Indian hospitality page covers GST on rooms and dining at a group level; at property level, invoice quality is the daily headache.

I design the front office and finance rules together. The reservation or check-in records the billing company and GSTIN, validated against the company master. The system that issues the invoice is defined per document type: the PMS for guest folios, the ERP for company invoices raised from the city ledger, or another arrangement agreed with your CA. Where e-invoicing applies to your business, the issuing system generates the IRN and QR code, and credit notes for revisions follow the same route.

Banquet and event advances are recorded against each function with GST treatment confirmed by your CA, then applied to the final bill. Your chartered accountant decides rates and treatments; I turn their guidance into masters, invoice templates and test cases, and check that the GSTR-1 data from the system agrees with posted revenue. National tax context is on the India ERP consultant page.

OTA settlements, travel agents and company credit

Many Indian hotels sell rooms through OTAs, and OTA settlements are among the hardest items to reconcile. A payout may net off commission, GST charged on that commission, and tax deducted or collected at source, and it may cover many bookings at once. If accounts cannot match each deduction to a booking and to the credits shown in the hotel's tax statements, money is quietly lost.

I design OTA reconciliation as a process in its own right. Each payout statement is imported, matched to reservations and split into gross booking value, commission, GST on commission and any TDS or TCS. Commission and its GST are booked as an expense and input credit where eligible, and TDS or TCS amounts are tracked against the statutory credit statements. Your CA confirms the treatment; the ERP makes it visible.

Travel agents and corporate companies on credit follow a separate path. Each has a credit limit, agreed rates and billing instructions in the ERP. At checkout the folio moves to the city ledger, the invoice goes out with the booking reference and GSTIN, and collections follow a defined cycle with aging by account. TDS deducted by corporate customers on hotel payments is tracked until it appears in the hotel's credit statement. These rules are agreed with front office, sales and accounts in joint process mapping sessions.

DG sets, water plants, stores and the payroll boundary

Engineering in an Indian hotel covers more plant than many owners realize: DG sets for power backup, transformers and panels, HVAC and chillers, lifts, boilers and calorifiers, water softening and treatment, a sewage treatment plant, fire systems and kitchen equipment. Several items are serviced under annual maintenance contracts, and some need statutory inspections or renewals tracked by the engineering head.

Each machine gets a record with its location, AMC vendor and service calendar. Job cards are raised against it, AMC visit reports are filed with the job, and critical spares are held in the engineering store with reorder points. Diesel received and consumed by the DG sets is logged with running hours, and electricity and water consumption are recorded, so utility cost per occupied room becomes a number management can follow rather than a guess.

The main store issues to the kitchen, bars, housekeeping, minibars and engineering against approved requisitions. Perishables are bought through a market list with daily rates, and minibar charges from the PMS are checked against refills. Linen sent to an outside laundry is tracked out and back.

Payroll, with PF, ESI and professional tax, usually runs in a payroll system or with a provider, and the ERP receives a departmental journal. Staff meals and any staff accommodation get their own cost lines so labor cost reflects them.

Leaving Tally, picking a platform and remote delivery

Tally serves many Indian hotels well as an accounting tool, and some will keep it with a better PMS interface. A fuller ERP is worth considering when the hotel needs purchase approvals, a controlled main store, maintenance history, corporate receivables and departmental reporting in one place.

Indian hotels usually weigh ERPNext, Zoho, Odoo and Business Central. Each vendor works through scenarios taken from your hotel: a night audit voucher with GST, a corporate invoice with a GSTIN and e-invoice, an OTA payout with commission and TCS, a banquet advance applied to a final bill, a DG set service with diesel consumption, and a store issue to the kitchen. Your finance head and I score them on one sheet, and I accept nothing from vendors.

Migration from Tally covers ledgers redesigned by department, open corporate and agent receivables, advances, supplier balances with TDS details, store stock and the equipment list. Go-live avoids the wedding season and the financial year-end close, with parallel night audit runs before the switch. All sessions are remote and held in IST, with recorded walkthroughs for shift teams. Migration steps are covered under ERP data migration, and the market overview is on the India hub.