The rare business with a daily close
A hotel is the rare small business that already closes its books every night. The night audit rolls the date, posts room revenue and tax to every folio, and balances the guest ledger before the morning shift arrives. Most of the accounting problems we see in GTA properties come from ignoring that ritual: the PMS quietly performs a daily close, then the general ledger gets rebuilt from bank feeds as if it never happened.
We treat the PMS as the subledger it is. Whether the property runs Cloudbeds, WebRezPro, RoomKeyPMS or a flag-mandated Opera Cloud, the daily audit pack flows into QuickBooks Online on a mapping we build once: room revenue by rate class, food and beverage, parking and other operated income, with HST and Municipal Accommodation Tax posted to their own liability accounts instead of buried in revenue. The result is a departmental statement a hotel person can actually read, rooms, F&B and undistributed costs each on their own lines, in the shape a lender or a flag expects to see.
OTA money: the screen and the bank tell different stories
Online travel agencies pay you in several different ways, and each one breaks a naive set of books.
| Booking channel | How the cash actually lands |
|---|---|
| Direct, card at the desk or booking engine | The card batch settles a day or two later, with processing fees netted off or billed monthly. The batch hits the bank, not the folio total. |
| Hotel-collect OTA (agency model) | You charge the guest the full rate and the OTA invoices its commission afterward. Revenue is right, but the commission expense goes missing unless someone books it. |
| OTA-collect (merchant model) | The OTA collects from the guest and pays you net of commission, often on a virtual card that carries its own processing fee. Record that deposit as revenue and you have understated both revenue and expense. |
| Corporate direct bill | Nothing lands at checkout. The stay moves to the city ledger as a receivable and needs real collection follow-up. |
The reconciliation that matters runs channel manager to PMS to bank: what SiteMinder or the flag's central reservation system says was sold, what the audit posted, and what the deposits prove. We run it monthly, because HST is owed on the gross room charge rather than the net deposit, and the gap between those two figures is precisely where an HST examiner looks first. If a review letter ever arrives, CRA Audit & Review Support answers it from workpapers that already exist.
Three liabilities hide inside every folio
An advance deposit is not income; it is a liability until the guest actually sleeps. So is the HST collected on every night, and so is the MAT sitting on the same folio waiting for the municipality's own return. Books that post deposits straight to revenue overstate the booking month, understate the stay month, and leave nobody certain what is owed to whom. We carry a deferred-deposit balance that agrees to the PMS advance ledger, keep MAT and HST payable as separate accounts that match what was billed, and age the city ledger monthly so corporate accounts get chased while they are still fresh.
Housekeeping payroll, the cost you can actually manage
Rooms-division labour is the biggest controllable cost in the building, and it runs inside our End-to-End Accounting engagement rather than in a separate payroll shop: T4s, source deductions, vacation pay accruing on every hourly cheque, and WSIB premiums for housekeeping and maintenance staff. Once Ontario payroll crosses the $1-million Employer Health Tax exemption, EHT joins the remittance calendar too, and we put it there before the first notice does.
Contracted labour needs the same honesty. A genuine cleaning company invoices you and carries its own people. A crew of individuals paid per room, working your schedule with your supplies, looks like employment to CRA, and a misclassification reassessment arrives with retroactive CPP, EI and penalties attached. We would rather flag that in month one than defend it in year three.
What lands on your desk each month
The monthly package is built for an operator: a departmental statement with costs per occupied room, OTA commission summarized by channel, deposit, HST and MAT liability positions, and a city-ledger aging. Housekeeping hours sit next to rooms sold so overstaffed weeks show themselves. For a small independent motel that mostly needs answers between year-ends, CPA Quick Support at $99 a month covers the questions and reviews the CRA mail. Full delivery is scoped in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, so the fee is a decision you make once, not a surprise you meet monthly.
