P&L review

Getting your hotel leadership team excited about accounting is like someone thinking it’s fun to go to the dentist. Your average person wants nothing to do with it because they have a predisposed notion that it’s yucky, boring and better left for someone who has a hard time walking and talking at…

I tell my Introductory Hospitality Financial Leadership Workshop participants that the concept behind the matching principle is “the most important concept today.” Why? When it comes to producing financial information, it’s the cornerstone of understanding why we do almost everything the way we do it in the…

When I do financial leadership workshops with hotel teams we often talk about liabilities. I tell my audience that I know for a fact that each one of them have at least two liabilities. I get some puzzled and Kreskin-like looks from my audience as I tell them I can see…

One of my mother’s favorite sayings: Many hands make light work

My dear mother Donna often recited her favorite sayings, especially when she wanted to make a point. She had some really good sayings and several have stuck with me. One of them I relate to hotel financial leadership. Her saying was “Many hands make light work.” How…

If you google the words “financial statement analysis,” you will get a long list of definitions like this one by Wikipedia:

“Financial statement analysis (or financial analysis) is the process of reviewing and analyzing a company’s financial statements to make better economic decisions. These statements include the income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, and a statement…

As the Regional Operations Analyst in the mid-90s in the West, my boss and I reviewed the financial performance of all of our hotels pretty much on a quarterly basis. The reviews consisted of a trip to the hotel, a tour of any capital projects, and a sit down with the core executive team to review the financials.

We quickly…