The hospitality industry is full of stories of people who started in low-level jobs and worked their way to the top. These guys obviously possess a good work ethic, charisma, and intelligence. What their admirers sometimes fail to note, though, is their willingness to learn.

 

If you feel that you’re ready to take the next step up the career ladder, you simply have to gain a basic knowledge of accounting. In addition to having a basic grasp of the theory behind it, you also have to understand how it works in your specific industry and in fact your own department.

How Analyzing Financial Statements Builds Your Career

On a basic level, bookkeeping is about keeping track of cash and other valuable items (including non-tangible elements like labor). Armed with this information, you could tell whether a company is gaining or losing money.

 

This is useful, but somebody with a working knowledge of accounting can reap much greater benefits from the same information. Compiling and processing individual transactions in a systematic way enables us to draw up financial statements, showing the specifics of profit and loss in much greater detail.

 

These financial statements can then be analyzed. Interpreting them is a specialized skill apart from entry-level bookkeeping. With the proper training, those apparently cryptic columns of numbers can tell you what you’re doing right or wrong, where you can save or earn more money, and even predict what effects to expect from major and minor changes in the way things are run.

 

If you have any existing experience in room department operations, this course can serve as an introduction to the world of financial accounting. Such experience is not required, though: we begin with the absolute basics and systematically proceed towards gaining a working knowledge of financial statement analysis.

What This Course Will Teach You:

Our approach to this subject is unique in the sense that it incorporates both theoretical learning and practical exercises based on how things are done in the real world. In about four hours, you’ll be shown:

• Key accounting terms and how they’re used in the hospitality industry.
• How the rooms department fits into the hotel’s operational and financial structure.
• How to interpret profit/loss and other financial statements in order to gain useful, actionable knowledge.
• Present, explain, and motivate strategic proposals based on financial analisis.

 

Trying to manage any business or department without understanding financial statements is hit or miss at best. When you know how to analyze them, however, you gain a much clearer picture of how management decisions will affect the bottom line. Anyone new to the hospitality industry who’s ready to take on more responsibility will benefit from this course.