The sales figures, guest information, and KPIs (key performance indicators) that a hotel’s POS (Point of Sale) system collects are some of the most useful intelligence a revenue manager has in their data arsenal. But, if you can’t easily access and visualize your POS data, you’ll be stuck making important decisions without a key piece of the revenue puzzle.
In today’s market, POS reporting is essential to your hotel’s BI (business intelligence) program. A Point of Sale report is a BI report generated based on the data a business collects from its POS system. Your BI platform can centralize data collected by your hotel’s POS system and create actionable reports to track revenue and analyze the hotel's performance, finances, and in addition to many other departments.
If you run or manage a hotel, your POS system is a gold mine of information. Here are six essential reports you can use to make an effective POS dashboard.
1. General Reports
Generating a general summary report is the easiest way to capture an overview of the data collected by the POS system. These dashboard reports are displayed in real-time and show a general overview of the current state of the business. A general summary or analysis displays quick facts such as net sales within a specified period, the total number of transactions, cumulative invoice figures, and outgoing costs.
A general report provides a 'bird's eye view' of your hotel's performance over time. It also provides an overview of the performance of different spheres of the hotel and can help you identify any problem areas that need closer attention.
2. Inventory Reports
Requiring minimal effort and manual data, inventory tracking using POS data can be highly effective in maximizing revenue. You can use POS data to streamline the ordering process and diagnose and minimize wastage.
An inventory POS report is a glance at the current stock of inventory available. You can use periodic inventory reports to determine stock levels and check the overall monetary value of your hotel’s current inventory. Technical inventory reports include detailed data such as raw ingredients, items below or over a specific limit, and reports of items and requisitions.
Many hotel BI tools have built-in inventory analytics. Use this feature to streamline the reporting process and broaden the capabilities of live and historical reports. For instance, some live POS reports dashboards showcase order workflows and allow you to set up alerts for inventory schedules, or incoming and outgoing delivery payments.
3. Employee Management Reports
You can use POS data reports in your BI software to track the performance of individual employees throughout your organization. A POS dashboard can generate reports detailing top performers, changes in employee performance over time, and which employees' performance need improvement. For instance, you can create a report for the revenue generated by each server and bartender in your F&B department or the cumulative amount of revenue they bring in over a certain period.
By accessing your POS data, you can view a summary of each employee's performance and get information such as their number of hours worked, number of transactions, cumulative sales over a time period, and percentage of total labor costs. Some BI software features time-entry reports, duty allocation based on job titles and employment type, and staff pay rates.
The data collected by your POS software can go a long way in helping to provide clear and up-to-date insights to manage labor costs, optimize schedules, reward hard-working staff, and identify areas for improvement in others.
4. Guest Reports
Your BI dashboard can produce helpful customer or guest reports with your POS data. These reports are essential for understanding customer behaviors and patterns and how they respond to their guest experience. They can also help you understand the strength and weaknesses of your hotel, its reputation, and what areas need improvement.
Guest reports generated with POS data offer a general overview of guest behavior with data collected from each transaction. Some BI software makes this report relatively quick to access and easy to update. A well-designed guest report will provide a rich selection of data types to analyze, including guest personas, country of origin, length of stay, guest history in the hotel, room preferences, and the overall quality of service.
Use guest POS reports to better understand your customer base. By analyzing trends in the unique behavior of various guest profiles you can determine where they spend the most money, what amenities they utilize most, and predict future demand. Then you can optimize your marketing and improve your guests’ experience with data-backed strategies targeting each guest segment.
5. Food & Beverage (F&B) Reports
The F&B report is all about optimizing your menu and dining experience to increase seat occupancy and REVPASH (revenue per available seat hour). This POS report is the ideal point for capturing, analyzing, and tracking the best-selling foods and drinks and finding menu items you may want to replace. A BI dashboard with historic F&B report generation can go a long way to help the hotel identify both its most and least popular menu items over the course of a week, month, season, or year.
Your bars and restaurants can be huge revenue drivers for your hotels. A POS data-backed F&B report is essential to growing and maintaining demand. With a high-quality F&B report, you’ll be able to provide a high-quality, enjoyable dining and drinking experience to your customers that keeps them coming back.
Pro tip: To take your F&B reporting a step further, use your POS data to build forecasting reports. We’ve outlined how in this guide.
6. Revenue Reports
Quality revenue reporting is key to making the right business decisions daily. Every modern hotel BI platform worth its salt will have a revenue report with data sourced from your POS system. These reports will include a detailed account of customer payments, accounts payable, and an overview of the revenue performance of your hotel over a specified time.
You should customize your revenue POS reports to the unique amenities your property offer. With a well-designed report, you’ll be able to quickly attribute spend and revenue to the different amenities of your hotel —whether it be rooms, F&B, spas, or a casino.
Ready to automate your hotel POS reports?
Take on your POS reporting with the most powerful decision intelligence tools available to the hotel industry. Break down your data silos and compile these reports, and more, on a single, flexible BI platform—so you can make hotel data reporting as easy as pressing a button.
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