Standard Operating Procedures
Our core business is auditing hotels. We have a diverse client base from large branded hotels to smaller country house hotels. We carry out both financial and operational audits at hotels throughout Europe and the UK.
The most effective audits are where we benchmark a hotels performance against a companies set of Standard Operating Procedures. We have noticed however that the majority of the companies we audit either do not have an up to date set of operating procedures or they have no documented procedures at all.
In these instances we audit against industry best practice. It does however leave processes open to interpretation. What usually happens is that each hotel in a group will have appointed their Financial Controllers from a variety of different companies. They will all bring spreadsheets etc with them; so you find, for example, that cash handling procedures, or banking reconciliation sheets are all different.
It is much more efficient to have a set of procedures which all hotels adhere to and which have been approved by senior financial managers within the group, not at hotel level. This will give much greater control, significantly reduce risk and reinforce your corporate brand.
These procedures are not just for Finance, they are also designed to aid operational departments so that all areas of the hotel are working to the same standards
We have written a set of Standard Operating Procedures for hotels which can be quickly edited and implemented. These cover the following areas;
• Cash handling
• Income audit
• Banking including cash and credit card reconciliations
• Petty Cash
• Floats and Keys
Other areas can be added at a later date, for example purchasing and credit control, but these SOP’s cover the core areas. There are approximately 40 SOP’s and 20 spreadsheets.
We would go through each SOP with group management and hotel controllers (it is vital that hotels have an input and agree the procedures so that they are correctly implemented). The procedures would be written specifically for your business.
Each hotel would then have a process which must be followed and can be effectively audited against
Click here for a Standard Operating Procedure Sample
