As Chip Fritsch, COO of Hotel Investor Apps (HIA), recently shared in his interview on the [CLIC] Connect hotel podcast,
“HIA is driven to build the best solution for our hospitality clients. We want to be the system that solves pain points, that allows you to do more with your team, to take them out of manual data entry and put them on a higher tier of operations.
We are never going to be done developing, it’s not going to happen, it is in our DNA. We are going to keep building.”
2024 was certainly a great example of our team’s dedication to making HIA ERP & Accounting platform the best in the industry. The HIA in-house development team built new software integrations, enhanced key areas of the system like Budgeting & Forecasting, Bank Connect, and Business Intelligence, as well as improved the overall user experience.
Here are some of the highlights from 2024 development:
New & Enhanced Integrations
In 2024 HIA expanded available 3rd party software integrations by 12%, adding 7 new tightly integrated solutions; as well as enhancing several existing integrations.
A few exciting new integrations include Avendra iBuy, BOSS for AP bill import, the PMS system Resnexus, the POS system Infrasys, the POS system Micros Symphony, UKG for payroll/HR, and Microsoft Teams for easier collaboration within a single platform. Additionally, other integrations have been updated or improved.
NEW Integrations
- Avendra iBuy
- BOSS
- Micros Symphony 19.6.2
- Resnexus
- Infrasys
- Microsoft Teams
- Inova Payroll for Business Intelligence
Enhanced Integrations
- AutoClerk integration
- Micros 1.17
- Repay
- Netchex
- RoomKey
- Inova Payroll
Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting Module
HIA’s Budgeting & Forecasting module saw major enhancements in 2024, and was re-released as Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting.
This included adding powerful new features to streamline the budgeting process, reduce repetitive tasks, and provide hoteliers greater control and precision over financial planning.
Kim Vassell-Jacob, HIA’s Budgeting & Forecasting expert, highlights the benefits, “These enhancements make the budgeting process not only faster and more intuitive but also more secure. Our goal is to save time while also improving precision.”
New features and enhancements include:
- Streamlined upload options
- Simplified driver management
- New budget driver options
- New bulk update option for greater efficiency
- Reusable budget configurations
- New ‘Lock Budget’ functionality for more accuracy and security
- Automatic GL conversion tool for easier import of historical budgets
For a deep dive into the recent budgeting and forecasting enhancements, check out HIA’s blog on Budgeting Enhancements. If you are interested in even more customizable budgeting and forecasting options, consider adding the Excel Connect integration which provides live data exchanges to and from HIA and Excel. (See the 1-minute video on Excel Connect)
BankConnect - New Version 2024-2025
HIA’s Bank Connect module allows users to synchronize their many bank accounts onto a single dashboard within the HIA platform. This makes it easy to monitor hotel and portfolio cash positions from all your banks in one location.
In February this year HIA announced a new banking integration with MX, in addition to the existing Plaid banking integration, which further expanded the available number of integrated financial institutions to over 12,000 in North America and globally.
Since then HIA has enhanced its Bank Connect system by enabling it to seamlessly switch between different MX or Plaid integration connections if needed, ensuring a more reliable and frequent update process with banking institutions.
Additionally, this upgraded Bank Connect version being rolled out now (2024-2025) provides the automatic creation of transaction documents by month. Previously, document creation was based on a single time range creating only one document for the whole period. Now, the process generates separate documents for each month, offering more granular and organized data.
Learn more about BankConnect in this video.
Business Intelligence Enhancements
In 2024, HIA updated its Business Intelligence module to deliver a more intuitive user experience including more visualizations, as well as new dashboards and analysis. Key enhancements included:
Simplified Ease-of-Use on the Operations Dashboard including revamped dashboards and more filtering to enable users to further drill into the data.
New Dashboards & Analysis
- New “Daily Recap” Dashboard:
- Provides a high level recap of key metrics across the portfolio, including labor, from the prior day for fast takeaways.
- New “Per Occupied Room (POR)” Dashboard:
- A financial dashboard that enables users to analyze revenue and expenses across the portfolio from a POR perspective
- New Rolling 12 Month Financial Analysis
New Dynamic Filtering
The daily operations dashboard now has dynamic filtering (cascading/tiered filtering that enables you to narrow down and focus on a specific metric or portfolio value for benchmarking). For example, segment out a specific department and account to compare across the portfolio, such as Linens.
Enhanced Anomaly Detection
Anomaly detection notifies users when anomalies or variances are detected, such as for payroll anomalies or net income anomalies.
For a demo on HIA’s business intelligence module, reach out to sales@hotelinvestorapps.com.
New Import Tools for Adding Hotels
It all started in 2023 when HIA created an industry-first data import tool that allowed for the import of historical data which included the General Ledger (GL) transactional level detail. This enabled users switching accounting software to HIA to maintain the story behind their numbers, not just trial balance level detail.
HIA’s development team has continued to build new tools left and right, refining and expanding HIA’s import tool offerings. HIA’s Chief Development Officer, Fernando Amadaz, notes,
“We are excited to keep bringing new import tools to the table. These tools not only speed up the implementation process for new customers, but for existing customers when they add new hotels to their portfolios.”
2024 Improvements to HIA’s data import tools include:
- Expanded the GL import tool to bring over detailed financial history from an additional 2 accounting software vendors
- Added subaccount mapping from multiple vendors
- New bulk import options for multi-file uploads
Other import tools include an AP Import to bring in all AP bills and open AP as well as vendors, providing detailed data and reduction of vendor duplicates. For an overview of HIA’s GL import tool capabilities check out this video.
Platform Enhancements
In addition to the major areas of development focus listed above, many general enhancements were made to the platform in 2024 to improve the user experience. These updates were across the board in different areas, including:
- Enhanced Reporting and Processing Speeds, especially to Daily Entry
- Enhancements in GL Error Detection
- Newly available GL Consolidation by Company
- Enhancements to update information in bulk
- 50 additional fields added to Daily Report Preferences
- Improvements to PMS Mapping for faster onboarding
- Enhanced Mobile App experience with customizable main screen
- New simplified option for 1099 filing (coming December 2024)
Looking Forward into 2025 & Beyond
HIA is dedicated to continually improving our ERP & Accounting software and has more updates on the development road map for 2025 including exciting new integrations, more user-experience enhancements, and new business intelligence updates. We look forward to sharing those updates with users in 2025.
Director of Marketing at HIA
Elisa Fritsch, Director of Marketing at HIA, contributes 15 years of diverse sales and marketing experience from corporate to start-up environments. In the hospitality sector, she managed B2B marketing for notable companies like Choice Hotels International and Kalibri Labs. At HIA, Elisa focuses on inbound and content marketing, leveraging her industry knowledge to drive growth.
