For independent hotels, small groups and management companies paying suppliers every month
Hotel Accounts Payable Automation Software
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A hotel pays food and beverage purveyors, linen services, engineering suppliers, utilities, franchise brands and contractors every month, and the invoices land as PDFs, statements and paper at the receiving dock. AutoPayables reads each supplier invoice, lets you code every line to an account and a property or department, flags the same invoice arriving twice, holds bills above your threshold for approval, and exports approved bills to QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage. It handles accounts payable only. It does not replace your property management or point of sale systems.
3
Duplicate checks run on every invoice before approval
Line
Level at which each charge is coded, so a shared bill can split across properties
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Ledger export layouts: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Sage
$49
Per month for 200 invoices on Growth, one price for the whole account
Accounting sync
What hotel accounts payable needs from software
The parts of the job that keep your general manager or clerk keying supplier bills instead of running the hotel.
Capture from email or upload
Purveyors email PDFs, laundry services send statements and a delivery brings paper. Vendor, invoice number, dates, tax, totals and line items are read into a draft bill with a confidence score, so the reviewer checks only what looks off.
Line-level coding by property and department
A shared supply order or a linen invoice covering two hotels can be split by line, each to its own property or class. Rooms, food and beverage, engineering and capital projects stay apart, and recurring vendors keep their coding.
Duplicate invoice checks
Every bill is compared by file content, by vendor plus invoice number, and by vendor plus amount plus date. The emailed invoice and the weekly statement copy do not both get paid.
Approval above a threshold
Bills over the amount you set wait for the general manager, controller or owner, logged with approver and timestamp. It is one threshold for the account, not a routing tree per property.
1099 vendor tracking
Seasonal landscapers, freelance engineers and other contractors may need a 1099. Flag them, keep the TIN on the vendor record and export a 1099-NEC CSV at year end.
Coded bills to your ledger
Approved bills export in the import layout your accounting system reads, so your accountant loads one batch instead of retyping each bill.
How a hotel AP week runs here
From a forwarded purveyor invoice to a batch in your books.
Set up accounts and properties
Add the expense accounts and the property names, departments or classes you track, so coding is a pick, not a typing job.
Point vendors at one address
Purveyors, linen services and contractors email invoices to your AutoPayables address, or the front office forwards what arrives on paper after scanning.
Review flags and code lines
Duplicate checks run on their own. You correct low-confidence fields and assign each line to its account and property.
Approve and export
The general manager or controller approves bills above your threshold, then you export the batch to QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage.
Where AutoPayables fits a hotel, and where it does not
An honest read, so you buy the right shape of tool.
Look at hotel property systems for
- Reservations, folios, night audit and rate management
- Purchasing, inventory counts, par levels and recipe costing
- Payroll, tips and commission reconciliation
- Retyping every purveyor, linen and utility invoice from a shared inbox
What AutoPayables does today
- Vendor invoices only. Guests and bookings stay in your property system
- Not covered. Purveyor invoices are read and coded to the right account
- Not covered. Contractor bills can be coded and tracked for 1099
- Invoices read into coded draft bills, reviewed by one person, exported as a batch
Who runs AP this way
Hotels that want clean coded bills for every property without a new operations suite.
Independent hotels on QuickBooks
A general manager or clerk who loses afternoons keying purveyor and engineering invoices.
Small groups with two to ten properties
Teams that need each hotel's supply, linen and utility bills coded to the right entity before month end.
Owners preparing for a refinance or sale
Owners who need an approval trail and consistent coding before a lender or buyer asks for clean books.
Outsourced bookkeepers serving hotel clients
Staff who want an import-ready batch per client instead of a pile of forwarded PDFs.
Why hotel payables pile up
A hotel is a small city of vendors. Food and beverage purveyors deliver several times a week, a linen and laundry service bills by route, engineering buys parts from three supply houses, and housekeeping supplies come from a distributor with its own statement cycle. On top of that sit utilities, the franchise brand's fees, online travel agency commission invoices, property insurance, landscaping, elevator and fire inspection contracts, and the occasional renovation contractor. Each of those lands as a PDF, a statement or paper left at the receiving dock, usually addressed to whoever placed the order.
The people who deal with it are rarely accountants. At a 60 room select-service hotel the general manager or an accounting clerk keys invoices between check-ins. At a management company with eight owner entities, one AP person keys for all of them and has to remember which bill belongs to which legal entity. The errors are predictable. A purveyor invoice and its weekly statement both get paid. A shared laundry bill lands on the wrong property. A renovation invoice that should be capitalized is expensed because nobody coded it at entry.
What AutoPayables does for hotel AP
AutoPayables reads each supplier invoice into a draft bill: vendor, invoice number, dates, tax, totals and line items, each field with a confidence score so the reviewer only looks at what is doubtful. You code every line to an expense account and to the property, department or class you track, such as rooms, food and beverage, engineering or a capital project. Recurring vendors keep their coding, so the second linen invoice of the quarter takes seconds.
Every bill is checked against the others three ways, by file content, by vendor plus invoice number, and by vendor plus amount plus date. The purveyor invoice and the statement that lists it do not both get paid, and a vendor who re-issues the same bill under a new number is still caught on amount and date. Bills over a dollar threshold you set wait for the general manager, the controller or the owner, logged with approver and timestamp. Approved bills export in the import layout for QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage.
Worked example, a 90 invoice month for one hotel
Take a 75 room hotel with a restaurant and bar. A typical month has about 28 food and beverage purveyor invoices, 12 housekeeping and linen invoices, 14 engineering and parts invoices, 10 utility and contract bills, 8 franchise and commission invoices and about 18 miscellaneous bills. That is around 90 invoices. At five minutes of keying and coding each, which is a conservative figure for a bill with several lines, the clerk spends 7.5 hours a month typing. At two minutes of review per draft bill it is three hours. The Growth plan covers 200 invoices a month for $49, so one property sits well inside it, and a management company with two or three similar properties still fits.
The time saved matters less than the controls. Run the same month through duplicate checks and approval and the typical catches are a purveyor statement paid on top of its invoices, one utility bill entered twice from email and paper, and a capital invoice that needed a project code.
What stays in your property systems
AutoPayables handles accounts payable only. Reservations, folios, night audit, rate management and the point of sale stay in your property management and POS systems. It does not run payroll, tips or commission reconciliation against bookings. If a franchise or commission invoice arrives, it is read, coded and approved like any other vendor bill, but the underlying booking data stays where it lives.
Franchise fees, capital projects and 1099 vendors
Brand fees and reservation system charges are usually the same amount every month. Code them once per vendor, and the duplicate check flags the month the bill arrives twice. Property improvement plan invoices from a renovation contractor often need a project or class so capital spend stays separate from repairs. Independent contractors such as a seasonal landscaper or a freelance engineer may need a Form 1099-NEC. Flag them on the vendor record, keep the TIN, and export a 1099-NEC CSV after year end. The IRS publishes the current Form 1099-NEC instructions, and the filing deadline for the prior year is January 31.
How it compares with doing it in your accounting system alone
QuickBooks and similar systems store bills well but do not read invoices for you, and they do not check duplicates across email, statement and paper. Hotel groups that outgrow that often look at restaurant or hospitality platforms, which can include invoice capture but are priced as part of a larger suite. If you want a closer look at how a multi-property setup works, see multi-location invoice processing. If your hotel runs a restaurant, the restaurant accounts payable page covers distributor invoices in more detail, and the QuickBooks accounts payable page shows the export. Prices are on the pricing page, so you can compare before you talk to anyone.
Who should look elsewhere
If you need a full hotel back office suite with purchasing, inventory counts, par levels and recipe costing in one product, that is a different category and you will pay for it. If your payables are under ten invoices a month, your accounting system alone is probably enough. AutoPayables fits the middle: independent hotels, small groups and management companies that pay dozens to a few hundred supplier invoices a month and want them coded, checked and approved without hiring another clerk.
Frequently asked questions
The best fit reads purveyor, linen, utility and contractor invoices into coded draft bills, splits lines across properties or departments, checks duplicates before approval and exports to your accounting system at a published price. AutoPayables does this for $49 per month on Growth. Your property management system still handles folios and reservations.
Yes. Each line of an invoice can be coded to an expense account and to a property, department or class, so a shared laundry or supply bill can split across hotels. The coding is saved per vendor, so recurring bills from the same purveyor take seconds to review and approve.
Every bill is compared by file content, by vendor plus invoice number, and by vendor plus amount plus date. When a statement lists invoices already entered, or the same bill arrives by email and on paper, the match is flagged before approval so only one copy is paid.
Stop keying purveyor and linen invoices by hand
Try AutoPayables on a real month of invoices from your purveyors and service vendors and see the coded batch before you commit.