– Start of Protected Content –

Get free access to this complete Report and your own personalized Account, including the following content:

Accounting Software & Financial Management Solutions *

Market Summary – Financial & Accounting Systems

Market Overview

The need for Financial Systems is a given in today’s world, but they take many forms and vary in their comprehensiveness. Each business has a different scope of needs related to financial management. This determines the type of systems they may want in place to cover their business requirements. Common solutions may range from a standard Accounting System to a full-fledged Enterprise Resource Planning solution. Alternatively, it could be encompassed within an industry-specific system such as a Property Management System, Point of Sale, or Golf Management system. The options don’t stop at this but continue into the combinations of systems as most PMS, POS, and Golf Management Systems interface with multiple, best-of-breed accounting packages.

This Capsolve report was influenced significantly by the solutions commonly deployed within hotel and restaurant accounting functions at the property and corporate levels. While the focus is on Accounting Systems, the report also covers the other segments we found in our comprehensive research. The Solution Styles section lists the types of solutions covered in the report. While we cover industry-specific ERP systems, we have not yet added all the well-known, multi-industry ERP solutions. A select group of these are seen across the larger hotel chains, brands, and portfolios of properties as they provide functionality that may be adapted to larger companies and other industries that are part of these global organizations.

Marketplace Context

The 55 Financial and Accounting solutions in this sub-marketplace earn the category a Medium size rating from Capsolve. Given the complexity associated with accounting and financial systems, they are a relatively stable segment of vendors. However, recently, there has been a small burst of activity within the financial reconciliation segment due to the introduction of new vendors and products. While our tracking covered standard reconciliation products, these new products are focused on OTA-related reconciliation. They caused the hotel industry to emphasize the volume of transactions within this channel and how they are managed from order to cash.

Approximately 75% of Financial and Accounting solutions in today’s marketplace are from companies centered in the United States. When considering the top five countries, this percentage almost reaches the top decile, creating a Low level of geographic dispersion.

While growth continues, the level is much lower than many other software categories across our research. When considering the Requirements Complexity, it is apparent that nearly all of the solutions reside within either the Medium or High classification. As you might expect, ERP solutions have more capabilities in their multi-module feature set, as do those accounting solutions that go well beyond standard accounting modules. Capsolve has researched this category of solutions for you and introduces you to the possibilities for your team and company.

Solution Paths

Changing your financial and accounting systems can be laborious since they are intertwined with your core systems. However, aligning these solutions with your business management and reporting needs is imperative. The most common path is to determine your complete finance and accounting-related needs and then search for systems that meet this minimum set of requirements. A few standard approaches enabled by today’s technology solutions within this category include:

• Comprehensive Core: an Accounting solution often with selected Financial Management features, covering most or all business needs from a finance and accounting perspective
• Best Fit or Minimized Core: selecting an Accounting solution as a primary focus and fulfilling other business needs from separate technology purchases
• Best Strategic Fit: a solution providing a balance between comprehensiveness and long-term strategic needs

These solution paths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Solutions within the marketplace may create the opportunity to combine one or more paths and meet more of your selection criteria. Appropriately formulating an RFP to share with potential vendors will help to ensure you ask the best questions specific to your business while allowing you to learn about the depth of each potential vendor partner.

Pricing Information

Numerous pricing models exist in the marketplace and it is crucial to understand how each one will affect your total cost of ownership. The standard pricing structures are:

• Base Software Price plus a Maintenance Charge: This pricing is usually charged for on-premise software installed on local servers but may include cloud-based software. It is generally charged based on the number of servers, user licenses, companies, or user accounts. If on-premise, there may be ongoing charges for modifications and upgrades based on the percentage of the base software.
• Subscription Price: This pricing is more common with the adoption of Software-as-a-Service. The price is usually charged annually, quarterly, or monthly and applied to each company, brand, location, or user account. This type of pricing may also be aligned with the features selected across the solution’s scope. These features may vary in cost structure and include software, modules, and more.
• Revenue or Transaction-Based Price: These fees are based on the volume of activity flowing through the software and closely align with its usage. This type is unusual within the accounting segment but may be found in the other segments, especially if it is combined with a Payment solution driven by transactions.

As expected, a combination of these pricing approaches may be applied to any software.

Sales & Marketing Considerations

While sales and marketing are not as directly affected as other departments, the expected causal relationship exists between sales transactions and how they flow into financial accounts. Additionally, selected ancillary functionality that is more closely tied to sales and marketing might include Payroll, Commission Management, and other HRM features.

Current Trends

1. Business Structure: More solutions can handle multiple locations, both from an accounting management perspective and with regard to financial reporting.
2. AI & ML: Artificial Intelligence is rampant across most software categories, and finance and accounting are no exception. Expect to see more innovation in this area as vendors explore applying AI to their solutions.
3. Recent Increase in Vendor Solutions: While not the largest category, the field recently added more solutions as the conversation revolved around OTA reconciliation.
4. The Cloud: The sensitive nature of financial and accounting solutions has not prevented them from finding a home in the cloud. Security and other measures have now improved to the point that most corporations trust cloud solutions even in this category.
5. ESG & Sustainability: The ESG trend blends into the Finance Reporting function as it often requires standardized reporting of ESG metrics on a frequency similar to financial reports.

– End of Protected Content –

About this Report

This document reviews marketing information and capabilities associated with this category’s solutions and the surrounding technology ecosystem. It contains original content written by Capsolve to provide a perspective of current trends affecting one or more of the hotel, restaurant, golf course, and country club industries. The analysis covers a statistically significant portion of the previously defined category marketplace.