Controlled beta · initial target about 20 hotels

Build your hotel budget without managing it across multiple Excel files.

A guided budgeting workspace for independent and small hotels. Bring in historical context, build monthly revenue and costs, record assumptions, compare the new plan with prior performance, review the consolidated P&L and cash position, and download a controlled budget output.

Monthly hotel planning Prior-year comparison Private authenticated workspace Budget reports & export

The beta is a planning and management-support tool, not a general ledger, statutory accounting system or substitute for management review.

Built for hotel operatorsFinance discipline without an enterprise implementation project.
Controlled calculationsServer-side financial engines remain authoritative for calculated outputs.
Transparent betaAccessible beta functions and later platform modules are stated separately.
Your planning data stays yoursNo sale of hotel budget data for advertising.

Why an independent hotel should use it

Keep the budgeting exercise together—and keep it useful after approval.

Independent hotels often build the budget through separate spreadsheets, copied versions, email comments and assumptions that become difficult to trace. The planner keeps the operating plan, historical context and explanations in one controlled workflow.

01

Reduce spreadsheet dependency

Plan Rooms, F&B, Events, Payroll, departmental expenses and other costs through one monthly hotel budget instead of maintaining parallel files and formulas.

02

Compare while deciding

Use controlled prior-year actuals as planning context while setting the new budget rather than rebuilding comparison worksheets manually.

03

Preserve the reasoning

Record material assumptions with the budget so future reviews can see why occupancy, ADR, staffing or costs changed—not only the final number.

04

See one hotel result

Bring departmental plans into consolidated hotel P&L, cash and KPI views, run consistency checks, then export the finished budget for management review.

The objective is a continuing planning record, not another annual spreadsheet. The wider platform foundation already extends toward actuals, forecasting and performance management; those modules will be opened to controlled-beta participants only after the budgeting workflow is validated.

A guided budgeting process

From historical performance to a complete operating budget.

The application guides the hotel through the inputs that matter while calculations and reporting relationships remain controlled by the budgeting engine.

Getting started: Download the template → Upload prior-year actuals → Set initial assumptions → Build and refine the budget.

01

Set up the hotel

Confirm fiscal year, currency and operating structure, then prepare historical information used as planning context.

02

Build monthly operations

Budget room nights and ADR, F&B and other revenue, payroll, departmental costs and relevant fixed or cash assumptions.

03

Explain and compare

Use prior-year comparisons and the Assumptions Register to keep commercial and operating logic connected to the numbers.

04

Review and download

Check the consolidated result, review P&L, cash, KPIs and decision views, then download the complete budget output.

Features, controlled-beta limits and roadmap

Use what the beta opens today. See clearly what comes later.

The underlying platform contains additional performance-management foundations, but limited beta accounts deliberately focus on the annual budgeting workflow first. We do not present disabled modules as available to pilot hotels.

Available now

Simplified Budget — controlled beta

  • Hotel setup and historical contextFiscal settings plus controlled prior-year actuals, including two comparison years where data is available.
  • Monthly revenue planningRooms, F&B, Events and Other Revenue through guided operating inputs.
  • Payroll and expense planningMonthly staffing/cost inputs, departmental expenses and below-GOP/cash assumptions.
  • Assumptions RegisterKeep the rationale for material budget decisions beside the plan.
  • Budget Analysis & ReviewPrior-year context, KPI/decision views, consistency checks and management-attention items.
  • Consolidated budget reportingHotel P&L, cash, KPIs and controlled budget outputs for review and circulation.
  • Guided onboardingDemo workspace, page-level tours and beta feedback/support channels.
Deliberately deferred

Built foundations not yet opened to limited-beta accounts

  • Actuals ManagementThe platform has financial/operational Actuals foundations, but the controlled budgeting beta keeps this module disabled for limited accounts.
  • Budget vs ActualVariance and in-year performance workflows remain deferred until the annual budgeting pilot is validated.
  • Forecast / Rolling ForecastForecast-version foundations exist, but limited-beta users are not yet being asked to operate them.
  • Detailed professional budgeting is still developingThe Guided/Simplified workflow is the launch commitment while advanced departmental depth continues to mature.
  • One included hotel per pilot accountMulti-property commercial tenanting is not the first-cohort objective.
  • No daily operating MIS yetThe current beta is an annual/monthly budgeting product, not a daily hotel operations dashboard.

These limits are intentional pilot guardrails. They let us validate the core budget before exposing the wider performance-management stack to beta hotels.

Planned additions to beta access

Where the pilot is heading

Roadmap items below describe product direction and do not imply a committed release date.

Financial Control

Start from your actuals

Load a monthly P&L and run a controlled month-end review without building a budget first. A hotel that only wants performance control should not have to complete a planning exercise to get there.

Financial Control

Compare against what you actually have

Measure the month against Budget, Forecast or Last Year — whichever you hold. No budget is a legitimate answer, not an error, and a missing figure is shown as unavailable rather than counted as zero.

Financial Control

Bring your own baseline

Upload a budget, a forecast or a prior year prepared outside the platform. Where last year’s actuals are already loaded, they become the comparison without being uploaded a second time.

Financial Control

Explain the movement, not everything

Add rooms segment, outlet or department detail when a material variance justifies the effort — for one month or backfilled for past periods. Detail reconciles to the P&L; it never overwrites it.

Planning

Rolling forecast

Open controlled forecast versions so actual performance and revised assumptions can update the remaining-year outlook without replacing the approved budget.

Advanced

Detailed budgeting

Continue deeper F&B, Events, staffing, departmental cost and below-GOP controls for more complex hotels.

Scale

Multi-property and portfolio views

Extend the single-hotel model to controlled additional properties, consolidated oversight and portfolio comparison.

AI

AI Budget Assistant

Broader conversational analysis and controlled proposals remain future work. The platform also contains an optional human-reviewed AI variance-commentary path in management reporting; see the Privacy Notice for the data-processing boundary.

Financial Control — in development

Run month-end without a budget? Tell us how you do it today.

Financial Control is being built now and is not open yet. We are talking to hotels that close a month against last year, against a forecast, or against nothing at all — because those are the workflows the product has to fit. No account required, and nothing here commits you to the beta.

Initial controlled cohort

We are starting with a target of about 20 participating hotels.

This is a practical onboarding and support target, not an enforced registration ceiling or a technical database limit. We intend to bring hotels in progressively, observe performance and feedback, and keep the cohort manageable while the beta changes quickly.

Use hotel-level planning dataBudget and historical figures should be aggregated business data. Do not upload guest personal data, payment-card data, passport details or unnecessary employee personal information.
One included hotelUse one property and one principal planning record during the initial cohort so issues and feedback remain comparable.
Keep your own approved copyExport important reports and approved versions. Beta software can change and is not a statutory books-and-records system.
Tell us what fails in real useReport errors, confusing workflows, missing hotel use cases and performance delays through the in-app feedback channel.
What we ask in return:Use the workflow on realistic hotel planning cases, challenge the calculations and usability, and share practical feedback. Participation does not require publishing your hotel’s financial figures.

Data privacy & trust

Use real hotel planning data only when you are comfortable with the beta safeguards.

The private workspace requires authentication and the current production database is hosted in an EU region. The product is designed for aggregated hotel financial and operating information—not guest-level or sensitive personal records.

01

Private workspace

Registered budgets are associated with the account that owns them. The public demo is separate from private hotel workspaces.

02

Purpose-limited use

Hotel budget data is used to operate, secure, troubleshoot and improve the budgeting service. We do not sell hotel planning data for advertising.

03

Controlled support access

Authorized administrators may access account or workspace data when reasonably necessary for support, security, debugging, backup/recovery or legal obligations.

04

No guest data required

The budgeting workflow does not require guest names, card information, identity documents or other guest-level personal information. Do not upload them.

05

AI use is disclosed

An optional AI-drafted variance-commentary path can send defined financial variance context to Anthropic when configured and invoked. It cannot change financial tables and requires human review.

06

Exports remain available

Use the application’s outputs to retain management copies outside the platform. You remain responsible for your official approved records.

Why we are building this

A practical companion to hotel finance guidance—not another software project for its own sake.

Hotel Budget Planner is being developed as part of eHotel Management School (eHMS), an independent hospitality learning and decision-support initiative. The starting point is a recurring problem in independent hotels: budgeting discipline matters, but enterprise planning systems can be disproportionate and spreadsheet models become fragile, version-heavy and difficult to explain.

The aim is to turn practical hotel-finance guidance into a usable workflow: clear assumptions, monthly operating drivers, controlled calculations, comparison with history, management review and an output that hotel teams can understand.

Visit the eHMS book & guide library

Common beta questions

What a hotel should know before joining.

Who is this beta intended for?

Independent and small hotel owners, general managers, financial controllers and operating leaders who want a structured monthly planning process without starting an enterprise planning implementation.

Can another hotel see my budget?

Private budgets are account-owned and are not part of the public demo. Authorized administrators may access data when needed for support, security and platform operation; see the Privacy Notice for the full boundary.

Should I upload guest or employee personal data?

No. The application is designed for aggregated hotel planning and operating figures. Do not upload guest names, payment-card information, passports or unnecessary personal employee records.

Are Actuals and Forecast available in this beta?

Not yet for limited beta accounts. The platform has underlying foundations for Actuals, Budget-vs-Actual and Forecast, but those navigation modules are deliberately deferred while the annual budgeting workflow is tested.

Is this an accounting or audit system?

No. It is a financial-planning and management-support tool. Your accounting ledger and approved financial records remain authoritative.

Why target about 20 hotels initially?

The target is for controlled onboarding and support, not because 20 hotels exhaust the database. We want enough real usage to expose different hotel needs while keeping issue resolution and product changes manageable.

Can I try it without using my hotel data?

Yes. The public demo can be explored without registration and is intentionally separated from private hotel workspaces.

Will AI change my numbers?

No. The existing optional variance-commentary path produces a draft for human review and cannot write financial tables. Broader AI assistance remains future work.

Try it before using hotel data

The demo is available when you want to explore the workflow first.

The demo is a secondary learning path. Your own budget remains in a private workspace with controlled historical import, saved assumptions, review and downloadable budget outputs.

No registration

Explore the sample budget

Open the public sample workspace to understand the screens and workflow without using hotel data. When ready, return to the website or move into your own registration.

  • No hotel upload required
  • See the budgeting modules
  • Use page-level guided tours
  • Return to the website at any time
Explore demo

Initial beta cohort

Use the demo, review the safeguards, then decide whether to bring in your hotel.

We are aiming for about 20 participating hotels initially so we can validate real operating use cases without losing the direct feedback loop that a beta should have.