Hotel property management software is designed to control the flow of information and data necessary for the management and operation of hotels and motels. This is achieved through a PMS module, which has front desk and back office software, hotel management software, hotel accounting software, hospitality/sales and catering software, and point of sale software. Front desk operations software manages reservations, guest check-in/check-out, housekeeping, tracks room availability and unsold rooms, guest folio review and edit, makes or changes key lock cards, city ledger, and night auditing. Revenue can be tracked and managed with PMS software by keeping records of revenue per available room, average daily rate, percentage occupancy, summarizing revenues, payments and taxes, auto-posting of charges and payments, and automatic transfer of advance deposits.

Back office software management keeps track of payroll, accounts payable, general inventory, general ledger and personnel/human resources. The front desk software should have a data export interface to the back office accounting system to allow for billing controls. Back office features also manage guest services such as retail POS, restaurant POS, spa/golf POS, and related operations such as purchases, inventory, and food and beverage inventory.

Reporting capabilities are also important to hotel management software. Management and marketing reports can be generated and include operating reports, occupancy forecasts, monthly activity reports, monthly deposit and cash out reports, room count revenue reports, room housekeeping status, corporate account statements, guest status, and cancellation, arrival and departure tracking.

Free hotel management software, free hotel reservation software is available on software providers’ websites for evaluation.