Hotel Profit and Loss Statement: A USALI Guide for Ghana Guesthouses
How to lay out a hotel P&L the USALI way, from department profit to GOP and net profit, with a worked example in cedis for a 12-room guesthouse.
Innkeeper Team · · 4 min read
Ask a guesthouse owner whether the business made money last month and the honest answer is often "I think so". Money came in, bills were paid, and whatever is left in the account feels like profit. It usually isn't. Rent paid quarterly, a generator bought last year and the electricity bill shared between the rooms and the kitchen all distort that picture.
The hotel industry solved this decades ago with a standard layout for the profit and loss statement called USALI, the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry. This guide explains it in plain terms and works through an example for a small Ghanaian property.
Why hotels use a different P&L layout
A normal business P&L lists all income, then all costs. That hides the question an owner actually needs answered: which parts of the business earn money, and which only look busy?
USALI answers it by building profit in layers:
- Department profit: each revenue-earning department (rooms, food and beverage, spa, activities) takes its own revenue and subtracts only its own direct costs.
- Gross operating profit (GOP): add up the department profits, then subtract the undistributed costs that keep the whole property running: management salaries, marketing, utilities you haven't split, repairs and admin.
- Net profit: subtract the fixed charges that don't change with how busy you are (rent, insurance, licences), then depreciation on your assets.
GOP is the number hotel managers are judged on, because it is what the operation itself produces before the owner's fixed costs.
A worked example: a 12-room guesthouse in October
Here is a month for an imaginary 12-room guesthouse with a small restaurant.
| Rooms | Food & beverage | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | GHS 54,000 | GHS 18,500 |
| Direct costs (housekeeping wages, linen, amenities; kitchen wages, food purchases) | GHS 13,200 | GHS 9,800 |
| Department profit | GHS 40,800 | GHS 8,700 |
Total department profit is GHS 49,500. Then come the undistributed costs:
| Undistributed costs | |
|---|---|
| Manager's salary | GHS 6,000 |
| Electricity and water (the unsplit share) | GHS 5,400 |
| Repairs and maintenance | GHS 2,100 |
| Marketing and OTA commission | GHS 3,600 |
| Payment gateway and MoMo fees | GHS 900 |
| Total | GHS 18,000 |
GOP = 49,500 − 18,000 = GHS 31,500, a GOP margin of 31,500 ÷ 72,500 = 43% of total revenue.
Finally, the fixed charges and depreciation:
| Fixed charges | |
|---|---|
| Rent (GHS 24,000 a quarter, so one month) | GHS 8,000 |
| Insurance and licences | GHS 1,200 |
| Depreciation (generator and furniture) | GHS 1,450 |
| Net profit | GHS 20,850 |
Notice two things. The quarterly rent appears as one month's share, not as a GHS 24,000 hit in the month it was paid. And the generator bought for GHS 45,000 appears only as its monthly depreciation, so last year's purchase doesn't make one month look like a disaster.
Shared bills: split them, don't guess
The electricity bill in the example was partly unsplit. In reality the kitchen uses far more power per cedi of revenue than the rooms do. If you can estimate the split, for example 60% rooms and 40% kitchen, record the bill against both departments. Department profit then tells the truth about the restaurant.
Do the same for a manager who runs both the front desk and the restaurant, or a cleaner who also helps in the bar.
The KPIs that come out of a USALI P&L
- GOP margin: GOP as a share of total revenue. As a rough benchmark, many well-run small hotels aim for 30% or more; track your own trend month to month.
- GOPPAR: GOP per available room (GOP ÷ rooms ÷ days). It compares properties of different sizes fairly.
- Cost per occupied room: rooms department costs ÷ room nights sold. If it creeps up while occupancy stays flat, look at linen, amenities and overtime.
Common mistakes
- Counting a loan repayment as an expense. The interest is a cost; the principal isn't.
- Expensing big purchases in one go. Record a generator, solar system or new beds as an asset and depreciate it over its useful life.
- Leaving out the owner's own work. If you'd have to pay someone to do it, include a fair salary, or the property looks more profitable than it would be under a manager.
- Forgetting cash expenses. Small cash purchases add up. Record each one with a receipt photo.
Doing it without a spreadsheet
You can build this in Excel, but the revenue figures have to be copied over every month and the splits redone by hand. In Innkeeper's accounting and profit reports the revenue is already there from your folios and restaurant orders. Record expenses as they happen, with split bills and repeating rent set up once, and the USALI profit and loss, profit per room and break-even appear for any period you choose.