Managing your gratuity distributions with Excel?
Millions of dollars in service charges and tip distributions in the hospitality industry are managed in time consuming and often error-ridden Excel spreadsheets. The unfortunate trend that we have uncovered is that the properties are spending unnecessary time and money to manage this manual process rather than fixing the actual problem. The main reason for this is that until now the only software choices available for their gratuity payroll process are the cause of the problem, not the solution.
These are some key questions to ask yourself about your current process:
- Did a programmer with an understanding of your process build your existing spreadsheets?
- Who is the original creator of the spreadsheet? What happens when that person leaves the company and the spreadsheet needs to be updated?
- How confident are you that the formulas have not been changed?
- Were the spreadsheets tested to ensure accuracy? When variables changed, was additional testing conducted?
- How much data is manually entered into your spreadsheets?
- What training is involved to ensure users understand how to utilize existing spreadsheets?
- Is there clear documentation of the gratuity distribution rules?
To learn more about our research into the errors with Excel spreadsheets and how Evention manages these issues, please click here.