What Is USALI?

Definition

USALI, the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry, is the standard chart of accounts and reporting format for hotels. Owners, brands, and operators use it so they can compare performance consistently.

Imagine comparing two hotels where one counts minibar sales as food and beverage revenue and the other counts them as rooms revenue. The totals might match, but the department results would tell different stories. USALI exists to prevent that. It gives the hotel industry a common language for financial reporting.

Who maintains USALI?

USALI was first published in 1926 and has been updated many times since. Today it is maintained by the Global Finance Committee, which is jointly sponsored by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) and Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP). HFTP publishes the manual.

The current version is the 12th Revised Edition, released in 2024, with a recommended effective date of January 1, 2026.

How USALI is structured

USALI organizes a hotel's results into a summary operating statement supported by detailed departmental schedules. At a high level:

• Operated departments: revenue and direct expenses for rooms, food and beverage, and other operated departments such as spa, golf, or parking, plus miscellaneous income.
• Undistributed operating expenses: costs that support the whole hotel, including administrative and general, information and telecommunications systems, sales and marketing, property operation and maintenance, and utilities.
• Gross operating profit (GOP): total departmental profit minus undistributed expenses.
• Management fees.
• Non-operating income and expenses: items such as rent, property and other taxes, and insurance. Earlier editions called many of these "fixed charges."
• EBITDA and EBITDA less replacement reserve.

USALI also defines statistics such as occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR so they are calculated the same way everywhere. See hotel flash report for how those metrics are tracked daily.

Why owners and brands require USALI

• Comparability: owners can compare hotels in their portfolio, and against market benchmarks, on equal terms.
• Management agreements: incentive fees and performance tests are often written around USALI figures such as GOP.
• Lenders and investors expect USALI-format statements when underwriting or valuing a hotel.
• Brand reporting: franchisors require consistent reporting across their systems.

USALI reporting across a multi-property portfolio

For hotel management companies, the challenge isn't one USALI statement. It's producing accurate statements for every property, every owner, and the portfolio as a whole, every month. When each property's books live in a separate system or spreadsheet, the finance team spends the close remapping accounts and rebuilding reports.

A multi-entity system with a shared chart of accounts solves most of this. Each property is its own entity, every account maps to a USALI line once, and owner reports come from the same data as internal reports.

Mapping USALI in Sage Intacct

Sage Intacct handles USALI reporting through its dimensional general ledger. Accounts map to USALI departments and lines, while dimensions such as property, owner, and brand drive the reports. One set of financial report definitions can then produce USALI statements for any property, owner group, or the full portfolio.

Acumen works with hotel management companies to design this mapping during implementation, including updates for the 12th Revised Edition.

Example: one account, three reports

A hotel management company operates 12 hotels for four different owners. Every property posts housekeeping wages to the same rooms payroll account, tagged with the property dimension.

At month-end, that one account feeds three reports at once. Each hotel's USALI rooms department schedule shows its own housekeeping labor. Each owner's package rolls up rooms department profit for only the hotels they own. And the portfolio report compares rooms labor cost per occupied room across all 12 hotels to spot outliers. Nothing is remapped or re-keyed, because the USALI mapping is set up once and applied to every property.