WHO I HELP

Hotels. Hotel Management companies. Head office accountants.

HOW I HELP

Information reporting. Establishing processes and providing further support.

SECTORS/SUPPORT

Hotel Accounting. Payroll. Tax. Business Advisory Group.

“FINDING INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO ELIMINATE MUNDANE, REPETITIVE TASKS.”

Based in the Glasgow office, Steven Weir is a Financial Controller at AAB Hotel Accounting. He manages a team who look after a portfolio of 25 hotels across 6 management companies. Steven’s team works hard to ensure that processes are tailored to the hotel’s needs and that they’re delivering a high-quality service, in addition to acting as the main point of contact for clients. In his day-to day role, Steven is invested in his team and enjoys supporting his colleagues in their growth and development journeys.

Additionally, Steven is passionate about working closely in partnership with hotels, allowing them to worry less about tedious processing and focus more on enhancing the guest experience!

Close working relationships

“We’re in a unique position whereby we work very closely with our clients on a daily basis. Our clients feel more like colleagues than what you would expect of a typical client relationship. I enjoy building close working relationships as it’s important that my clients feel they can raise any issues or concerns they have. Ultimately, we want to work with them to not only resolve any problems but also take any opportunities to challenge current processes and look for ways to evolve and improve. I believe change is needed at times to avoid the same issues recurring in the future.

Clients can always expect me to be available to go over any issues or provide advice. I may not always have the answers to hand but one of the big advantages of being a part of such a big and diverse organisation means I’m always able to find someone within the company who will have the answers. Clients can also expect that we’ll adapt to the hotel’s reporting needs and find innovative ways to incorporate the information to make a real difference to their decision-making.”

Making a positive difference

“Our clients tend to work with a great deal of transactions and information on a monthly basis, so problems can easily arise where robust processes aren’t in place or being followed. I get a great deal of satisfaction from working together with the client to tackle these problems head on and then seeing the new procedures starting to work.”

Thinking outside the box

“I like to challenge how things are normally done and find innovative approaches to eliminate mundane, repetitive tasks so that I can focus on the more enjoyable part of the job – interpreting the information. It’s surprising how often the same information is processed by different people for slightly different purposes. Therefore, being able to step back and look at the bigger picture can often make life more interesting and result in more innovative solutions to our challenges.”

The greatest challenge

“I’d say a big challenge in the hospitality sector is attracting and retaining talent. Quite often when a hotel struggles to fill a position at any level, the accounting and admin side of the business can be the first to suffer. We understand that when things get busy and customers are visiting the hotel, the last thing the client wants is for staff to be processing invoices. This often creates a backlog; things can start to spiral and important information can be lost. That’s where our experience can really help by tackling the backlog and building the right resources to ensure current items are accounted for. We help by reducing the accounting and admin requirements and help to provide feedback when essential functions are not performed.”

Drawing on past broad and diverse experiences

“I’d say my greatest strength is having a thorough understanding of the accounting packages we use and being able to advise on how these can be utilised best to ensure we provide an excellent service to our clients. In addition, I have a variety of experience with the firm having worked in the Audit and Business Advisory teams before joining Hotel Accounting. Drawing on these past experiences, I believe I’m well-equipped to advise my clients on how daily transactions and procedures should be designed to help feed into statutory obligations.”

Breaking the stereotypes

“I disagree with people who view accountants as “bean counters”, “scrooges” or “pessimistic”. These are outdated stereotypes and in reality, this is far from the truth. I believe it’s not about counting numbers but knowing what numbers count. Personally, I love how diverse my role as an accountant is and that I can advise on a whole range of areas within business. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of building a business as a way of achieving something together that is far greater than ourselves.”