Best Hotel Management Software in Bangladesh: A Buyer's Guide

Running a hotel means keeping many departments in step: reservations, the front desk, housekeeping, the restaurant, the store and the accounts. When each one works from its own spreadsheet or register, information gets lost between them, bills are missed and the month-end takes days. Hotel management software, often called a property management system (PMS), brings it all into one place.

There is no single best hotel management software for every property. A 20-room guest house in Sylhet, a business hotel in Dhaka and a resort in Cox's Bazar need different things. This guide explains how to choose, what each department should get from the system, and how FLEX InfoTech's two hotel products, FLEX Connect in the cloud and FLEX PMS on your own network, fit different properties.

What hotel management software should do

At its core, hotel management software records who is staying, in which room, at what rate, and what they owe. A complete system goes further and connects every department that touches a guest or spends money, so a restaurant bill reaches the guest's folio, the store knows what the kitchen used and the accounts close from the same figures.

When you compare systems, look at four things before price: whether it covers the departments you actually run, whether it handles Bangladesh VAT and service charge the way your accountant needs, whether staff can use it on the floor and on the phone, and whether support comes from a team that can reach you quickly.

Cloud or desktop: decide this first

Cloud hotel software runs in a web browser and on a mobile app, so owners and managers can see the hotel from anywhere and there is no server to look after at the property. Desktop hotel software runs on a server inside the hotel and keeps working on the local network even when the internet goes down, which still matters in some locations.

FLEX offers both. FLEX Connect is cloud hotel management software with 22 modules, available in any browser and on the mobile app (Android & iOS). FLEX PMS is the desktop edition, with 17 modules from the front office to accounts, that works offline on your local network with remote access from outside the property. Our guide to cloud PMS for hotels in Bangladesh compares the two in more detail.

Front office and reservations

The front office is where the guest's stay begins and ends, so it needs to be fast and hard to get wrong. Look for a reservation chart that shows every room at a glance, express booking for walk-ins, check-in and checkout with a clear folio, and a night audit that closes the day properly.

• Reservation chart, express booking and waitlist
• Room rates, rate types and dynamic rates
• Check-in, billing, checkout and night audit
• Market segments, business sources and company profiles
• Arrival, departure and in-house lists
• A direct booking engine for your own website, with local and international payment gateways

Housekeeping and room service

Room status should move between the floor and the front desk without phone calls. Housekeeping assigns rooms to housekeepers, runs the daily round and turndown, flags rooms that are not serviced or out of order, and records lost and found, minibar and laundry. In FLEX PMS, housekeeping supports Android and Windows tablets, and FLEX Connect's housekeeping screens are on the mobile app.

Room service should run as its own outlet with its own menu, so in-room orders are billed to the right room and its takings are visible on their own.

Restaurant, bar and café POS

Food and beverage is a major source of revenue for many hotels, and it is where integration pays off most. The restaurant and bar POS should take orders by table, print kitchen order tickets, handle dine-in, takeaway and delivery, and post a bill to a guest's room in one step. Each café, bar or pool bar should run as a separate outlet with its own menu and cashier shift.

FLEX PMS's restaurant and bar POS covers order tickets, kitchen display, dine-in, takeaway and delivery, the table chart, a digital menu and split billing. Restaurants outside hotels can use FLEX POS, which adds purchasing, inventory, food production and accounts. See our guide to restaurant POS software in Bangladesh.

Banquets, spa and health club

Weddings, conferences and corporate events can bring in as much as the rooms. Banquet management should cover halls and menus, event quotations, an events calendar that shows which hall is booked, function sheets for the kitchen and service teams, and event billing. Hotels with a spa or gym need appointments by treatment room and therapist, memberships and renewals, and billing with their own cashier shift.

These modules are part of FLEX Connect, and they are also sold on their own as FLEX Events and FLEX Spa & Gym.

Store, procurement and accounts

Behind the guest-facing departments, the hotel buys, stores and pays for everything. Procurement should run from purchase requisition and supplier quotation to an approved purchase order. The store should receive goods, issue them to departments against requisitions, record damage and returns, and close stock every month for the main store and sub stores.

Accounts should produce the day book, trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet from the same data, with bank reconciliation and month and year closing. HR and payroll should turn attendance and leave into the monthly salary, including service charge distribution. Bills must show VAT correctly and many hotels add a service charge, so check that rates are set up centrally and ask your accountant to review the setup before you go live.

Why hotels choose FLEX

More than 130 hotels and resorts use FLEX software, built and supported by FLEX InfoTech Limited from Dhaka and Thimphu since 2012.

• One system for every department, from reservations to accounts
• Cloud (FLEX Connect) or desktop that works offline (FLEX PMS)
• Mobile app (Android & iOS) for managers and staff on FLEX Connect
• Role-based access, so each user only sees the screens their role allows
• Integrations including channel managers, booking engine, payment gateways, biometric devices, smart locks, Tally, QuickBooks and Xero
• Local support 24/7 from the team that builds the software

Questions to ask in every demo

The best hotel management software for your property is the one your team will use every day. Ask the vendor to show, not just tell, using a real booking and a real bill from your hotel.

• Can we see a walk-in booked, checked in, billed and checked out in a few minutes?
• Can a restaurant bill be posted to a guest's room in one step?
• How are VAT and service charge set up, and who can change them?
• Does it keep working if the internet goes down, or is it cloud only?
• Which screens are on the mobile app?
• How long does data migration and training take?
• Who supports us at night and on holidays?

Frequently asked questions