The Hotels AP Automation Benchmark Report: Summer 2026 Edition
by Mike Waldron
Why this report exists
Hotel finance teams are inundated with invoices covering everything from rooms to food and beverage to spa services. Each invoice must be coded to the correct department and entity before it ever reaches the consolidated GL. For finance leaders managing a multi-location portfolio, a misrouted invoice can miscode an entire month for a department, skew an aging report, or prompt a GM to ask questions the controller isn’t sure how to answer.
While most hotel operators are aware there’s leakage somewhere in their AP process, far fewer have the data to quantify the impact. They may not know how many duplicate invoices are slipping through, how much exposure is sitting in flagged invoices, and how much faster the team could close the books if statement reconciliation wasn’t eating up so much time every month. Without the right data, these problems often go unresolved and continue to impact the bottom line.
Each quarter, Ottimate processes thousands of invoices for our hotel customers. We’ve compiled the data into a snapshot to help hotel operators quantify what’s really happening. It provides benchmarks based on actual hotel AP data rather than industry estimates or survey responses.
The first edition of the Hotel AP Automation Benchmark Report focuses on duplicate detection, fraud exposure, discrepancy rates, payment errors, invoice lifecycle time, and AP labor savings. Twice a year, we’ll track how these numbers evolve and what’s driving the changes so hotel operators can see how they stack up and where there are opportunities to improve performance.
The duplicates nobody catches until it's too late
The value of duplicate invoices has risen every quarter, suggesting either that invoice values are climbing or that vendors are submitting higher-value duplicates. Either way, the trend makes automated detection increasingly critical, not optional, for multi-property operators processing this kind of volume.
Fraud and overcharges, caught before they escalate
We expect this percentage to continue to increase as the year progresses and automation catches more potentially fraudulent invoices. When most hotels face potential fraud or overpayments, a system that can proactively flag invoice risk becomes critical. Teams that automate invoice validation and routing can resolve issues faster, reduce payment errors, and spend less time chasing down discrepancies.
The money you didn't know you were owed
The rest of 2026 is set to surpass 2025, as prices keep rising, invoice volumes keep growing, and overcharges keep rising right along with them. At some point, catching these mistakes before they hit your bottom line just isn’t realistic without some kind of automated check in the mix
Payment errors: the losses you can't claw back
Payment errors are costly and difficult to recover from once funds have left the account. Halfway through the year, hotels are already closing in on last year’s full total. Manual payment reviews miss what automated checks consistently catch, which is exactly why a final validation layer before disbursement matters, whether the payment is processed via ACH or a virtual card.
How much time automation buys back
Hotels are processing invoices faster even as volume continues to grow. For a property working against a tight month-end close calendar, that speed matters: fewer invoices left to estimate as accruals, and fewer surprises showing up in the aging report later
What a full-time employee's worth of time looks like
Through the first half of the year, hotels are already at almost 70% of the labor savings experienced in the entirety of 2025 and on pace to reach almost $93,000 in labor savings by the end of 2026. Hotels are getting faster and handling more volume at the same time, and those gains stack. It’s time back for the Property Accountant or AP Manager who’d otherwise be buried in reconciliation and exceptions, and time back for the Controller to focus on the work that actually needs their judgment.
About this report
The Hotels AP Automation Benchmark Report: Summer 2026 Edition is published by Ottimate using aggregated, anonymized data from our hotel customer base. All benchmarks reflect real invoice processing data across independent properties, management companies, and multi-property hotel groups. This is the first edition; future editions will track trends and flag what’s driving the changes.
The Hotels AP Automation Benchmark Report
Summer 2026 Edition
See what real invoice data reveals about hotel AP: duplicate detection, fraud exposure, invoice lifecycle time, and labor savings. Get the benchmarks Controllers and GMs use to catch margin leakage across every property.
