Record to Report Services for Student Accommodation: An Overview

R2R or Record to Report is all about financial intelligence.

Data is critical to accelerating results oriented decision-making velocity. According to a DATA AND ANALYTICS LEADERSHIP ANNUAL EXECUTIVE SURVEY 2023, just 59.5% of executives said their companies were harnessing the power of data to succeed at business innovation.  This means there is a need to unlock the potential of data for business benefit.

While different companies and the departments within them record and leverage data intelligence in different ways, purely from the financial perspective, R2R or Record to Report helps deliver meaningful financial intelligence to key stakeholders. Record-to-report outsourcing services are best placed to address a business’s R2R needs. You can leverage an outsourced R2R team with focused expertise in record to report, speed up TAT, and deliver reports that meet the highest reporting standards. Moreover, it helps you free up the time of your in-house accountants and analysts, who can focus on other strategic activities, like financial planning & analysis (FP&A).

Regarding the student accommodation sector, the quality and comprehensiveness of R2R will ensure the management can get more clarity on whether their business can exploit the opportunities in the student housing sector and figure out the next steps to drive business growth.

RELATED CASE STUDY: Improved financial reporting for leading UK PBSA company through process standardization and consolidated group budget template

What is R2R reporting?

R2R is intrinsic to the Finance and Accounting (F&A) function. It involves collecting, processing, and presenting accurate financial data that offers necessary feedback on business performance and guidance on the next set of business activities that can drive business growth. The internal customers of R2R include business owners, CFOs, and key leaders involved in setting a business’s sales and business goals, and responsible for its financial health.

From the perspective of the student accommodation sector and running a student accommodation business, some data points such reports can cover, include profit, loss, costs of running student accommodation such as utilities, personnel, demand, supply, and more.

What are the responsibilities of R2R?

The responsibilities that make R2R can be broadly categorized into four primary activities, including:

Recording of Transactions: Every financial transaction made by the student accommodation provider is recorded accurately, complying with the local accounting standards.

Consolidation and Sorting of Transactions: After each transaction undergoes a thorough vetting process and post-approval and recording, the transaction must be sorted systematically. This process includes collecting, validating, mapping, and slotting each transaction into homogenous groups.

Reporting: This is a crucial element of R2R and involves leveraging all the records to generate a range of reports such as annual reports, profit and loss, and more that will provide meaningful guidance to an organization’s leadership team. This team can get more clarity on the financial health of a business, key problem areas, and more.

Closing Cycle: Whether it is the closure of a fiscal year or any other set period determined by the finance leadership, the finance and accounting teams need to finish their financial record-keeping within a pre-determined deadline to close the general ledger for the year.

The process of R2R can be highly time-consuming and, although strategic, can be very repetitive. It is one of those processes that can be outsourced easily so that record to report services for student accommodations are manage promptly and effectively.

R2R Serviced Accommodation – The Reports that Matter

Let’s look at a scenario where you are seriously considering working with R2R outsourcing service providers. In such cases, you will have to list the kind of reports that are critical for your business to know whether this provider has experience of recording data for such reports and creating reports with the said data. Here are a few reports that will help you focus on not only the big picture but also granularly on the various aspects of your business:

• Profit and Loss

Irrespective of whether you are managing multiple student accommodations or just one, this report covers total income and expenses across the year, quarter, or a selected time frame. You get clarity on the accommodations that have been performing well, enabling you to dig into the reasons for profitability; the accommodations that have been incurring losses, and therefore figuring out the reasons for suffering from losses.

• Forecasts

There will be teams in your organization who might be tasked with understanding the impact of market pulls and pressures on your business’s present and future viability. For example, a new report discusses how international students are more likely to prioritize living independently than UK students. Such information can help you chart out focused strategies that will cater to the needs of international students and improve sales. This can help you determine the demand for your services in the ensuing year, the revenue you can generate, and more. Financial analysts can use this data to improve investor confidence in your business.

• Balance Sheet

Your business’s balance sheet is like an overview of your financial positions, including your business’s assets, liabilities, and equity. The balance sheet is typically a subset of the larger financial reporting of the company. It offers a snapshot of your student accommodation business’s financial health and position at a given time.

• Occupancy Rate Report

This report tracks the number of rental units occupied, which gives you more clarity on the utilization or under utilization of your student accommodation. A high occupancy rate means your business is doing well, and you mustn’t worry about its financial health; on the other hand, if the rate is low, you can lower the costs of running your student rentals to improve your financial health.

RELATED BLOG: The Ultimate PBSA Cheat Sheet to Ensuring High Occupancy Rates 365 Days a Year

• Treasury Report

This critical report offers information on your business’s cash management and financial position. The focus of such statements is to get more clarity on the cash flow, debt, and investment to get insights into the business’s financial health. Some of the core components of such reports include cash position, cash flow forecast, and bank reconciliations.

• Maintenance and Repair Expenses

This critical report helps monitor your accommodation’s maintenance and repair costs. It can also include the man hours needed to address these issues, which allow you to track your maintenance staff’s efficiency and productivity levels. This report can be a subset of your overall expense reporting.

• General Ledger Report

A general ledger report includes the financial data of your student accommodation including credit and debit account records, with trial balance validation. It is essentially a record keeper that can be leveraged to prepare a slew of financial reports for your business. It helps companies track and analyze business performance and includes information on account balances, transactions, account summaries, reconciliation amongst others.

Fit-to-Need R2R

Record to report outsourcing services delivered by an experienced services provider will not be limited to R2R the reports covered here. Their record-to-report services will cover a range of record-keeping and reporting that powers business growth and helps you keep on top of every regulation governing the running of your students’ accommodation business.

QX leverages the best-advanced technologies to drive the transformation of your R2R process backed by experienced staff and a customized approach towards recording vital financial data and delivering reports based on this data. This ensures a streamlined R2R function and improves the ability to make faster, more outcomes-focused financial decisions.

Originally published Sep 05, 2023 06:09:09, updated Jun 20 2024

Topics: Record-to-report cycle, Student accommodation, Student Housing