manager reviewing best spend management software for hospitality businesses

Running a hotel, resort, restaurant, or vacation rental means purchasing everything from bed linens and guest toiletries to cleaning supplies, F&B inventory, and FF&E — often across dozens of properties and hundreds of vendors. Each of those purchases directly shapes the guest experience, and each one carries margin implications in an industry where net profit margins hover in the single digits.

That volume and variety is exactly why generic spend management tools fall short. A platform designed for SaaS subscriptions and corporate card expenses won't help you enforce brand-standard amenities across properties, manage perishable F&B ordering, or consolidate invoices from local suppliers who still send paper bills.

This guide covers the five best spend management platforms built for (or well-suited to) hospitality operations, what sets each apart, and how to evaluate them for your business.

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Why hospitality businesses need industry-specific spend management

Hospitality procurement isn't just one challenge — it's several, happening simultaneously across locations. Fragmented purchasing and maverick spend consistently rank among the top challenges in the industry: individual properties managing their own ordering through separate spreadsheets, local supplier relationships, and manual workarounds. As a result, it becomes nearly impossible to answer basic questions about what's being bought, from whom, and at what price.

Here's what makes hospitality spend management distinct from other industries:

  • High SKU diversity across categories. Hotels and resorts purchase across housekeeping, F&B, maintenance, guest amenities, office supplies, and FF&E — often from different vendors for each category.
  • Multi-location coordination. Ensuring brand consistency (the same linens, the same coffee, the same toiletries) across properties requires centralized catalogs with location-level flexibility.
  • Perishable and time-sensitive ordering. F&B inventory can't sit in a two-week approval queue. Hospitality businesses need fast approval workflows that still enforce budget controls.
  • Vendor fragmentation. Many hospitality suppliers are regional or local, meaning a 20-property hotel group might work with 200+ vendors — each with its own ordering process, invoice format, and payment terms.
  • Tight margins under pressure. The global hospitality market reached $5.75 trillion in 2025, growing at a 6.6% CAGR. But rising operational costs mean every dollar of savings on procurement directly impacts profitability.

A purpose-built spend management platform addresses these challenges in ways that general-purpose tools simply don't.

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The 5 best spend management platforms for hospitality businesses

1. Order.co — Best for end-to-end spend management across multi-location hospitality

Order.co is a procurement and finance automation platform designed to centralize purchasing, automate payments, and deliver complete spend visibility — all from a single system. For hospitality businesses managing physical goods across multiple properties, it offers a uniquely comprehensive approach that covers the entire purchase-to-pay process.

What sets it apart:

Order.co doesn't just track expenses after the fact; it controls spend at the point of purchase. Every product in the platform's unified catalog is pre-approved to meet your business's sourcing needs, budgets, and approval policies. That means rogue spend is prevented before it happens, not flagged after the money is already out the door.

Key features for hospitality:

  • AI-powered strategic sourcing. Order.co AI finds the best prices across 30,000+ vendors, identifying savings opportunities that manual comparison shopping would miss.
  • Simplified invoice management. No manual 3-way matching is needed because line items are pre-coded, verified, and approval happens before the purchase is made. Order.co pays vendors upfront and then invoices the customer, eliminating invoice discrepancies entirely.
  • Vendor issue resolution. Hospitality teams never have to chase vendors for order mistakes, returns, or refunds. Order.co helps resolve vendor communications and resolves issues on behalf of your business.
  • Multi-location visibility. Real-time budget tracking and spend analysis by location, department, or cost center give finance leaders the visibility they need to make data-driven decisions.

Hospitality track record:

Order.co powers procurement across 1,700+ hotels, resorts, and vacation rentals, working with brands like AvantStay, Getaway, Lark Hotels, and the Auberge Collection. Lark Hotels, for example, centralized purchasing across 45 properties and organized over 2,000 products into curated catalogs, freeing staff to focus on guest experiences rather than tedious admin tasks.

Best for: Multi-location hospitality businesses (hotels, resorts, vacation rentals) that need a single platform to manage all vendors, enforce purchasing compliance, and automate everything from ordering to payment.

2. BirchStreet Systems — Best for large hotel chains and enterprise F&B procurement

BirchStreet Systems is a procure-to-pay platform built exclusively for the hospitality industry. It serves some of the largest hotel brands in the world with a deep focus on F&B procurement, recipe management, and enterprise-scale purchasing analytics.

Key features for hospitality:

  • eProcurement with compliance controls. Advanced workflow approvals and digitized procurement processes help hotel managers drive compliance.
  • AP 3-way auto-match. Accelerated invoice processing through automated matching of purchase orders, receipts, and invoices.
  • Recipe management across properties. Deploy standardized recipes and track real-time food costs and margin control across multiple locations.
  • Inventory management. Instantaneous inventory counts and replenishment tracking across properties.
  • GPO strategic partnerships. Access to group purchasing networks offering products below market price.

Limitations to consider:

  • Outdated user interface. Multiple user reviews cite a complex, cluttered layout that requires significant training to navigate, particularly around purchase order workflows and reporting.
  • Reporting constraints. Users report difficulty extracting specific data or customizing reports to match their needs, which can limit the spend analytics that finance teams depend on.
  • Enterprise scale and pricing. BirchStreet is built for large hotel chains, which means smaller or mid-market hospitality groups may find it more complex and costly than what their operations require.

Best for: Large hotel chains and enterprise hospitality groups that need a proven, hospitality-specific procurement platform with deep F&B and recipe management capabilities.

3. MarketMan — Best for restaurant-focused inventory and food cost management

MarketMan is a cloud-based inventory management and procurement platform built specifically for restaurants, from single-location operators to multi-unit chains. With over 15,000 restaurant customers globally, it focuses on helping operators control food costs, manage vendor relationships, and streamline back-of-house operations.

Key features for hospitality:

  • Live inventory management. Real-time inventory counts across locations, with mobile access for on-the-go counts and ordering.
  • Recipe costing and cookbook. Build recipes with precise ingredient costs, track theoretical vs. actual food costs, and adjust menus based on profitability data.
  • Vendor ordering and price tracking. Place orders directly to distributors (including Sysco, US Foods, and Gordon Food Service) and receive alerts when ingredient prices change.
  • Multi-unit centralization. HQ dashboard centralizes reporting, purchasing, and inventory across all locations.
  • POS and accounting integrations. Direct integrations with leading POS systems and accounting software for seamless data flow.

Limitations to consider:

  • Lengthy setup process. Building out your full inventory, recipes, and vendor catalog takes significant upfront effort — real-world implementation timelines often stretch to 6–12 weeks before the system delivers meaningful data.
  • Mobile app reliability. Users consistently flag issues with MarketMan's mobile app, particularly around offline functionality during inventory counts in areas with poor connectivity like walk-ins and storage rooms.
  • Restaurant-only focus. MarketMan is purpose-built for food-centric operations. Hotels, resorts, and vacation rentals that need to manage non-F&B categories like linens, amenities, FF&E, and maintenance supplies will find gaps in coverage.

Best for: Restaurant groups and food-heavy hospitality operations that need specialized inventory management, recipe costing, and vendor ordering in one platform.

4. xtraCHEF by Toast — Best for AP automation and invoice digitization

xtraCHEF by Toast is an accounts payable automation and food cost management tool designed for restaurants. Acquired by Toast, it integrates tightly with the Toast POS ecosystem and focuses on eliminating manual invoice processing — one of the most time-consuming tasks in restaurant back offices.

Key features for hospitality:

  • Invoice digitization and line-item extraction. Snap, scan, or email invoices, and xtraCHEF extracts line-item details automatically — no manual data entry required.
  • Automated GL coding. Line-item level general ledger coding happens automatically, giving finance teams visibility without lifting a finger.
  • Invoice approval workflows. Configurable approval rules ensure the right people review invoices before payment.
  • Vendor statement reconciliation. Automatically reconcile periodic vendor statements against invoices, resolving discrepancies in clicks rather than hours.
  • Price tracking and COGS reporting. Real-time spending by category, vendor, and item — with historical price tracking for data-driven vendor negotiations.

Limitations to consider:

  • Toast dependency. xtraCHEF's most valuable features (real-time COGS analysis, menu margin reports, and theoretical vs. actual food cost tracking) require Toast as your POS. Without it, you're limited to basic invoice processing and accounting sync.
  • Limited inventory depth. Compared to dedicated inventory platforms, xtraCHEF's inventory module is lighter, lacking recipe-level variance analysis and the granularity that multi-unit operators often need.
  • Scaling challenges. User reviews consistently note that xtraCHEF becomes harder to manage cleanly beyond a handful of locations, making it a better fit for smaller operations than growing multi-unit groups.

Best for: Restaurant operators already using Toast (or planning to) who need fast, accurate AP automation and food cost visibility without overhauling their entire tech stack.

5. Restaurant365 — Best for unified restaurant back-office operations

Restaurant365 is an all-in-one platform that combines accounting, inventory, procurement, payroll, and workforce management specifically for multi-unit restaurant operators. Its approach is to unify the entire back-office under one system, eliminating the need for multiple disconnected tools.

What sets it apart:

Restaurant365 goes beyond procurement to cover the full financial and operational picture — from daily P&L reporting to labor cost forecasting. For restaurant groups that want a single source of truth across accounting, purchasing, and workforce management, it offers breadth that point solutions can't match.

Key features for hospitality:

  • Multi-unit accounting. Unified ledgers with consolidated or per-entity reporting, inter-company transactions, and multi-state payroll.
  • Inventory and purchasing. Centralized inventory management, vendor ordering, and automated receiving across locations.
  • Recipe costing and menu analysis. Track food costs at the ingredient level and analyze menu profitability across concepts.
  • Workforce management. Built-in scheduling, labor forecasting, and payroll are connected directly to financial data.
  • POS and bank integrations. Direct connections to leading POS systems and banks for real-time data flow.

Limitations to consider:

  • Complex implementation. Restaurant365's breadth comes with a trade-off: setup is intensive, and users frequently report a steep learning curve. Without careful configuration of your chart of accounts and integrations during the first 90 days, data quality issues can compound across locations.
  • Restaurant-specific scope. The platform is designed for restaurant operations. Hotels, resorts, and vacation rental businesses that need to manage procurement across non-F&B categories won't find the same depth of support.
  • Customer support inconsistency. User reviews on Software Advice give R365 a 3.8 out of 5 for customer support, with some users noting that onboarding was overdone with too much information, while ongoing support can be slow to resolve more complex issues.

Best for: Multi-unit restaurant groups that want to consolidate accounting, inventory, procurement, and workforce management into a single platform rather than stitching together point solutions.

Benefits of spend management software designed for hospitality

Why does hospitality-specific functionality matter? Here's what the right platform delivers that a generic tool won't:

Prevent rogue spend before it happens

In hospitality, unauthorized purchases both waste money and undermine brand standards. When a property manager orders off-brand linens or substitutes an unapproved cleaning product, the guest experience suffers. A hospitality-focused spend management platform enforces pre-approved product catalogs and approval workflows that stop non-compliant purchases at the source.

Consolidate vendors and reduce invoice chaos

Managing hundreds of vendor relationships across properties creates an invoice processing nightmare. Hospitality-specific platforms centralize vendor management and payment processing, transforming dozens of individual invoices into streamlined, consolidated billing. That means fewer hours spent on manual reconciliation and a faster month-end close.

Gain real-time spend visibility across locations

When each property manages its own purchasing independently, finance leaders are left piecing together spend data from spreadsheets, emails, and individual vendor portals. A centralized platform provides real-time dashboards showing exactly what each location is spending, on what, and from whom — enabling faster, more informed decisions about vendor consolidation and budget allocation.

Protect margins through better pricing

Hospitality businesses that consolidate purchasing across locations unlock volume-based pricing that individual properties could never negotiate alone. AI-powered sourcing tools can identify lower-cost alternatives and track vendor price fluctuations automatically, ensuring you're always paying competitive rates for the supplies your guests depend on.

Free up staff for guest-facing work

Every hour a hotel manager spends comparing vendor quotes, entering invoices, or tracking down a missing delivery is an hour not spent on the guest experience. Automating procurement and payment workflows gives hospitality teams time back for the work that actually drives revenue and satisfaction — creating memorable stays, improving service quality, and building loyalty.

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How to choose the best spend management software for your business

Not every hospitality business needs the same features. Here's a framework for evaluating which platform fits your operation:

Start with your spend categories

Does your business primarily purchase physical goods (linens, amenities, cleaning supplies, FF&E) or is food and beverage your dominant spend category? Platforms like Order.co excel at managing diverse physical goods procurement across categories, while MarketMan and xtraCHEF specialize in F&B inventory and food cost management. Match the platform to where your spend concentration lies.

Consider your location count and growth trajectory

A single-location restaurant has different needs than a 50-property hotel group. Look for platforms that offer multi-location management features, such as centralized catalogs, location-level budget controls, and property-by-property reporting. If you're planning to scale, choose a platform that won't require a rip-and-replace as you add properties.

Evaluate integration requirements

What ERP, accounting system, or POS do you already use? A platform that integrates with your existing tech stack (NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, Toast) will deliver faster time to value and reduce data entry. For example, Order.co automatically pushes invoice data into your ERP, eliminating manual data sync entirely.

Assess vendor management needs

How many vendors do you work with, and how fragmented are your supplier relationships? If you're managing 100+ vendors across local, regional, and national suppliers, you need a platform that can onboard and centralize all of them — not one that only works with a pre-set supplier network.

Weigh breadth vs. depth

Some platforms cover the full procure-to-pay cycle from requisition to reconciliation. Others focus deeply on one piece, like AP automation or inventory management. Decide whether you want a comprehensive platform that replaces multiple tools or a specialized solution that integrates into your existing workflow.

Ask about support and implementation

Hospitality businesses can't afford months of downtime during a software rollout. Ask vendors about implementation timelines, onboarding support, and whether they have experience in your specific segment (hotels, restaurants, vacation rentals). Order.co, for instance, can have properties placing their first orders within 14 days of implementation.

Simplify hospitality spend management with Order.co

Managing spend across a hospitality business doesn't have to mean juggling vendor portals, chasing invoices, and hoping property managers stick to approved suppliers. Order.co simplifies and automates purchasing to payments, giving hospitality businesses one place to manage purchases, ensure compliance, and control spend with minimal manual intervention.

From centralized catalogs and AI-powered sourcing to automated invoice management and vendor issue resolution, Order.co replaces the fragmented tools and manual processes that slow hospitality operations down. The result is more time for your team to focus on what matters most: the guest experience.

Ready to see how it works for your properties? Schedule a demo with Order.co to learn how leading hospitality brands are streamlining procurement and gaining full spend control.

Frequently asked questions

Spend management software for hospitality businesses is a platform that centralizes purchasing, vendor management, and payment processing across properties and spend categories. It goes beyond basic expense tracking to cover the full procurement lifecycle — from sourcing and ordering to invoice processing and spend analysis — with features tailored to the high SKU diversity, multi-location coordination, and vendor fragmentation common in hotels, restaurants, and vacation rentals.

These platforms reduce costs in several ways: centralizing purchasing to unlock volume-based vendor pricing, automating approval workflows to prevent unauthorized spending, eliminating manual invoice processing to reduce labor costs, and providing real-time spend analytics that surface savings opportunities. AI-powered sourcing features can also identify lower-cost alternatives for frequently purchased items across your vendor network.

Yes, most modern spend management platforms offer integrations with popular ERP systems (NetSuite, Sage Intacct), accounting tools (QuickBooks), and POS systems (Toast, Square). Order.co automatically pushes invoice data into your ERP, eliminating manual data entry. When evaluating platforms, confirm that the specific integrations you need are available and ask about the depth of data that syncs between systems.

Procurement software typically focuses on the purchasing process — requisitions, approvals, and vendor ordering. Spend management takes a broader view, encompassing procurement along with invoice processing, payment automation, spend analytics, and budget enforcement. For hospitality businesses, a platform that covers the full procure-to-pay process delivers more value than a procurement-only tool because it eliminates manual handoffs between disconnected systems.

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