How Commonwealth Hotels Connected Labor and Finance to Drive Profitability Across Its Portfolio

Labor is the largest controllable expense in hospitality. But when labor data and financial forecasting live in separate systems, insights lag, and so does decision-making. At Commonwealth Hotels, integrating Hotel Effectiveness and ProfitSword from Actabl has created a real-time bridge between operations and finance. Read on to learn how this works and how shared insights are improving operations and financial performance.

A Seamless Flow of Data

For Commonwealth Hotels, the integration between Hotel Effectiveness and ProfitSword wasn’t just a feature of these products from Actabl. It was a strategic unlock.

“We have Hotel Effectiveness mapped into ProfitSword,” said Andy Ashmore, Director of Analytics & Business Development. “The schedule, the actuals—everything flows from our time clock, through Hotel Effectiveness and into ProfitSword. It gives real-time visibility.”

This visibility means managers can see exactly how much labor they’ve scheduled, how much they’ve already spent, and how it’s tracking against forecasted revenue—all in one place.

Real-Time, Forward-Looking Labor Management

Commonwealth now operates with a real-time, future-facing view of labor costs.

“As schedules are entered into Hotel Effectiveness, they automatically show up in ProfitSword,” explained Debbie Farrell, Vice President of Analysis. “You’re not only seeing daily metrics—you’re seeing a week out, two weeks out, however far you’ve forecasted. You know exactly if you're running a successful hotel or if you have some opportunities there.”

This live connection between scheduled labor and financial projections enables smarter, faster decision-making, especially when business conditions shift quickly.

Replacing Chaos with Confidence

Before the integration, tracking and forecasting labor across the portfolio was a headache.

“We had Excel files everywhere,” Andy recalled. “We’d pull in daily labor data and try to feed them into massive spreadsheets. And honestly, they didn’t always update correctly or match up with what had actually been scheduled.”

Now, those spreadsheets are gone—and so is the doubt. ProfitSword automatically reconciles labor plans and actuals from Hotel Effectiveness, providing a single source of truth for labor cost tracking.

Richer Labor Insights for Better Performance

While ProfitSword centralizes and visualizes data across the hotel business, Hotel Effectiveness brings depth to the labor side of the equation.

“It’s not just hours and dollars,” said Debbie. “Hotel Effectiveness gives us deep productivity reports, wage benchmarks, and all kinds of metrics we didn’t have before. The richness of that data feeds right into our financial view, which gives our teams more levers to pull.”

This type of connected intelligence allows hotel leaders to go beyond “cost control” and into true performance optimization.

A Unified Platform for Smarter Teams

Ultimately, the combined ProfitSword and Hotel Effectiveness solutions from Actabl are empowering operators and ownership groups alike.

“It’s a great resource,” Andy said. “We’re seeing everything in one place. It’s accurate, and we’re not waiting weeks to understand what’s happening. That puts us in a position to make better decisions, faster.”

For a hotel management company with scale like Commonwealth Hotels, that agility isn’t just helpful—it’s strategic.

Takeaway: Integration Isn’t a Feature—It’s the Strategy

The real value of hospitality tech lies in how it works together. For Commonwealth Hotels, the tight integration between ProfitSword and Hotel Effectiveness has created a live dashboard for labor and finance, powering smarter planning, stronger margins, and better team alignment.

“Now we’re not just tracking where we’ve been,” said Debbie. “We’re managing where we’re going.”

Want to see how integrated labor planning and financial forecasting could level up your performance? Let’s talk.