Brian Roth, Co-Founder, Mike Baldinger, Co-Founder, Erik Nejman, Co-Founder
Driven by this mission for innovation, Evention identified the need to push the boundaries of existing systems within the hospitality space. These solutions including POS, Property Management Systems (PMS), Time & Attendance, Payroll, Credit Card Processors, cash equipment, and event management systems to name a few have long claimed the position of ’critical solutions for their niche space’, assisting hoteliers in improving guest experiences, point of sale, and payroll management. Yet, despite these pronounced process optimization capabilities, these independent automation systems lack integration features, presenting a broad spectrum of challenges to businesses.
Most spend considerable time manually transferring data between various systems, leading to an error-prone, inefficient approach to performance analysis and reporting. Especially during account reconciliation, this existing process increases accountants’ workloads—an already hard-to-find resource in today’s labor market.
As an industry leader in automating accounting processes and reconciliations, Evention has turned this adversity into an opportunity by helping businesses increase operational efficiency through a portfolio of expert-crafted software solutions. These time-tested platforms replace legacy accounting processes with automated, cloud-based solutions that help reduce errors, improve compliance, and mitigate fraud while offering seamless cross-integration capabilities.
Trusted by leading brands across the globe, Evention excels at automating accounting processes in the hospitality and retail domains. The company’s suite of solutions operates seamlessly on macro and micro levels, enabling unprecedented information sharing in real-time.
“We are redefining the process of integrating diverse systems,” says Baldinger.
A Legacy of Innovation
Evention began its innovation journey nearly two decades ago at the behest of a client request.
A renowned Chicago-based hotel had to allocate significant time and resources to process data manually from its event management systems. The annual calculations of gratuity payrolls using spreadsheets amounted to millions of dollars, and the data had to be fed again to downstream systems for further processing.
Recognizing the inefficiency and potential for errors in this process, Evention developed its first solution—Tips+Gratuities—as a substitute for manual gratuity calculations involving reams of paper and a subsequent tedious approval process.
This innovative platform seamlessly interfaces with various systems, such as point of sale, event management, time and attendance, scheduling, and payroll. It effectively automates the calculation of pooled gratuities, ensuring accurate and transparent payroll processing. The Tips+Gratuities platform is versatile, catering to business and departments including banquets, full-service restaurants, quick-serve establishments, front desk upsells, retail commissions, and other applications.
With its business ethos rooted in innovations, Evention has consistently added more features to the Tips+Gratuities platform to align with diverse real-world requirements. For instance, one of its clients faced a complex payroll process due to diverse roles within the hotel, such as captains, A-list servers, B-list servers, bartenders, and coffee crew. Each role received a different share of distributed gratuity, requiring manual interventions of up to 20 hours per week for reconciling and calculating the gratuity in Excel.
We’re Innovators Committed To Stepping Beyond Conventional Business Intelligence To Empower Hotels, Owners, And Management Companies With Unparalleled Data Reconciliation Across Their Disparate Systems For Elevating Their Overall Experience
Acknowledging and attuning to industry trends, Evention recognized yet another requirement within the hospitality space. This time, the demand was crystal clear—a digital tipping solution explicitly crafted for service staff that typically receive their tips from outside of the point-of-sale system, often as cash tips. Evention stepped in and developed its next prominent solution—InstaTip—a game-changing platform focused on service employees like valet attendants, porters, shuttle drivers, and housekeeping. Integrated into its Tips+Gratuities platform, the solution lets staff digitally receive tips.
Guests can instantly tip employees, and the gratuity is automatically reconciled and allocated to the payroll. This feature is instrumental in streamlining the entire process—from digital tipping to payroll management—while improving hotels’ compliance posture. InstaTip can serve as the perfect solution for offering variable pay opportunities, doubling as a tool to elevate employee retention in the service industry.
A Tale of Continuous Development
The development of a Total Recon platform marked another milestone in Evention’s innovation journey. It is designed to directly integrate with cash recycling and other cash equipment, effectively addressing the manual and complex process of counting, verifying, and reconciling cash. Using this robust solution, cash undergoes automated reconciliations against point-of-sale and property management systems, streamlining the entire process and saving hours in finance and operations.
Evention has further expanded the platform’s capability to support credit card reconciliations. It integrates with payment processors and gateways, transforming the arduous processes of sorting and matching credit card transactions with property management systems. This feature significantly reduces the time spent on credit card reconciliation, empowering finance teams to redirect their focus to other essential tasks.
Total Recon can operate as a standalone system or part of an integrated ecosystem. Evention offers separate modules for cash reconciliation, credit card reconciliation, and other reconciliation, allowing hotels to tailor their approach based on requirements. In addition, the platform is integrated to the hotels accounting system so that journal entries for any payment reconcilation can be posted automatically to the company’s general ledger.
“As active listeners, our solution development process is rooted in clients’ feedback. Witnessing the transformative impacts, customers consistently bring us new reconciliation challenges. Our passion is crafting balance through automation,” says Baldinger. “We leave no stone unturned to ensure our platforms are efficient and safe.”
The Evention Way of Excellence
Evention has equipped its solutions with multiple configurable options to accommodate specific workflows, security requirements, and different regional business regulations.
At the foundational level, Evention employs role-based security measures to ensure all users are granted access only to the data that aligns with designated roles and responsibilities within the organization. This approach establishes tailored environments where users can interact with information relevant to their functions. The company’s commitment to robust security practices is evident through adherence to SOC 2 standards. It undergoes rigorous security scans to integrate with customer security protocols, ensuring a cohesive fit into the client’s organizational infrastructure.
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We Leave No Stone Unturned To Ensure Our Platforms Are Efficient And Safe
A user-friendly platform interface further complements all these security features. As users access these systems, they are intuitively led through a standard hospitality procedure, whether involving the management of tips and gratuity payroll or the reconciliation of cash, credit cards, and rewards.
The Evention systems’ design prioritizes the automation of data imports, streamlining the user experience. The aim is to provide users with a lucid view of output and reconciliation outcomes. While most functions operate seamlessly through automation, the system is designed to alert anomalies in credit card mismatches, ensuring a vigilant and error-free operation. This approach allows users to focus on specific issues without being inundated by irrelevant data, a departure from the tedious manual processes typically conducted in Excel.
Upholding Customer-Centricity
Evention’s ultimate goal is to empower hotel teams to seamlessly integrate software into their workflow, facilitating swift reconciliation, approval, and a seamless transition to their following tasks with efficiency and confidence. A client testimonial aptly captures its excellence in customer-centric service delivery: ‘The meticulous adaptation of your solutions to our specific requirements speaks volumes about your team’s insightful grasp of the hospitality industry.’
An expert team from diverse industry backgrounds united by a shared passion for problem-solving, a culture of critical thinking, and the drive for continuous development forms the foundation of Evention’s excellence. To exceed expectations, they embody the company’s core values—rallying for customer delight, envisioning innovative solutions, having a collaborative spirit, being open-minded and nurturing success.
Celebrating its 20-year anniversary, Evention is gearing up to release a rewards reconciliation module to address the complexity of reconciling payments made with rewards points. It is designed as a comprehensive solution that can reconcile any type of system of record, automating and balancing the process for customers. The clear-cut roadmap reaffirms its commitment to bringing a groundbreaking solution that drives operational efficiency for the hospitality industry.
