Accounting Manager - Payroll & Benefits

Description

Avion Hospitality is seeking an experienced Accounting Manager – Payroll & Benefits to lead the accounting, reconciliation, and financial reporting for payroll, payroll-related expenses, and employee benefits across our growing portfolio of 40+ Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt hotels.

This highly collaborative role serves as the bridge between Payroll, Human Resources, and Accounting, ensuring payroll transactions, benefits expenses, payroll taxes, and labor costs are accurately recorded and reconciled across multiple legal entities and jurisdictions. The ideal candidate combines strong accounting expertise with an understanding of hospitality labor, multi-state payroll, and employee benefits while continuously seeking opportunities to improve processes and strengthen financial controls.

If you enjoy solving complex accounting challenges, partnering across departments, and helping build scalable financial processes in a fast-growing organization, we'd love to hear from you.

What You'll Do

• Own payroll accounting across all managed properties, ensuring accurate payroll journal entries, labor cost allocations, and general ledger reconciliations between Paylocity and M3.
• Ensure payroll expenses are properly allocated by department and entity while maintaining the integrity of labor reporting.
• Analyze payroll activity and investigate variances to ensure accurate financial reporting.
• Serve as the accounting subject matter expert for payroll, labor accounting, payroll-related expenses, and employee benefits.

• Manage accounting for payroll taxes and payroll-related expenses and benefits (PTEB), ensuring accurate categorization and financial reporting.
• Reconcile employee benefit programs, including medical, dental, vision, 401(k), life insurance, and ancillary benefit plans.
• Verify employer and employee contribution accuracy while reconciling carrier invoices and benefit funding.
• Oversee workers' compensation accounting, including premium accruals, payroll allocations, and audit support.

• Lead the payroll and benefits portion of the monthly close process, including accruals for payroll, bonuses, PTO, insurance, and related liabilities.
• Prepare account reconciliations and perform variance analysis to identify trends and resolve discrepancies.
• Partner with Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) to support labor forecasting, payroll budgeting, and expense analysis.
• Ensure timely, accurate, and complete financial reporting across all managed entities.

• Partner with Payroll providers and Human Resources to support multi-state payroll tax compliance, jurisdictional registrations, and resolution of payroll tax notices.
• Maintain strong internal controls related to payroll, benefits accounting, and financial reporting.
• Support internal, external, ownership, and regulatory audits by providing accurate documentation and analysis.
• Monitor compliance with accounting policies and continuously evaluate opportunities to strengthen financial controls.

• Lead initiatives that improve payroll accounting accuracy, efficiency, automation, and scalability.
• Support integrations and enhancements between Paylocity, M3, benefits providers, and other financial systems.
• Develop and maintain standard operating procedures that promote consistency and best practices across payroll accounting functions.
• Collaborate with Accounting, Human Resources, Payroll, Treasury, and Operations to streamline processes and improve the overall employee and property experience.

Requirements

 What We're Looking For

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience).
• Five or more years of progressive accounting experience with a strong emphasis on payroll and benefits accounting.
• Previous leadership or supervisory experience is preferred.
• Hospitality, hotel management, or multi-state, multi-entity accounting experience is strongly preferred.
• Hands-on experience with Paylocity (or a comparable payroll platform) and M3 Accounting.
• Strong understanding of payroll accounting, payroll-related expenses and benefits (PTEB), workers' compensation, employee benefits, and multi-state payroll tax requirements.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills with exceptional analytical, reconciliation, and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent organizational skills with the ability to manage recurring deadlines in a high-volume environment.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to partner effectively across Accounting, Human Resources, Payroll, and Operations.
• A continuous improvement mindset with a passion for building scalable, efficient financial processes.