Senior Accountant – Payroll & Benefits

Description

Avion Hospitality is seeking an experienced Senior Accountant – Payroll & Benefits to support 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 a key accounting partner 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, along with the ability to independently investigate issues, resolve discrepancies, and identify 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

· Perform payroll accounting across all managed properties, including 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 accuracy and integrity of labor reporting.

· Analyze payroll activity, investigate variances, and resolve discrepancies to support accurate financial reporting.

· Serve as a key accounting resource for payroll, labor accounting, payroll-related expenses, and employee benefits.

· Perform 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 and reconcile carrier invoices and benefit funding.

· Perform workers’ compensation accounting, including premium accruals, payroll allocations, reconciliations, and audit support.

· Perform 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, investigate differences, and resolve discrepancies.

· Partner with Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) to support labor forecasting, payroll budgeting, and expense analysis.

· Support timely, accurate, and complete financial reporting across all managed entities.

· Coordinate 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 preparing accurate documentation, reconciliations, and analysis.

· Monitor compliance with accounting policies and identify opportunities to strengthen financial controls.

· Identify and drive process improvements that enhance payroll accounting accuracy, efficiency, automation, and scalability.

· Support integrations and enhancements between Paylocity, M3, benefits providers, and other financial systems.

· Maintain and enhance standard operating procedures that promote consistency and best practices across payroll accounting activities.

· Collaborate with Accounting, Human Resources, Payroll, Treasury, and Operations to streamline processes and resolve accounting-related issues.

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.

· 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 is strongly preferred.

· 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 strong analytical, reconciliation, and problem-solving abilities.

· Excellent organizational skills with the ability to independently manage recurring deadlines in a high-volume environment.

· Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to partner effectively across Accounting, Human Resources, Payroll, Treasury, and Operations.

· High attention to detail with the ability to investigate discrepancies and follow issues through resolution.

· A continuous improvement mindset with an interest in building scalable, efficient financial processes.