Managing vacation rentals is not an easy task. Creating reports, generating invoices, arranging reservations and organizing rental activities are just some of the responsibilities of a vacation rental manager. The job can be made much easier with reservation system software where all the everyday jobs or tasks in managing a hospitality business are combined into one rental management software suite.
If you are thinking of buying vacation rental property software, this article will help you determine what reservation program would best suit your needs.
First and foremost, you must determine what are the things that you are looking for in a vacation hotel booking system. What are the functions, abilities or features that you are looking for? Second, do you need a desktop application or a web-based program? Third, is the software user-friendly? Fourth, how affordable is the reservations software?
The common features of vacation rentals software are:
Check for availability and make reservations including the arrival date, departure date and manage multiple rental rates.
Generates confirmations, receipts and statements.
Record important information on all of your rental units.
Process Online payments.
An easy-to-use database that tracks all the information about your guests especially payments.
Keep track of deposits, payments to accounts, and other income sources. Generate registers for your income reporting accounts
Record all your expense payments and travel deductions. View deposits and debits for any number of expense reporting accounts.
A way to add misc. charges and record full and partial rent payments and print rent receipts.
Track of all your income and tax deductible expenses and generate tax form reports.
Some hotel booking software will also keep track of schedules, generate form letters to be mailed or emailed, and provide other tools to help you streamline your business. Consider these additional features:
Send promotional materials or other form letters to all of your guests, vendors, family, friends or any other contacts
Keep track of all the appliances, furniture, etc. that are included with your rental units.
Create property management invoices for other owners whose units you manage. Add management fees and deduct expenses.
Create Work Orders for any repairs or maintenance, track vendors, schedules, work completed and amounts paid.
Display your appointments, deadlines and other important events in Daily, Weekly or Monthly Calendar formats in scheduling software.
Create To Do Lists with room for notes, deadlines, priorities, etc. with project management software.
The best hotel or motel software also includes tools which allow you to look up where area codes are, calculate time zone differences, and has a universal calculator that adds or subtracts numbers, dates and times, converts length, volume and weight measurements, computes discounts, sales tax, foreign money exchanges and loan payment amounts.
One major thing to consider is, should it be a desktop application or a web-based application? Here are some differences between the two:
A desktop application is an application that runs without the need of an internet connection. A web-based application, which includes any software you log on to a web site to access, requires a fast, reliable internet connection.
Desktop software is generally much faster and easier to use than web-based software. If you do not have a very fast internet connection, it could take you several times longer to get the same amount of work done.
A desktop application, if backed-up regularly, is more secure and reliable than a web-based application. If your web connection goes down, or the company's website were to go down, or the company went out of business, you will no longer have access to your data if using web-based applications.
With desktop applications, you generally pay just once, and technical support is often included. With web-based applications you rent the software, paying monthly fees and often get only email support.
Would you rather pay less on a monthly basis for web-based software, which will add up to much more over time, or pay one reasonable amount up front and get the features, speed and reliability of a desktop application?
As a small business person, I'm sure you would rather find ways to save money and at the same time have the features and capabilities you are looking for in vacation booking software?
With these things in mind, you can now determine what would be the best vacation property management system for your need. The best reservation system for a small business person like you, in my opinion is to get Vacation Rental Tracker plus. It is a reasonably priced desktop application that is easy to use and is available for most Mac and Windows computers.
To better understand its ease, comfort and productivity, and to download a free trial today, visit
http://productivity-software.com/vacation/index.html for more details.