Accounting Services Archives

What to Look for in an Outsourced Accounting Firm for your VRM Business

What to Look for in an Outsourced Accounting Firm Here’s a common misconception about outsourcing: Any firm you choose must be better than what you already have. People assume that once they’ve selected an outsourcing firm, their problems are solved. But some firms are better than others. And while the option you choose may improve…

Best Practices for Month-End Close in Vacation Rental Management

Best Practices for Month-End Close in Vacation Rental Management The month-end close puts extra strain on vacation rental management businesses. They’re not just accountable to themselves; they send month-end reports to property owners who will expect to see positive numbers presented on time. The month-end close consumes a lot of resources and inspires a certain…

The True Cost of Employees

The True Cost of Employees Companies outsource functions like accounting for many reasons: to overcome a talent shortage, to gain specialized expertise, to scale their staff fast enough to keep pace with growth. But perhaps the biggest reason a company considers outsourcing in the first place is to cut costs. They want to do the…

Trust Accounting: Crucial For Vacation Rentals

Trust Accounting: Crucial For Vacations Rentals Vacation rental managers are really in the business of trust accounting. No matter what range of services they provide or how many properties they oversee, their fundamental role is to make sure funds flow from renters to property owners (and themselves) correctly. If managers need to get one thing…

Outsourced Accounting: The Secret of Successful Vacation Rentals

Outsourced Accounting: The Secret of Successful Vacation Rentals What differentiates successful vacation rental businesses? Many people assume it’s about having a portfolio of beautiful homes to rent in ideal locations. Others think it’s about how you market the properties or handle the maintenance. All these things are important, of course, but the answer is more…

Vacation Rental Property Management Key Performance Indicators

Gross Rental Revenues We will start with the obvious one, rental revenues. Every vacation rental property manager should be tracking this metric month-over-month, year-to-date and season to prior year season. However, going further should tell an even better story. For example, calculating rental revenues by property, destination (if multi-destination manager), area of town, owner, channel…

Common Pitfalls of Accounting for Vacation Rental Property Managers

Not Using Tracking Categories. Likely the most common pitfall is using separate accounts to track properties instead of tracking categories (i.e. locations or classes in QuickBooks). Using separate accounts instead of tracking categories creates several challenges, including difficulty setting up owner/property reporting and banking rules. In addition, if you use a PMS that syncs with…

Trust Accounting for Vacation Rental Managers

One Bank Account or Two? There really is not much of an option here. Two bank accounts (at least) are needed to appropriately administer trust accounting. One of the most basic requirements of trust accounting as required by law, is that there be no commingling of company funds and property owner funds. While trust accounting…

Essential Ximplifying Applications

As a company begins to build its accounting systems and processes in the cloud, it may become overwhelmed by the number of apps or not know which cloud-based accounting software to begin with. My review below is certainly not all-encompassing, but it reviews and compares several of the most essential apps necessary to become lean, mean, and Ximplified.

Becoming Ximplified

Time and Talent. The two T’s we always need more of. Time: stakeholders expect reporting faster than ever. Talent: there is an ever-growing shortage of top rate talent with unemployment rates for accountants hovering below 2%. Luckily, integrated accounting and finance tools, once only available with multi-million-dollar implementations and hours of IT designing and coding, are available at minimal costs.