Outsourcing vs. Upgrading: Two Options for Vacation Rental Accounting

outsource or upgrade accounting

Outsourcing vs. Upgrading: Two Options for Vacation Rental Accounting The exacting demands of trust accounting create huge headaches at most vacation rental management businesses. Trust accounting is a time- and labor-intensive obligation that repeats month after month. Even harder, the particulars of trust accounting are foreign to many working accounting professionals and hard to learn…

Read More

Best Practices for Month-End Close in Vacation Rental Management

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…

Read More

The True Cost of Employees

Accounting article image

The True Cost of Employees Companies outsource accounting functions 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 same…

Read More

Trust Accounting: Crucial For Vacation Rentals

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…

Read More

Outsourced Accounting: The Secret of Successful Vacation Rentals

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…

Read More

Common Pitfalls of Accounting for Vacation Rental Property Managers

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…

Read More

How Trust Accounting Works

Trust Accounting for Vacation Rental Managers

Understand how transactions flow You will need a general understanding of accounting in order to properly account and track both your owners’ and your own vacation rental management company’s books. Hopefully, this will give you a general understanding of the flow of transactions using trust accounting best practices. Bookings & Invoices Rental & security deposits…

Read More

Essential Ximplifying Applications

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.

Read More

Becoming Ximplified – Steps to Smoother Accounting

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.

Read More