Vacation rental software that’s incredibly easy for homeowners and guests to love. Quickly and professionally manage reservations, guest check-in/out, payments and communication.
As for software for independent, single property owners, there isn’t a lot available. However, if you’re willing to do your own bookkeeping, vacation rental accounting software can be used to keep track of income and expenses. As well as monitor reservations, and produce listings, reports and invoices.
If you have a vacation rental property or plan on owning one soon, you should be familiar with the best vacation rental software for one property. If you are passionate about hospitality and providing an exceptional experience for your guests, this article will help you find the right software to do so, both quickly and easily.
Vacation rental software is something all property owners should consider. Vacation rental accounting software can help you keep all your expenses and revenue organized, which helps you make better decisions about your business in the future. If you’re curious about vacation rental software for 1 property or if you want to get information on vacation rental accounting software, these are the perfect platforms for your vacation home or apartment property!
What is Vacation Rental Management Software?
In short, a property management system centralizes the reservations and operational tasks for your vacation rentals. Rather than logging into Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com separately to manage reservations and communicate with guests, a property management system lets you do it all in one place.
Most vacation rental property management systems offer these basic features:
- Multi-calendar: One calendar where you can see all reservations from all channels for all of your listings.
- Reservation management: The reservation system module or CRS as it’s called in more sophisticated hotel software gives the ability to change dates, prices, and other details for existing reservations.
- Channel management: Synchronizing rates, availability, and sometimes content across all listing sites such as AirBnB, VrBO, Homeaway and Flipkey. With a channel manager, you can change your availability in your property management system and let the change be sent across all of your listing channels.
- Booking engine: Booking software provides the ability to enter direct reservations booked offline (over the phone or in person) or online (via your own website or booking widget) and increase revenue coming from direct channels.
- Integrations: Most property management systems offer a library of integrations that range from payment processors to dynamic pricing systems to keyless entry solutions.
- Mobile app: Many vacation rental owners run their properties remotely so if you fit into that category you’ll want a dedicated mobile app to run your business on the go wherever and whenever.
Stessa
Stessa is a digital platform for property investors to manage, monitor, and communicate the performance of real estate assets. Created by real estate investors, Stessa allows users to easily keep track of property performance, finances, and the paper trail that comes with real estate investing—in one central place.
Stessa will track income, expenses, and provide investors with dozens of critical investing metrics and tax-ready documentation.
Beyond the fact that it’s free, Stessa also offers a number of innovative solutions for landlords who want a tool that moves beyond simple accounting inputs and outputs. For instance, Stessa recently added real-time receipt scanning with automatic tax-ready real estate categorization to the Stessa mobile apps for iOS and Android.
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All receipts and invoices that are scanned with the Stessa app are also available on the online platform and vice-versa, so you always have a complete picture of your property expenses. Stessa’s machine learning and OCR technologies parse all the details and then organizes the information. All transaction details are stored in the cloud with the industry’s best security, so everything is always accessible and available during tax time or for audit purposes.
Further, Stessa has a document storage feature that allows landlords and investors to capture all of their critical financial and accounting documents in one centralized database.
Other cool features from the Stessa accounting software app includes rental reports and a mortgage portal for those looking to explore their financing options.
Quickbooks
Quickbooks is accounting software used by businesses in all industries. It is a powerful accounting tool designed for businesses of all types to track and manage income and expenses.
As such, many landlords have turned to this platform to manage their rentals. Quickbooks can easily allow you to receive and track rent payments, pay contractors and property managers, and track fees and track property maintenance.
That said, because Quickbooks is a more general accounting software suite, it lacks many of the industry-specific features that landlords may require like investing metrics.
Appfolio
Appfolio, and Buildium below, are both full suite property management software. Appfolio is therefore a powerful tool for landlords and property managers to keep track of tenants, properties, payments, word orders, and more.
Appfolio does have accounting features, such as deposits, online payments, automated late fees, and more.
Buildium
Buildium is similar to Appfolio, in that it is more of a full-fledged property management platform than one specifically designed for accounting. Buildium does offer some accounting features such as company financials, payment tracking, accounts payable, and more. And, you get all these accounting tools with Buildium’s core membership, it’s not an upgrade.
Buildium also includes some in-app calculators and an e-filing tool when it comes to tax time. To compare both Appfolio and Buildium, here is a comprehensive analysis of both software suites.
Beds24
Beds24 offers all of the standard property management functionality (multi-calendar, channel manager), plus a booking engine and integrations with several ancillary services. It’s best for property managers who want to take full control of their operations and don’t need much guidance from support representatives, since Beds24 does not offer phone support.
Unique features: Beds24 allows for a lot of customization – you can add essentially any restriction, pricing rule, fee, and policy you want, and the system makes it easy for you to set up channel connections on your own without the assistance of a support representative.
Integrations: Beds24 offers direct connections to Airbnb, Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia, Vrbo, and Tripadvisor. Several other regional channels are also available, as is iCal import and export functionality. Beds24 also integrates with PriceLabs, Wishbox, Mailchimp, several keyless entry solutions (igloohome, RemoteLock), and several payment processors (PayPal, Stripe).
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, a Beds24 subscription starts at about $10 per month for one property. Additional properties/units and links to channels cost about $1 each. If you have 5 properties listed on 3 channels each, your monthly fee will be about $20. If you have 50 properties on 3 channels each, the monthly fee is about $70.
Disadvantages: Unlike some other systems on this list that have invested heavily in user experience and building a sleek, beautiful interface, Beds24 is a bit clunky. But while it’s not the most fashionable system, it’s certainly functional.
Bottom Line: Beds24 packs a lot of features into a very small price. If you’re comfortable with a less user-friendly experience, this system is an excellent value.
iGMS
Since its launch in 2015, iGMS has grown to support over 100,000 listings with its property management system. You may know the company by its old name, AirGMS. In addition to a multi-calendar, automated messaging, and booking management, the system offers special functionality for automating cleaning team operations and notifications.
Unique features: Some systems only let you set up a direct Airbnb or Vrbo connection to one Airbnb or Vrbo account, but iGMS allows you to configure direct connections with multiple Airbnb accounts, which is a nice option for property managers who list different properties under different profiles. The cleaning management features also help to streamline cleaning operations at scale.
Integrations: Direct integrations are available with Airbnb and Vrbo (for rates, availability, and reservation); all other sites use a simple iCal connection. iGMS doesn’t offer much in terms of third-party software integration.
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, iGMS offers two plans: a pay-per-booking plan with a fixed cost (around $1) per booking, or a monthly or yearly subscription with no fees per booking. The “Pro” plan costs $100 per month for 5 properties and includes 24/7 email and phone support. Under the same plan, 20 listings cost $360 per month with an annual subscription.
Disadvantages: iGMS does not offer a direct connection with Booking.com or Expedia, making it a less strategic system for property managers or hosts who want to distribute listings on sites beyond Airbnb and Vrbo. As of today, iGMS also does not offer a website builder.
Bottom Line: Professional property managers, rather than individual owners or part-time hosts, may get the most benefit from iGMS, especially if your business is focused on Airbnb and Vrbo and not Expedia, Booking.com, or direct bookings.
OwnerRez
Catering to the traditional vacation home market, OwnerRez brands itself as “built by owners, for owners.” The company believes in simplicity and transparency, but that doesn’t mean the system lacks functionality. In fact, OwnerRez offers a vast array of features, from a multi-calendar to a guest database to automated message templates and responders. OwnerRez is known for its clean, user-friendly interface and hands-on customer service. The company is open to suggestions and encourages users to let them know about any features they’re missing.
Unique features: OwnerRez offers their own damage protection and travel insurance products. The system also allows you to collect and analyze your guest reviews from a variety of different sites.
Integrations: OwnerRez offers integrations with dynamic pricing software (PriceLabs, Beyond Pricing, Perfect Price), several keyless entry systems (RemoteLock, among others), guest communication tools (Wishbox), and QuickBooks (extra fee applies). You can also add an OwnerRez widget to your website via WordPress, Weebly, SquareSpace, and WIX.
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, OwnerRez charges a monthly fee dependent on the number of listings and a choice of add-on features. With no add-ons, the monthly fee for 5 listings is $28.99 (as of June 2020) and $131.99 for 50 listings. The plans include unlimited bookings. Add-ons include website hosting, channel management, and QuickBooks integration for a few more dollars per month.
Disadvantages: iCal imports and exports are included in the monthly fee, but for property managers who want to use the channel management functionality to sync rates, availability, restrictions, content, and policies to sites like Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Tripadvisor, you’ll need to pay extra. OwnerRez does not have an integration with Expedia (yet).
Bottom Line: OwnerRez is a great choice for cost-conscious property managers who want a lot of features, integrations, and input into the company’s development pipeline.
ResNexus Software
ResNexus is a property management and reservation software service which helps a business improve their property management processes with the latest and most advanced features. ResNexus is a cloud-based property management software and all-in-one solution, for property managers serving thousands of clients of various sizes in multiple industries, such as bed and breakfasts, hotels, lodges, campgrounds, and vacation rentals.
Features
- Reporting
- Analytics
- Simple Data Migration
- Accrual Accounting
- Cash-Based Accounting
- Online Reservations
- Invoices
- QuickBooks Synchronization
- Group Reservations
- Accept Payments
- Guest History
- Business Consulting
- Marketing Tools
- Rental Property Management
- Guest Management
- Hospitality Management
Integrations
QuickBooks Cloudbeds Google Analytics
Pricing
ResNexus offers three SMB and enterprise pricing plans for users to choose from
Vacation Rental Software Campground Software B&B Hotel Lodging Here are the details for each package
- Basic Edition – $14.99 (monthly payment)
- Essentials Edition – $49.00 (monthly payment)
- Professional Edition – $60.00 (monthly payment)
So, which vacation rental software should you choose?
If you’re always short on time and you feel overwhelmed with your day-to-day tasks as a property manager, any of the above tools will make a huge difference in your life.
However, every property manager has different business needs. Make sure you keep yours in mind when choosing a vacation rental software solution.
Before you commit, try answering these questions:
- What’s your budget for vacation rental software? Choose the software solution that provides the biggest value for your money. For example, Host Tools is perfect for small hosts who need an easy-to-use, budget-friendly solution with lots of useful features.
- Which channels do you advertise on? And which ones are you planning to get listed on? Make sure the software you have your eye on has direct API integrations with those channels.
- What aspects of your business should you automate to save the most time? Is it guest communication, task management, channel distribution, or pricing? The software you pick should have the automation capabilities that are most important to you.
Conclusion
Vacation rentals can be a great idea for anyone who has space or property and wants to make some extra income. However, there are a number of details you have to think about as a vacation rental owner. You need to keep track of your guests, their visits, their payments and so on. This can get complicated fast which is why we want to talk a bit about the best way to manage this process with the right vacation rental software
Vacation rental bookkeeping software is a quintessential companion for small-scale vacation rental businesses. The owner of such business needs to keep a track of all the expenses, income, and other details that are related with the rental property. There are certain tools available as vacation rental software which help simplify these tasks.