Trust but Verify

As a vacation rental manager renting inventory for your owner, you are often required to do what is called trust-based accounting. Requirements vary slightly from location to location, but typically include the following:

• Collected rent for non-company owned properties is not treated as income (but as a liability that may be partially offset by commission income)
• No commingling of company and rental funds in the same bank account
• Complete ledger (records) of all income, charges and disbursements for each account

Transferring Trust-based Accounting Data to QuickBooks

In the US, the NC Real Estate Commission tends to have the most stringent rules regarding reporting requirements and non-commingling of rental and operational funds. Through our integration with QuickBooks we can create reports and processes that adhere to those requirements.

Read more about our back office integration services.

Owner Statements

If you collect money on behalf of your owners, you still want to make sure you get your commission and other charges paid. Typically this involves creating a set of owner statements.

The Bookt platform makes this process easy and as usual allows a great deal of flexibility. You can:

• Define close out periods (e.g. monthly or quarterly)
• Define a wide variety of commissions and calculation methods (percentage, flat fee or a combination)
• Determine what parts of the reservation income is applicable for commissions.
• Add miscellaneous charges for repairs and other service
• Provide “this is how much you will receive” reports that clearly outline all applicable income and charges
• Provide easy ways to adjust invoices prior finalizing the statements

Owner statements are visible to your property owners in their online owner’s extranet.