From vacation rentals to short-term stay residences, many hospitality businesses/property management companies deal with properties that have multiple owners. This setup provides multiple sources of revenue for management companies including management fees and cleaning fees, but can be complicated when it comes to owner accounting, reporting and communication with owners. This is where a property management system with built-in owner management capabilities can simplify day-to-day operations and allow for the management companies to sell rooms or rental units on multiple channels. When evaluating systems, look for the following three tools to make managing a property with multiple owners of units, rooms or sites easier:
1. Seamless Individual Billing
Property managers need to be able to associate owners to specific rooms within their property management system, and have the ability to pay out an automatically calculated amount of reservation revenue from those rooms to their owners. For example, if someone owns Units B & C at a property, the manager can associate the owner’s name to those specific units in the system. When a guest comes to stay in Unit C, the owner management module will automatically determine the correct payout amount allowing the manager to easily pay the room revenue earned directly to the owner. With the right billing tool, managers can also save both time and resources by automating expenses billed to the owners, no matter the fee type. Look for a system that allows for a variety of billable fee types such as percentage-based commissions, housekeeping fees, monthly fees, credit card processing fees and more.
2. Intuitive Owners Portal
An owners portal is a powerful tool that allows owners to log in to a special view of the areas or rooms that they own within a property, and manage their own units. By giving owners access to an owners portal, they can create or modify their own reservations, export their own statements and more. The owners portal should also give property managers complete control over what owners have access to within the portal, and allow them to enable or disable owner access independently.
3. Extensive Reporting Capabilities
A variety of reports can help property managers better manage and communicate with owners. Owners should have access to detailed reporting that provides real-time visibility into their particular unit’s performance, such as the Owner Ledger Report, Statement Invoice and Owner Income Summary. Property managers also need visibility into the property’s performance as a whole, so the ability to view all owner statements in a single system can enable data-driven decision-making based on reservation and revenue trends.
4. Built-In Inventory Rotation
As a management company with multiple owners, it is important to offer an even distribution of bookings to each individual owner. To ensure fairness for everyone, a fully equipped system should offer inventory rotation that shows how often a room or site is booked and automatically assign guests to the least booked room. By implementing inventory rotation, you are guaranteeing that bookings are evenly distributed among owners.
At RMS, helping RV parks and campgrounds achieve their business goals is our main focus. Our cloud-based reservation management system has a robust suite of features that can be tailored to meet each property's needs and empower park owners in any market conditions. For more information about RMS, visit www.rmsnorthamerica.com.
