Hi All,
We are ramping up a co-hosting business using OwnerRez as the PMS and QuickBooks Online for financials. We are in a state where we need to walk a fine line between what we can do as a co-host and what is considered a property manager bc property managers are required to be licensed relators. Also, we are using a MTR/STR Hybrid approach. This means we are trying for 30 night minimum rentals first and filling in the gaps by opening it up to 2 night minimum. Our target guests are insurance company customers that had a fire/flood in their home; people relocating to Charlotte, but not sure where they want to buy yet; companies with employees on long term assignments that would be more comfortable in a house than an extended stay hotel.
The main thing we need to be careful of when it comes to systems/processes around OwnerRez is guest/channel payments must be paid directly to the owner, then we invoice for our commission and out of pocket expenses. We plan to have each owner have their own Stripe account or other method to collect payments.
A few questions and a general ask for any tips, tricks or gotchas below (remember, we are using OwnerRez and QuickBooks Online):
1) Do you have a solution in OR for channel (vrbo, airbnb) payment processing fees/commission charges that the channel subtracts before sending the owner the payment? I detailed this question out with screen shots in another forum post. Would appreciate your input on the separate post. https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/go/80018
2) How do you setup multi-month (lets say 5 months) stay where the guest (or insurance company) will pay monthly instead of in 2 payments before arrival? How do you show each monthly payment that was made to the owner (can only find a single Direct Remittance field on the PM tab of the Booking, so we could keep updating the total, however that doesn't provide us the detail of what happened when, and we have a feeling it will get even messier on the owner statements.
3) How do you do background checks, credit reports and income verification on a multi-month stay? We setup the integration with trustd.ai which handles the background check/id verification, however are open to other options and don't have any integrated solution for credit check/income verification
4) How do you handle accounting for security deposits in OR? They need to be in the Quote and charges on the Booking, but the $$ is being received/held/returned by the owner. How do you show it was paid, but not show it as paid to you? How do you show it was returned?
3) Do you have any other tips, tricks, gotchas you can call out using OR and QuickBooks Online for Co-hosting where the owner is paid directly by the guest/channel and we invoice the owner for our commission and out of pocket expenses?
Thank you!
