PMv2 introduced greater flexibility for configuring and displaying expenses and added custom formulas for owner statements.
Why didn't we just release this one-way, non-reversible Property Management Upgrade for all users? An upgrade of this magnitude significantly impacted the appearance of your owner statements and affected your property management business and operations.
Most users likely had to adjust statement views after upgrading and before issuing any new statements. Rather than force-accept those changes on our schedule, we offered a transition period during which you could read about the changes and new enhancements, and then upgrade at your convenience.
- What changed?
- Historical Data Effects (i.e., bookings and statements before PMv2)
- Expenses
- Statements
- Reports
- Bookings
- Other
What changed?
When the Property Management upgrade took place, OwnerRez implemented the following changes:
- OwnerRez tracks expense records for Commission, Taxes, and Damage Protection (if applicable) on new bookings. This means the Owner Statement Summary report breaks these items out for more accurate reporting going forward.
- Statement Views no longer offer complex columns for things like "Net for Commission" or "Owner Net" that are subjective in nature. Instead, you define your own columns and utilize our Custom Formula builder, which allows you to define your columns based on specific calculations.
- You can configure transaction fee (e.g., credit card processing fees) expense settings separately from channel fee expense settings.
- Each owner's previously configured channel fee was ported to the new "Transaction Fee" configuration.
- Owners who used the "Pre-deduct from earnings" channel fees option were automatically set to "Show as reimbursed expense."
- Owners who preferred their statements to include any booking expenses only if they are included were automatically set to use prorated booking expenses.
- Booking expenses on owner statements may be prorated if desired.
- Expense records no longer offer "Owner Visibility" settings. All "hidden expenses" were marked as "permanently excluded" to prevent them from appearing on future owner statements. Instead, Statement Views have a "Hide Booking Expense Category" option to control owner visibility.
- Any related expenses were also excluded when a booking was excluded from owner statements.
- Existing owner statements and PM statements were locked and uneditable.
OwnerRez also initially suggested any changes we think you should make to help transition to the new owner statement design during the PMv2 upgrade process.
Historical Data Effects (i.e., bookings and statements before PMv2)
This PMv2 upgrade includes a data migration of historical data. "Historical data" refers to all statements, bookings, and expenses that occurred prior to the upgrade. This ensures that your PM reports are consistent from the beginning, as the purpose of this upgrade is to provide a full and correct historical report on all bookings in your account.
The data migration added expense records for Commission, Taxes, and Damage Protection (if appropriate) to all bookings that existed prior to your enrollment in the PMv2 upgrade.
As part of this migration, you might notice a few things in your account:
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All historical Owner Statements have an "Original" PDF and Excel download option. These original files are snapshots of the statements as they existed prior to the migration.
When PMs access their PMv1 owner and/or PM statements generated before their PMv2 upgrade, they can click on the Download dropdown list to select either the original PDF or Excel files.
When owners access their statements through the owner portal, historical statements are only available in the "Original" PDF format. Note that statements generated after the PMv2 upgrade do not include these “Original” files, but owners can still access them as usual.
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Some historical bookings may be included on the next Owner Statement following the data migration. If there has been an over- or underpayment to the owner historically, the data migration detected and correct the balance on the booking.
If you prefer not to show this correction to the owner, you can choose to exclude the booking from all future statements.
After the data migration occurred, we recommended that you carefully review your next round of statements for any historical bookings that reappear. Do not blindly create owner statements and send them to your owners without reviewing them for historical oddities.
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New adjustment expenses may be included on the next PM Statement for bookings with a guest balance of less than 100% paid. These adjustment expenses are described as "Rounding error adjustment from PM upgrade." These adjustments are designed to address the discrepancy in rounding prorated amounts between the old PM module bookings and the upgraded PM module expenses.
Historically, prorated booking remittance was rounded after subtracting commission, taxes, and damage protection (if applicable). However, in the PM Upgrade, rounding occurs on each expense (Commission, Taxes, and Damage Protection) before the rounded amount is subtracted from the booking total paid amount. This may result in a very small difference (between 0.01 and 0.03) between the old and new remittance totals, which are reflected on the PM statement.
- Booking expenses are now prorated on PM statements by the "Guest Paid %" amount and the booked dates. If you previously issued a PM statement with partially paid bookings and the expenses were included at 100%, your next statement corrected the over-remittance, unless the guest paid the remaining balance.
Expenses
Effective expense management offers key benefits. It can boost profits by clarifying costs for each property and improving budgeting. Tracking expenses helps identify cost-cutting opportunities and informs better investment decisions. This focus allows property managers to concentrate on their most profitable properties.
In OwnerRez, expenses are items paid on behalf of your owners for which you need reimbursement. This includes tracking expense records for commissions, taxes, and damage protection (if applicable) on new bookings. Your Owner Statement Summary report can break these items out for more accurate Profit & Loss type statements going forward.
The critical expense areas include the following.
When configuring your surcharges, the Expense and Commission areas (Settings > Pricing > Surcharges > Expense and Commission) allow you to control how they affect your expenses. Here are the Surcharge > Expense and Commission default settings.
Because the default surcharge settings affect your vacation rental business's bottom line, it is imperative for you to review those surcharge settings to confirm your choices.
When configuring your taxes, be sure to review the Expense area (Settings > Pricing > Taxes > Expense). Here are the default Tax > Expense settings.
If you are responsible for remitting taxes, you'll want to ensure this section is completed. The Date to Use section can also be set on the system-wide PM > Expenses > Settings section covered next.
PMs can configure system-wide expense defaults by navigating to PM > Expenses > Settings.
You can determine what booking default dates to use for expenses and select your Damage Protection PM Account (if configured).
Expense records no longer offer "Owner Visibility" settings; instead, they include an option to "Hide Booking Expense Category" to control what is visible to owners on Owner Statements.
Expenses can also be edited on the individual Booking Expenses tab.
Statements
Owner
Owner Statements are now more versatile. They can hide expenses and use a Custom Formula Builder, where you define your columns based on specific calculations.
If your PM premium feature was previously configured before October 2024, your pre-Property Management Upgrade custom statement views are copied and labeled "Legacy," while the new post-Property Management Upgrade copies are labeled "Standard."
If any of your views use the columns listed below, we modified the new Standard version of those views to remove or adjust the column types as noted.
- Booking > Gross – replaced by Custom Formula:
[Gross] - [HiddenExpenses](Note that the Gross column is still available on Standard views but will display the entire Gross minus hidden expenses as a total amount.) - Booking > PM Commission – replaced by Expense Category > Commission
- Booking > Damage Protection (or Owner Damage Protection) – replaced by Expense Category > Damage Protection
- Booking > Owner Taxes – replaced by Expense Category > Tax
- Booking > Pre-Deducted – replaced by Hidden Expenses
- Booking > Net For Commission – replaced by Custom Formula:
[Gross] - [NonCommission] - Booking > Rent + Show-As-Rent – replaced by Custom Formula:
[ChargeCategory_RentOnly] + [CategorizedAsRentCharges] - Booking > Owner Amount – replaced by Custom Formula:
[Gross] * [PercentInPeriod] - [Expenses] - Booking > Owner Revenue – replaced by Custom Formula:
[Gross] - [FullCommissionCharges] - [Expenses] + [ExpenseCategory_Commission] + [ExpenseCategory_DamageProtection] - Booking > Owner Amount – replaced by Custom Formula:
[Gross] - [Expenses] - [ExpenseCategory_Tax] - [ExpenseCategory_DamageProtection] - Booking > Taxes Paid By – removed
- Booking > Damage Protection Paid By – removed
- Expense > Owner Visibility – removed
The easiest way to start owner statements and payouts from scratch is to issue one statement per owner and the corresponding payouts one day prior to the date you want to begin sending Owner Statements, such as the last day of the month prior to sending your first Owner Statement. This essentially creates a "baseline" so that the OwnerRz system thinks each owner is paid through the end of the month.
You can add as many Booking Columns as desired by clicking on the +Add Column at the bottom left, and you can edit the column Title as desired. Many columns allow you to either Prorate the amount or Show Total by checking the checkbox in those columns. You can also add Help Text for each column to customize your Statement Views. Finally, you can click the trash can icon on the right to delete that column if necessary.
Property Management
Reports
The PM Owner Statement Summary Report is an income statement that contains owner income and expense totals based on remittances. Refer to our Owner Statement Summary support article for additional information.
Bookings
Once the upgrade was completed, future bookings include improved, detailed side-by-side Owner/PM information. You can check that out by navigating to a new booking in the future and the PM tab.
When you record a booking expense (Booking > Expenses tab > + Record Expense), you'll notice that the Owner Visibility section has been moved to Statement Views.
Other
The Property Management Upgrade Status has been added to the PM Settings section, allowing you to check your upgrade process and suggestions even after completing your review and marking the upgrade complete.